Hopefully you were one of the millions of people this week who caught this bit about the little girl who received this precious gift: a doll with a prosthetic leg — just like her:
If you were able to make it through that video without crying, good on you. I bawled my eyes out because it spoke to me so powerfully. This little girl demonstrates so beautifully and succinctly something about human nature, doesn’t she?
When we do, we feel like this:
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Think about all the little girls out there who thought that the “standard” for inclusion was a Barbie doll, white and skinny. And unless you, as a little girl, were both of those things, great. But if you weren’t? You were a deviation from that standard and, consequently, just didn’t measure up. For boys? How about those toy soldiers, ay?
I don’t know why we need symbols and images, pictures and prototypes to provide a template for ourselves. Is that divine or deception? I don’t know. But it’s real. I watch middle schoolers divide themselves up into groups of like standards all the time. Why do they do it? Largely because we adults do it, I think. We want to establish ourselves as a part of the whole — the whole what doesn’t always matter — we just know what it feels like to be included. We crave that feeling. We certainly don’t want to be excluded — and I’m not just talking about the 12-year-olds here.
Did you hear this little girl?
“She’s like me!”
“Thank you for making a doll like me!”
Those tears were tears of joy and gratitude and relief — that she was no longer a deviation from the standard, but the standard itself. Accepted because she was acceptable. No longer excluded, but included.
Worthy.
Valued.
Deserving.
Those who still feel like they are the deviation from the “norm” as opposed to whatever proposed “standard” is being sold to us feel:
Inferior.
Dismissed.
Rejected.
There is a certain amount of shame in that, isn’t there? What I think is even more dangerous and sad is the feeling of superiority and entitlement that those often have who do meet the relegated standard. We see this in patriarchy, don’t we? The image, the picture, the prototype for the Divine has been strictly male, hasn’t it? I refer to the Holy Spirit as my Mother in Hope Givers, and a few people have balked at the notion.
But when women cannot see themselves in the face of God, we are made to feel as if we are the deviation from that holy standard: Inferior, Dismissed, Rejected. We are less than.
And I just don’t believe that.
I don’t.
I agree with Sue Monk Kidd who writes in The Dance of the Dissident Daughter:
“There’s something infinitely sad about little girls who grow up understanding (usually unconsciously) that if God is male, it’s because male is the most valuable thing to be. This belief resonates in a thousand hidden ways in their lives. It slowly cripples girl children, and it cripples female adults.”
When it occurred to me that God could, indeed, be everything to me, even my Mother (because Lord knows I needed one) it freed me. I had an experience not unlike this little girl:
“She’s like me!”
“Thank you for allowing me to see myself in YOU!”
Doesn’t that demonstrate so clearly our salvation moment when we embraced the fact that Christ came to this earth as a human? So that we could see ourselves in His likeness?
And just like the little girl in the video, like the doll who could now live life without limitations, we are free.
Worthy.
Valued.
Deserving.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Daisy Rain Martin is an author, speaker, advocate, and educator as well as a founding member of The Flying M-Inklings Writing Group. She lives with her husband, Sean-Martin, in the beautiful state of Idaho and teaches English and Literature during the school year to the best 7th graders the world over. Daisy spends her summers writing, speaking, researching, creating, gardening, and canning.
Hope Givers: Hope is Here, is the sequel, of sorts, to her comedic, spiritual memoir, Juxtaposed: Finding Sanctuary on the Outside, which was Christopher Matthews #1 top selling book in 2012. She has also written a free e-book for anyone who has or is currently being sexually abused called, If It’s Happened to You.
Please follow her weekly blog, SATURDAISIES, which addresses a plethora of current issues including child advocacy, all things hilarious, and matters of the heart. She would love for you to join the Rainy Dais Community by friending her on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.