Recovering from the damage of harsh words

I remember being in school.

I never really liked my school days. I don't look back on them with any amount of good feeling.

Yet there was one day towards the end of my high school days that is massively important.

I was in the headmasters office. He was one of those old school guys who everyone was fearful of. He had one of those hairstyles that seemed like he had slapped it down with pure grease. Parted on the side, with the parting closer to his left ear than the top of his head. He wore dull Ill fitting grey suits with once white shirts and strange green and brown ties. He without fail always wore his black academic gown over this dreary attire.

He always had a face like a bulldog chewing a wasp.

He had only one manner.

Pure aggression.

And I wasn't his favourite pupil.

Oh no.

Definitely not.

On the day I am recalling now, he had me stand in the corner of his equally dreary office facing his desk.

I felt like I had a flock of swans flying around in my lower abdomen.

I was terrified.

I had been caught along with one of my classmates letting the tyres down on the car of a teacher who had put me on detention for something ultra trivial.

I know now that wasn't good really!

The headmaster was on the other side of the desk, tapping his cane into his hand with a deeply intimidating rhythm.

It wasn't the six of the best that hurt me that day.

It was his vicious tongue.

"Lacey, you will never amount to anything. Your just a useless piece of trash."

It was a day I have never forgot.

I went home that night with a set of six deep crimson stripes on my backside and a very deep wound in my heart.

Yet somehow that dubious false-prophecy spoken by a severely troubled man, has served to help me to rise from the damage that could have inflicted on my life. After the dust settled from that remark, I sat in my little bedroom looking in a mirror, and I said to myself, "I will amount to something, I will make sure of it." I don't know where it came from because I was fifteen years old and did not understand anything about God whatsoever, but I heard words drop into my head that I have tried to hold on to right up to this day. "I will be an extraordinary person. So from that day on I have tried to be an extraordinary person, tried to work harder at being extraordinary. I've tried to work and live an extraordinary existence.

Never would I listen to anything or anyone who directed shameful words of discouragement ever again. Things have been said to me since that have hurt of course, but I always rise up from it.

It could of gone another way.

I have ministered to many people who have been almost mortally wounded by similar words.

People who feel less than ordinary, whose lives have been shaped by the devastation caused by words.

Someone once told me how when she was six years old, her mother had said to her when she had done something wrong, "mummy doesn't love you anymore!" probably said in anger, yet fifty six years later this lady had found it difficult to believe anyone could love her. It had affected her relationships at work, in her family and had prevented her from believing God could possibly love her.

Damage caused by words.

So this is for those who have been damaged by words.

God really does love you.

You are everything to him.

He loves you unconditionally and his love is not measurable.

You amount to worth that is also unmeasurable.

In the eyes of God? You are the apple of his eye.

And in that knowledge you can rise from the ashes of the hurt caused by Ill-directed words that usually come out of a persons insecurity.

You are extraordinary. Is it time to walk in your extraordinariness?

I pray right now that God will strengthen us to be able to get up when we get knocked down by someone's harsh words.

I guess this blog post seems a bit random to what I usually write, but I'm sitting on the train somewhere between London and Durham, and I just felt compelled to write. So my fingers just began to type on my iPad and I felt strongly in my spirit that this is what I needed to write so I guess it's for someone today.

So then if it is you this is for? Whatever has been said to you? Refuse today to let those words land on you. Rise from the hurt and allow Gods extreme love to land on you instead.