"We're All Mean"

A few years ago there was a movie or show called Mean Girls. I never watched it.  I know enough about mean girls.

I was a mean girl.  In grade school and middle school.  Through part of high school.  On through the years I graduated from obvious, making fun of people meanness to sneaky, talk behind their back and spend hours on the telephone gossiping about people meanness.  I was most definitely not Miss Popularity!  In fact, I didn't even like myself... and I think that was part of the problem.

It's hard to be comfortable in you own skin, especially when all kinds of people have all kinds of expectations.  We feel like we have to live up to everyone around us, be as smart and as skinny and as social and as funny and as... on and on until we're in a vortex and don't know how to get out.  We try so hard that we lose sight of who we really are... not sure of what is real and what is just pretend so that everyone will think we are what we need to be.  I'm just now figuring out who I am and what I'm about and learning to love me.  I wish I would have done that years ago, learned to be comfortable with me and not tried so hard.  It never works when you try too hard... people know it and end up not liking you for it, for the very thing you're doing to get them to like you.  Shewww... It's exhausting.

Truth is, I'm still mean sometimes.  Wallace and Caleb vouch for that.  It's too easy for me to complain or make snide comments about someone.  Just tonight, everything Caleb was saying was getting on my last nerve and I was snapping like a mean old snapping turtle.  To which he replied, "Mom, I'm just a mean kid."  And I stopped... and I paused.  Because we learn by example and what he sees and how I respond to him will directly influence how he will respond... which may very well be why he has such a temper. (And let me make a full disclaimer.  My Mom and Dad are not, nor were they ever, mean people. Both of them are two of the most humble people I know.  I'm not sure where I got my mean streak...)

"We're all mean, Caleb.  And I'm sorry I've been grouchy tonight."  Help me, Lord, not be mean...