A girlfriend and I were on a shopping excursion a few years ago, each perusing different racks, and I ran across a sweater that had a tag that said 7X! I called my friend over and showed her, saying, “I’ve never seen this size before, have you?” She turned the size tag right side up and showed it to me. It was an XL...stupid = 1. Brogan = 0.
Later, I was relating that story to a different friend, and after she got done laughing her butt off, she asked me, “Why do you give us this kind of ammunition?”
Because, at this stage of my life, I am finally comfortable in my own skin. It’s taken over 30 years, but now I have learned to not only embrace my eccentricities but to flaunt them in front of God and country. You’ve seen the posts I’ve had on Facebook with the scorecard stupid -1, Brogan = 0. Why? Because if I can laugh at myself, other people will laugh with me, not at me.
Can I add 2 and 2? Not always. Do I need GPS to get from point A to point B without getting lost? You bet. I am a stellar housekeeper? Hell no. Am I scared of the dark? Yes, yes, yes!
Am I perfect? Absolutely not, and I don’t want to be. The last perfect person who walked this earth ended up nailed to a cross, and that is waaaAAAaaayyy above my pay grade.
And that is A-freaking-okay!
In my upper elementary school/mid junior high school years, I was an easy target for bullies because I wasn’t cool, I wasn’t smart, and I wasn’t pretty. I tried to be but could never pull it off. At some point between fifth grade and seventh grade, I decided I would just try to be invisible and stay off the Bully Radar.
Yeah, that didn’t work so much either.
I didn’t have an epiphany about all of this until about age 15 after I was on a church youth group hayride where another member said the single most hurtful thing of my life. As I cried myself to sleep that night, I vowed that no one would ever have the power to hurt me like that again. To make that happen, I had to quit trying to be cool or smart or pretty or any of those things. I had to like myself first and be myself no matter what anyone else thought.
Plus, I realized if I acknowledged any foibles or...well, misdeeds...before anyone else did, and if I could make it a humorous thing, then no one else could use that to hurt me.
I will never be super smart, or marginally cool, or remotely pretty. But I am compassionate. I am loyal. I am honest. And I am a bunch of freaking fun. I don’t think that girl from the hayride was a happy person; she couldn’t have been to say such a hurtful thing to another person. I sincerely hope she found her happiness in time.
The take-away here is to always, always, always strive to be kind to one another. That perfect person I mentioned before? Yeah, that’s what He said too: Love Your Neighbor. It wasn’t a suggestion, folks. It was the second greatest commandment in the Bible, only behind Love The Lord.
Follow it.
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