Little Mel

Alison Cook, a lovely Christian counselor the algorithm introduced to my feed, recently posted an idea to find a picture of yourself from when you were young and hang it up somewhere you can see it every day. She writes, “Take in that young child. Notice what you feel towards them. Is it ambivalence? Shame? Guilt? Sorrow? Are there parts of you that don’t like this version of you?” I admit, when I look at these pictures of young Mel, I’m a puddle of happy-sadness. I see a little girl with joy and abandon— a kid who would dance undignified in the streets because life is fun and she loves her Jesus. And on the reverse side of that coin, I carry so much sadness that some of those parts of me got chipped away. That happy, silly girl grew up to believe she was not enough—not pretty enough, skinny enough, talented enough, worthy enough. Not all at once and not by any one person. But she learned to conform to the world around her to be accepted, and in the process, forsook so much of what made her eternally whole.

Alison writes, “Jesus said to become like children. I don’t think that means to become uneducated or foolish. I think that means to become like that person you were before.” It’s so hard for us to remember, but “God made you whole before the world broke you. God called you good before shame entered in. God named you beloved before parts of you learned to believe otherwise.”

So much of my Christian walk has been disempowering the voices of fear and shame. Because if I’m really listening, Abba is whispering a much truer message: that He sees me, His little girl, in all my goofy, awkward imperfection and calls me beloved. Just as I am. Because He is good.