My daughter Hannah has freckles. Cute ones on her nose and cheeks. We’ve always told her they are angel kisses, so as she got new ones she felt special.
Lately there has been a change in Hannah’s attitude about her freckles. She’s made weird comments like, “I’m afraid I’m going to turn into one BIG freckle.”
A staff member came into the classroom to get something. Hannah likes this guy. He makes kids laugh. He’s silly. Somehow the subject of her freckles came up. He said, “We can play connect the dots with your freckles.” The class busted out laughing. Hannah’s heart broke, but she hid her emotions.
I tried to reassure her that they laughed at the game idea—not at her. I told her that God made her just the way He wanted her to be, and that her sweet freckles are part of His masterpiece.
It’s amazing how that one comment made her self conscious. She now sees her freckles as connect the dots, not angel kisses. I’m heartbroken for her.
Still I knew what she felt like. When I was young, I was teased for being so pale. Kids would put their tan arm next to mine and smile. Proud of their color, belittling my lack thereof. I felt ghostly. Ugly. I longed for a golden tan, but I always burned and freckled instead. And skin cancer runs in my family.
The person who said sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never hurt me— lied!
It’s sad how the voices we hear affect us so deeply. We can hear a hundred positive things about ourselves, but we remember the one negative one, the one that shamed us.
Why is this?
Reading this was a reminder to me of how we all begin comfortable with who we are. Little things are said and then we change our attitudes. Nothing about the situation changed. Hannah’s freckles were still the same, but suddenly her attitude about those freckles changed, from something special to something to be laughed at.
Tiffany, your comment about being white reminded me of my two cousins who were always sick. I was outside and very tan in the summer, but they were very pale. I remember being envious of my two cousins with their pale skin. Even their freckles were pale and I thought it was “angel skin”.
As summer went on my tan got darker and my knees got so tan that my dad thought they were dirty. He would take a big old scrub brush to them on Saturday night so that they would be clean for Sunday morning. They were rubbed almost raw and on Sunday morning I went to church with tan skin and red knees. I figured that I deserved to be scrubbed hard. I felt dirty and that nothing I could do would make me clean and perfect like them.
Instead of being okay with who I was and how special God made me, I became ashamed of the way I looked. No matter how many good things are said about us, we seem to internalize any negative thing and take that to heart. Then our attitudes change, we become self conscious and it takes away our joy. If we could only see ourselves as God sees us, perhaps then we would realize just how special we really are.