Noticed

This is my friend Drake. He's fifteen months old, and probably one of cutest toddlers you've ever seen, right? Maybe I'm partial, but even if I wasn't I would still think he's cute. The problem with precious baby Drake, though, is that he KNOWS he's cute. And that makes it very hard to take him in public. Wherever we are, if we walk past anyone that doesn't acknowledge his presence, he will make noises at them until they tell him how cute he is (or until we walk away). He knows he's cute, and he wants to make sure everyone else agrees. Everyone. Now we all know that not everyone in the world (especially everyone in the public library) thinks that little kids are adorable. But poor baby Drake just wants to be affirmed. He wants to feel loved. He wants to be noticed. And oh, how much I learn about myself from this precious little boy and his seemingly pointless antics. For if the truth be told, I am exactly like Drake in this. I always have been. But I hope that I won't always be.

I have never exactly been the strong, silent type, though it may appear to be so sometimes. Silence is something that is rare for me, even when I'm sleeping. I'm just loud by nature. I'm pretty sure even my thoughts are often loud, judging by the noise in my head that I can't seem to control. On the rare occasions that I am more quiet than usual, for example when I am in big group settings, my facial expressions and body language usually still speak loudly, especially to the people that know me well. And as for the strong part, well, we'll just say that is also lacking. I'm weak and needy, and I'm not ashamed to admit it. We'll just leave it at that.

The bad part about my weak and noisy status is that it causes my happiness to depend mostly on the behavior of other people. I'm addicted to approval and affirmation (in both positive and negative forms), and I'll do whatever it takes to get them. That includes letting people use and abuse me, willingly discounting my own feelings, and worst of all, trying to manipulate the people I love into loving me the way I want them to. Let me be the first to tell you, that never works. It only causes me more frustration, and causes the people I care about to stop caring.

Yes, I want to be noticed. I'll admit to that one, too. Maybe no one paid enough attention to me when I little, or maybe negative attention has always been easier to obtain for me, so I play my strengths. Either way, the point is that the people who are supposed to notice me, the people who are supposed to pay attention to me and care about me, well, they just WILL. I don't have to make them. I don't have to obsess about what they think or what I did or didn't do. I'm tired of my demeanor, my mood, and my general contentment being found in other people. That's not how it is supposed to be. I'm selling myself short. Jesus loves me, this I know, and I want that alone to be where I rest. I want to care only about pleasing HIM and gaining HIS approval for all that I am and all that I do. I want to be able to say who cares if someone else doesn't appreciate me. He does. That's all that's really going to matter in the end anyways.

I hope that I can learn to become the strong, silent type. To me, it's those people who are a picture of security. A picture of rest. While I know that in some areas I will always remain weak, I pray that I can learn to be quiet more often. Just because I'm making noise (good or bad) doesn't mean I will turn a head or get a comment. I want to be loved for who I am, and I want to be appreciated only out of that kind of love. And as for baby Drake, well, he'll figure it out. Not everyone cares how cute he is. But the good news is, the people that really count tell him so every single day. May that be enough for him, and may it also become enough for me.


(sidenote: thank you, elizabeth (and/or ellie), for the advice about being noticed. it's truth. this is where it let me.)