Weapon Revealed

“Why do you wear clothes like that?”

“You don’t live where we live, so you can’t play with us.”

“You’re not very pretty.”

“You’re so fat.”

Stinging words from children. A friend posted on facebook recently that a child had used words like this on her kindergarten daughter.

There are so many campaigns out there about anti-bullying, and that’s nice, but it’s not going to stop the little cuts on the playground or the glares across desks or the exclusions at game time.

It CANNOT be stopped. It WILL NEVER stop. As a parent or teacher you cannot be there every second to defend your child. You can’t control what other children do and you certainly can’t control what happens in other children’s homes that instigate behavior like that.

It’s weakness. It’s doubt and unbelief. It’s sorrow over questions unanswered and insecurity over obvious differences. We live in a world that applauds diversity and spends billions of dollars showing us who we aught to be and what we aught to look like.

Weakness.

Weakness that has found a weapon.

“Death and life are in the power of the tongue…”

Most of us didn’t even know we had a weapon until someone used it on us.

My friend’s little girl walked away from the weapon. Because she has a mommy and daddy who have loved her enough to combat those words from within. What about the little one who doesn’t have that love? They become the next one to use the weapon and it goes on and on.

I remember sitting on the side of my parent’s bed, tears running down my face over unjust words and play. She had hurt me…again…and I didn’t deserve it. She seemed to want to hurt me especially and I was tired. My little heart was not broken, it was simply tired of putting up with it. I had been taught to turn the other cheek, to walk away, to ignore it and it will go away. But she was relentless…her weakness had found it’s weapon and she enjoyed making those cuts at me.

I was waiting for my mother to tell me what to do. How to finally fight back, surely it was time to fight back.

I am sure that her heart was just as bruised as mine over it, and as a mother I now know that she was probably even more angry than I was.

But she didn’t offer me revenge, defense or pity. She offered me the greater weapon of love.

“Mary,” she said, “she does those things because people have done them to her, she does them because she’s never been taught how to deal with hurts. She does those things because her parents do those things, she doesn’t know any other way. We don’t need to hurt her more, we need to pray for her and ask God to comfort her.”

And the tears came harder, not because I felt betrayed, but because I was sorry for even wanting to hurt her more.

It’s not enough to teach our children to be strong, to be brave, to know what to say or even to ignore offenses. We must offer them enough love that they can share it with those who need it most. Love is more than something we keep handing back and forth amongst the people we like best. It is a fruit of the Spirit, it holds seeds within it and the more we give the more will grow.

Jesus said, in Matthew 5:44 “But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;” KJV

If we teach our children this concept, they will never look at a bully the same. I promise you, there will be a compassion within them that grows each time they pray for those who hurt them. It’s part of that whole overcoming the world thing. It doesn’t look like a victory, but realizing that 30 some years later I am still friends with that little girl who made me cry and considering what God has done in her life, I think maybe there’s more to it than what it looks like.