When The Dictionary Defines You

In the annals of conversation a mother has with her daughter as she grows up, I can recall only a handful that are indelibly wrapped around my soul.  Each one, a cacophony echoing through the tunnel of my memory, words that have shaped who I was to become.

This statement still rings in my ears like it was yesterday:

"Be sure you read the dictionary when you get there so people don't think you're stupid." 


Whether she thought I was stupid or not doesn't change the fact that those words revealed that my worth, at least in her eyes, was based on my intelligence, and frankly, the dictionary was my only hope.
I'd failed to meet any expectation or hope that she had that I could "be whatever I wanted to" and that "I was JUST a LITTLE bit BETTER than everyone else"...I'd come home pregnant, dropped out of college and now was marrying a guy that, in her eyes, definitely didn't measure up, either, and I was moving to a college town with only a high school diploma and a 'kid' that wasn't his. Things didn't look too good for me...

I was a tangled mess.  The potential I had was now cut down and it was all but too late.

Forest Gump stated, "Stupid is as stupid does."  Maybe his momma knew my momma and that's where she got it from...I dunno.  I did do a lot of stupid things growing up and to this day, there are moments when I say to myself, out loud, mind you..."Daune, that was really stupid!  But you're not!"



Please don't misunderstand me.  I am not bitter towards my mother AT ALL! I am grateful to God for her life, her desire to see me succeed and her willingness to get out there and live. I am a mother that says stupid things, thinking I'm 'helpin' my kids.  Yet, experience and Truth have taught me lessons that a dictionary couldn't touch.

With all this rambling on, one would wonder if there is a point to this post.

Yeah, there is.

Lately, I've been thinking about why I never really desired to be involved in the political process or learn about things I did not do well at school in.  My Love has always been the historian, so to speak. We've only recently been able to carry on a conversation about government, the headlines, etc. and all because I didn't know or WANT to know about those things...fear that I was stupid and had no business sticking my nose in things I knew nothing about.

BUT...

Times are a changin' and that girl now loves her 1828 Webster's Dictionary; she is hungering to know the truth:  about the world, what God's desire is for her in all of it and how she can influence her kids to read the dictionary, the atlas, watch YouTube videos on speeches made by the Prime Minister of Israel and so on...

So, if you notice that my FB page is filling up with 'political' jargon or articles I'm reading, just overlook that and know that I'm growing, learning and yet...my worth isn't based on what I know, but on Whose I am!

What defines you?  I'd love to hear from you.

Until next time...