The Church by the Tootsie Roll-Pop Store

I was thinking about how I often times consider too highly the thoughts, praises and curses of those around me in accordance to myself. As I began thinking about how much I depend on what other people think about me it occurred to me the very first memory that I have of consciously doing something or rather altering something that I was doing because of the way that others might think of me. I was four or five I don't really remember but I recall that my family did still live at our first house in Tennessee, on Gossey-Hill Road. A mile or so from our house was a church next to a gas-station. This gas-station is one that stands out in my memory because of the large, orange ball that stood over it. This ball, I always thought was a giant tootsie-roll pop because the only time we would go into that station was when my dad would get tootsie-roll pops (chocolate usually).

This particular memory revolves around the church beside the "tootsie-roll pop store" (as I always thought of it as). I was enrolled in a Vacation Bible School or a Mothers' Day Out programme of some kind so I was there on several occasions and we made all sorts of things. I have only two memories about this church. he first is making The Ten Commandments out of some kind of (non-edible as I soon found out) dough material and after baking them, gluing the Ten Commandments onto these baked pieces of inedible dough. My second memory is the one that has to do with reacting to the way others might think of me:

I remember that it was recess or what ever they called it at this programme in which I was enrolled and I was wearing some kind of a suit. Nothing too fancy: probably a clip-on tie and those sorts of things. I remember running out of the church, straight for the play-ground. I think I was in front of the rest of the children there and as I ran I saw a plastic play thing. I don't know what it was exactly but has all sorts of things that we could climb on, though it wasn't very large. It had a slide attached to it and I ran up the slide. Just before I had run up the slide, I looked behind me and no one was following me anymore. It seemed everyone had stopped to do something else or had passed me up for other play-equipment on the play-ground. I remember getting to the top of the slide and thinking: "No. Better not play on this. Everyone will think I am stupid." So I climbed down, and I don't remember what happened after that.

Why does this stand out so much? I don't know. Though, I do know that I still do this sort of thing. I still run off on my own to do something that I want to so badly and then stop; either out of fear, or simply thinking that others will think that I am stupid for wanting to do that. Since then, as I said, I still do that but I would venture to say that I know better and am therefore more foolish for thinking this way. "Others do not determine our potential or our significance" I heard a radio-preacher say on the crackly radio in my car today as i drove down Scenic Highway. "It is God and God alone who determines our importance and He did so long ago when He determined that He would sacrifice Himself for us." Since then, these images and memories of all the different times that I considered others' opinions of me higher than that of God's.

The Truth is so clear, yet I don;t care to grasp it most of the time, that God prizes me. He loves and adores me. Other people's thoughts of me will fluctuate with the weather but God's eye of satisfaction is never changed. His view of me has not changed from the day He determined me conception. God is so glorious, and so marvelous. I pray that He helps me to never stop considering the words of other higher than the promises that He has given.