Free-Wheeling Friday--I Know What It's Like to Not Fit In

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I began Renee Swopes's book A Confident Heart this week with a load of other women in the Proverbs 31 Ministries online Bible study.  I read through the first chapter and answered the questions, and it gave me a lot to think about.  As did the other book I started--Something Inside Me by Chitoka Webb.  With all the happenings recently, I considered many things within me.  And here is what I discovered.

I have always been one who responds to challenges.  When someone says I can't do something, I set out to prove them wrong.  If "it can't be done," I will find a way to do it.  That is one of the reasons that I enjoy And blogging.  Your job is never done.  Never be satisfied with the status quo.  Keep trying to make things better.  Work with what you have.  These are important principles of my life.

Since I have been this way most of my life, you can imagine that I didn't always fit in as I was growing up.  I have never made friends easily,.  I am not an unfriendly person, but I would say I require often as much from my real friends as I do myself.  Not that I expect perfection--everyone if different.  I just mean that in order to call someone a friend, I am not interested in playing games or not being up front about things.

In elementary school, I was an individual.  I didn't dress like everyone else.  I challenged myself to be a good student.  I didn't generally get in trouble.  I often did more work than I had to.  I didn't watch the current movies or listen to the current music.  And you can imagine how I was treated.

As early as second grade, I was not well-liked in my peer groups.  Third grade was horrid--no one in my class liked me, and I'm being honest.  I was writing stories by the fourth grade, and music was my life from sixth grade on.  I was made fun of regularly.  In fact, in high school, it was the kids in my church youth group who treated me the cruelest.

I realized today that I do honestly know what it's like to not fit in.  I never have.  And as I went through school, college, and young adulthood, I was consistently put down.  It became a joke to me that once year (when I taught in a Christian school), I would get called into the principal's office to answer for what I had done wrong.  And then when I worked for a "Christian" principal in a public school in Texas, I still got in trouble.  I think I finally hit a record when I was not in trouble for my last two years there because I finally had figured out how to keep myself out of trouble.

Isn't it a shame that God's people are sometimes the cruelest people on earth?  That has never made sense to me.  I have always been more accepted and appreciated by non-Christians than Christians.  When I was married, I seemed to get along better with single people--that should have told me something.  I had to fight hard for any praise I did receive.

I realized today that this blog is the most positive thing I have ever had in my life.  I have finally been validated to a degree.  Don't get me wrong.  I don't mean that I am finding all my value and worth in this blog.  I find that only in the Lord. This blog could totally fall apart tomorrow.  I know that.  But God owns this blog, and He has chosen to bless me through it.  I remember that it was scary to step out and faith and begin this blog.  I am even stepping out in faith when I sign up for blog hop giveaways and have no sponsors.  And God is providing.  God is showing Himself  so faithful.

I am so glad I have finally found my niche.  I am not even desperate to get sub jobs like I was the past two years.  I actually miss my blog when I can't be on it as much as I would like.  It's so nice to finally fit in, and thank you, blogging world, for accepting me at last!