Inspired by how my father would counsel a congregant that’s been marred, mistreated, and mocked
A lot of people project.
They take their fears, their hate, their own discussed disappointments, and hang them on your shoulders like a coat that was never tailored for you.
It is a mixture. Part their pain. Part their shortcomings.
And when it comes, it comes dressed as treatment. As feedback. As the way they talk to you in a room, or don’t look at you at all.
But listen.
The way someone treats you is not always a report card on who you are.
Often, it is the reflection of their own low mindset. Their low place. Their nature spilling out because they haven’t cleaned their own house.
When you’ve been treated poorly, it is not proof that you failed.
You haven’t done all things wrong.
You are not the sum of their reaction.
So be careful. Be mindful.
Take the action from a holy perspective.
Know this in your bones: it is not you. It is them, fighting themselves.
My father would sit with a congregant marred by gossip, mistreated by family, mocked by friends. He’d lean in, Bible closed, and say it plain: Child, that mirror they held up isn’t yours. Give it back.
Where I come from we have a funny expression he loved to use:
God removes the flies from the butt holes of cows with the tail He gave them.
Crude imagery. True mercy.
God helps the flies not to mess up the cow.
The point is this: God fights the nastiest battles for us.
The ones we can’t see. The ones too filthy to touch.
The ones that buzz around us because someone else left their wounds open.
So keep on doing right.
Keep projecting, not their darkness, but God’s grace.
Let it live in your calm disposition.
Especially when you’ve been lied on. Dragged. Misnamed.
God says it plain:
Don’t be destroyed.
Don’t be dumped on.
It’s okay to be disappointed. Feel it. Then let it go.
Let God fight your battle.
He has the tail for the flies.
He has the strength for the filth.
He has the record of who you really are.
I too have experienced this.
I too have been marred, mistreated, and mocked.
And I have employed this perspective to keep my soul from breaking.
You are not their projection.
You are not their low place.
You are not their unhealed story.
You are a child of light, walking through rooms that sometimes forget how to turn the lamps on.
So walk anyway.
Gracefully.
Quietly.
With your head up, because the mirror they held up was never yours.
Let them keep it.
You keep your peace.
This is my father’s counsel. This is my lived testimony. This is the work.
