Love Revolution, The by Joyce Meyer

Author:Joyce Meyer
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Political Freedom & Security, Christian Life, General, Religion, Political Science, Self-Help, Personal Growth, REL012000, Self-Esteem
ISBN: 9780446569958
Publisher: Warner Books
Published: 2009-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER

8

Love Is Inclusive, Not Exclusive

If you judge people, you have no time to love them.

Mother Teresa

Jamie walked into the church on the corner of Spruce Avenue and Twenty-third Street in Harbor, Illinois. She was desperate for help. She had seen the church building for a long time and watched the people file in and out two or three times a week. Jamie had often sat in the coffee shop across the street from the church, drinking a latte, wondering how she would be accepted if she ever got up the nerve to go to one of the church services.

Jamie had been to Sunday school a few times as a child when she attended with a neighbor, but she certainly knew very little about the proper protocol of church attendance. She wasn’t sure she would fit in or be accepted, so she just drank her coffee and watched. She tried to see if the church people looked any happier when they came out than they did when they went in, but they all left so quickly she couldn’t really see clearly. Occasionally, someone from the church service came to the coffee shop after church. A few of them sat alone and, honestly, they looked as lonely as she felt. Some came with other people and they laughed and seemed happy, which gave her hope that she might one day have enough courage to go to a service.

Jamie grew up in a home where she received very little affection. Both of her parents were alcoholics and although they did not overtly abuse her, they did great damage to her self-image by being quick to criticize and find fault with her. They often compared her to her brother, who seemed to be smarter and more talented than she was in every way. She always felt unloved, ugly, and stupid, and as though she had no value at all.

By the time she was thirteen, Jamie had fallen in with the wrong crowd and was drinking and taking drugs. Her emotional pain was so deep that she numbed it with substance abuse. She also developed an eating disorder called bulimia. She ate normal amounts of food, binged occasionally, but always forced herself to vomit after eating so she would not get fat.

She had never forgotten the day of her twelfth birthday when her mother looked at her with disgust and said, “I didn’t have time to bake you a birthday cake, but you don’t need it anyway. You’re already fat enough!” She had never thought she was fat until that day, but every day since, she looked at herself in the mirror and saw a girl who looked about thirty pounds heavier than she actually was. Her image of herself was distorted through the mean and unloving things her mother repeatedly said to her.

Jamie’s grades in school were not very good and she did not feel she was “college material,” so when she graduated from high school she got a job stocking shelves and bagging groceries at a local grocery store.

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