Stupid

Along with my self worth issues, or should I say contributing to my self worth issues was how I viewed my intelligence. My whole life, or most of it, I considered myself stupid.
In third grade it became apparent that I had some math issues. I was put in a remedial math class with a teacher named Miss Maxwell. She had short dark hair and I did not like her. We were studying multiplication and she gave us instructions for an assignment. As she was speaking I began daydreaming, staring off into space, thinking about anything but math. Nothing interested me less than math. She finished speaking and I continued staring off into nothingness. The next thing I knew she grabbed me up and was marching me to the office. I didn't know what I had done, but as she pulled me down the hall, she informed that I was being punished for "daydreaming". I was wearing a very short green corduroy dress with a wide seventies white collar and I became very afraid as she pulled out a big wooden board and began paddling my bottom. The dress did little to pad the blows. Neither did my thin cotton panties. I never forgot her, the math class, or the dress. Or how stupid I felt.
Fast forward two years. Different teacher, different school. Same feeling of stupid. I was in my second year of violin class and I had a secret which I carefully guarded for fear of shame that anyone would find out. I couldn't read the music. For two years I had "winged" it, listening carefully to the sound of the song as played by others and according to how I knew the tune went and duplicating that on my violin.
One day though, she finally caught on to me. Unfortunately it was in the middle of class. When she realized that I didn't know the music for the upcoming spring concert she just kind of stood back and regarded me through those big glasses of hers and then at last she spoke. "You can't be in the program" she said. I looked down at my violin as the tears came. So much shame. Stupid closed in on me and made me feel so worthless. I think in the end she did let me perform with the class for the program but after the year was over a few weeks later I never picked up the violin again, and music to me was a closed world.
Fast forward again, about twelve years. Stupid has followed me all the way through high school and intimidated me into not going to college. Instead I take a job at Jack in the Box. After a year of working there on the graveyard shift I am offered the position of shift leader. I have to go to "shift leader school" and take some classes and tests. It is while I am there that the shackles of stupid begin to loosen and I finally realize that things might not be as I supposed all these years. I take a test and hand it in to the teacher. I am the first one done. The test was easy. I had been ready for it for a week. After I hand it in he takes a minute to grade it and then says to me "I have never had someone turn this in so fast and get them all right". He has no idea the cataclysmic bomb this sets off in my mind. Simple words, but all of a sudden I realize that maybe I'm not as stupid as I think. In my mind I see a bird fly out of a rusty cage. I feel free. Little do I know that there is more freedom to be had.
One day my aunt, who has inherited my grandfather's 1949 Flat top "Texan" Epiphone guitar, asks me if I would like to have it. I jump at the offer. I have always loved guitar, have always wanted to learn how to play it, but as I mentioned earlier, it was just a shut off world to me.
The guitar sat in my house for a few months until one day I picked it up and began to pluck the strings aimlessly. I realize that it is a useless gift unless I learn how to play it. I go to the store and buy "Guitar for Dummies" and check out some stuff from the library. At first I don't get it. I sound terrible and I'm slow. Can't make it sound like music. But I keep trying. After about a month I have learned three or four chords. I open the book and try a song. It sounds awful. I try another song, this one is Yankee Doodle Dandy. I pluck the strings, and all of a sudden I realize I am playing a recognizable tune! I am absolutely elated. Can't believe it! The doors of the music world, if not thrown wide open are at least open a crack. Stupid begins to lose its hold on me at last. But there is more to come.
Ten years later I begin to attend a church function. It's actually a weekly prayer meeting. I love the ladies. I love to pray with them. On this particular day, however, I make a joke that really isn't funny. It's...stupid. The joke falls flat. One of the ladies criticizes sharply and I begin to cry. I can't stop myself. I become hysterical and I don't know why. Two hours later I am still crying. I am at home. Still crying. Doing laundry I think to myself "I haven't felt this stupid since...since...violin class in the fifth grade..." All of a sudden it becomes clear to me. Stupid is from Satan. It is not just a word it is a tangible thing. And it's not who God says I am. God has never called me stupid, he calls me friend! The tears immediately stop. I am instantly OK again. Putting down the laundry I run upstairs and get on the computer. I look up the word and am amazed at what I read.

From Webster's dictionary. Stupid: Slow of mind. OBTUSE.

I wonder about the all caps word Obtuse. I look it up. Not pointed or acute. BLUNT.

But its what it says about the origin of the word that takes my breath away. This is what really got me.

Middle English, from Latin obtusus blunt, dull, from past participle of obtundere to beat against, blunt, from ob- against + tundere to beat

The words "to beat against" bring tears to my eyes because that sums it up exactly. All these years every single time I did something wrong, made a mistake, said the wrong thing I could hear the word STUPID STUPID STUPID pounding in my head. Beating me into dullness. Intimidating me into being less than I could be for fear of failure and being found stupid.

I realized that I had a spiritual problem. It began the day the teacher told me I couldn't be in the program. She laid a mantle of stupid on me even though she never uttered the word and I wore it all my life. For a long time I was angry with her for her lack of sensitivity. What kind of a teacher chastises a student in front of the other kids? But then I realized I bear a portion of the blame. I was a child when she spoke those words. But I grew up. And I still wore the label. I allowed myself to believe the lie. Bought into it without ever questioning it, never realizing that God had never spoken that over me.

I spoke to that spirit of Stupid. I told it to go away in the name of Jesus. I asked God's forgiveness for my belief in it. And I was free.

A few weeks later I saw a lady on TV who captured my attention. Completely. It was Intervention and she needed help. Oh how she needed help. She was shown on the previews hitting herself. Beating herself up with her hairbrush, her fists, whatever she could find to punish herself. As she beat herself she repeated the mantra "Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!" Goosebumps prickled my skin. I had empathy for that woman like I had never felt for anyone before. I began to pray for her. I know, I know, its TV, but another secret of mine is that I sometimes pray for the people I see on TV. My heart went out to her. If only she could know how much God loves her. If only we could ALL know how much God loves us. It would change our perspectives about ourselves completely and totally forever.

Your Love Broke Through

The music takes me back. I'm forty years old, but in my mind I'm ten years old again, and laying on the orange carpet listening to Auntie Kathy play the piano. It's 1978 and the music she is playing is Keith Green. I don't know it yet, but the melodies will be with me for the rest of my life. The music wrapped itself around the four of us, the three kids, and my aunt, and created a bond that has yet to be broken. We have had many disagreements, but the one thing we have never disagreed on is that music. It was real. Down to Earth. It reached out to where we were and picked us up, and took us to another level. It told us there was a life to be lived. It spoke of hope, and peace, and healing. Things I desperately needed were offered. I reached out and took the offering, and it changed my life.

Many years later, after we were all grown up and married, my aunt decided to give the piano to my youngest sister. The only hitch was, that my aunt lived in Texas, and my sister lived in Arizona. My middle sister, Heather had a moving van, and had volunteered to bring it to her, since her new home was now close to my youngest sister's house.  Heather's husband, Ian, Heather, myself, and Auntie Kathy spent three hours moving the piano from Auntie Kathy's front porch out to the moving van, over broken sidewalk, mud, and grass. It was a monumental effort. After we got it in, everyone piled in the car, and we all went to my house, to spend the night.
The next morning, Heather and Ian loaded up their car, and prepared to head to Arizona, to drop off the piano at my sister's house, and then head to their new home. After everything was loaded we persuaded Auntie Kathy to climb up in the back of the van  and play us some music. She began to play. It was Keith Green. As the sound flowed around us and down the quiet street, we were overcome with emotion, and Heather and I stood in the street with tears flowing down our faces. The music was so haunting, taking us back to our strife ridden childhood and the peace found, laying there on the orange carpet. There was an overwhelming feeling was that this was the last time we would ever hear the sound of Auntie playing her piano. Other pianos were not the same. It was this piano, this music that had embedded itself inside of us, and become a physical part of our flesh and blood.
So tonight, on a whim, I got on Youtube, and typed in Keith Green. Out of the speakers began to flow the music of my childhood. Everything around me fades...Back, back, back I go, to a time before kids, before marriage, before the house, before the cares of growing up consumed me...