Stand Strong: You Can Overcome Bullying (and Other Stuff That Keeps You Down) (17 page)

That verse speaks to my heart and gives me the faith to understand there is no such thing as good or bad luck. Even the bad things that happen in our lives can be for our good if we don’t let them defeat us but instead turn them into opportunities to gain strength and grow.

I have complete peace knowing that God won’t let anything happen to us unless He has a good purpose for it. I completely gave my life to Christ at the age of fifteen after reading John 9 in which Jesus explained that He had allowed a man to be born blind “so that the work of God might be displayed in his life.”

At first, I thought that meant God would heal me so I could be a great testimony of His awesome power. Later on, I was given the wisdom to understand that if we pray for something, and if it’s God’s will, our miracle will happen in His time. If it’s not God’s will for it to happen, then we know that He has something better in store for us. I feel God uses us in ways that are unique to our stories and the challenges we have overcome. So for every
bully, every hurt, and every challenge you’ve survived, your life grows richer and your spirit grows stronger!

Philippians 4:13 says, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” God has a greater purpose for your life than anything you can imagine. Now, try to imagine, once again, that God can turn your bullying experiences into a gift with lifetime benefits.

W
ORDS OF
W
ISDOM

The belief that adversity can make us stronger has been around for a long time. Here are just a few of the quotations I’ve found from philosophers, leaders, heroes, and other wise women and men:

I could give you many more of these testimonials about using your bullies and other challenges as motivation and inspiration to create a better life, but I think you get the point. If you still have some doubts, I have one more bit of evidence that says the bullies who want to make you their doormat can become your steppingstones instead.

T
HE
S
CIENTIFIC
R
ESEARCH

It may seem obvious that those who bully us are our enemies, but research psychologists have come up with evidence that suggests they may also unwittingly serve as our friends over the long term. If that’s too hard to swallow, maybe we’ll just call them
frenemies
.

One nonscientific observation that seems to make sense is that while most people experience bullying at some point in their lives, they manage to survive and move beyond it. In fact, many people say that their bullies gave them motivation to work harder, be better, and prove their value.

Maurissa Abecassis, a psychologist at a New Hampshire
college, told the
New York Times
, “Friendships provide a context in which children develop, but of course so do negative peer relations.… We should expect that both types of relationships, as different as they are, present opportunities for growth.” As someone who was driven to consider suicide as a kid, I sure don’t want to make it seem that we shouldn’t take bullying seriously or that it is in any way acceptable or a good thing to have happen to you. But throughout this book, I’ve been telling you that what the bully does to you isn’t nearly as important as how you choose, in the end, to respond to it. That’s what this research says too.

A school bully who picks on a lot of kids may actually help them bond together in their mutual fear or dislike, which can enhance their self-esteem and self-confidence, according to another study. A series of experiments by psychologists at UCLA found that middle school girls who “reciprocated a fellow classmate’s dislike” scored higher in social competence ratings than their peers who stayed neutral, according to “Can an Enemy Be a Child’s Friend?” a
New York Times
report by Benedict Carey in May 2010. In simpler terms, the mean girls in your class can inspire you to make friends with their other victims and develop people skills in the process.

Another take on the potential benefits of being bullied as a teen is that it prepares you for dealing with meanspirited, deceptive, and dishonest people as an adult. These people do
exist, and you have to learn to spot them quickly and avoid them, or at least keep your contact with them to a minimum.

I led a sheltered life while growing up in a Christian home. My instinct when dealing with people was always to give them the benefit of the doubt, which I still think is a healthy approach. As a teen, though, I often went too far in my trust of people. If people took advantage of me or deceived me or didn’t do what they said they would do, I tended to think there had been a misunderstanding on my part or a mistake. Eventually, I came to realize these people were bullies of another sort. They abused me by preying on my trusting nature. Over time, I learned to pay attention to my gut feelings about people whose motives were suspect.

Many bullies pretend to be your friends either in person or on the Internet. They may act all nice and friendly to lure you in, but later they stab you in the back, try to turn other people against you, or suddenly shut you out after they are done using you. Psychologists say that teens who experience that kind of bullying often learn from it and become more alert and less likely to be victimized as adults, when the stakes can be much higher socially and financially.

Again, I don’t think anyone believes bullying is a good thing, and if we could eradicate it from the planet, I’m sure the world would be a better place. My point in examining the opportunities to benefit from bullying is to help you learn and
grow from what otherwise would be an entirely negative experience. Many teens have talked to me or written to me about doing just that.

U
SING
B
ULLYING TO
B
ETTER
Y
OURSELF

Sixteen-year-old Peter wrote that he’d been bullied since the seventh grade by classmates who said bad things about him and made fun of him. It didn’t help that he was so shy he was having trouble making friends with girls.

“I was always a smart kid and got first place in my class until ninth grade. And they also bullied me for being smart and for studying and having fun learning things and for knowing so much. I became so depressed that I thought that I should just sit alone at home and never go out.”

Peter at first let the bullying drag him down. “I started to believe that I’m just not good enough, that I can’t be the ‘cool guy’ that everybody wanted me to be, that others don’t like me,” he wrote. “And what does my life mean if others don’t like me?”

Peter let these concerns embitter him initially. He took the “eye for an eye” approach and “started hating other people and thinking that I am always right and that they are bad and started ignoring them or wishing they had never been in my life.”

That didn’t work out for him, Peter said. “For the next two to three years I’ve had the same kind of lifestyle, closed, lonely, with nobody to talk with or share my story with. Sometimes I was so low in my life that I considered suicide.”

I’ve read that many bullies were once victims of bullying themselves, and that was the case with Peter. He figured if he couldn’t beat bullies, he’d join them. “I started doing all the things they do: teasing, bullying, not studying, bad behavior at school, swearing, disrespecting people,” he wrote.

When I was bullied, I never dreamed that other people were dealing with similar problems. The same happened with Peter. He felt alone. He didn’t think anyone else would understand his feelings. Then he met a girl who opened up to him about her own depression and isolation. Her trust made Peter feel trustworthy.

They struck up a friendship. At first, Peter’s insecurities got in the way, but this girl reached out to him and let him know she cared about him.

“That was when my journey of rebirth began,” he wrote. “From then on I started realizing that if I was able to make that one girl smile with only a few words, then I could do anything
in my life. So I began being me, and I started talking more and more to God and in a couple of months I realized that LOVE is the driving power of the world.”

Peter recalled something that he’d heard me say in a video: “Never lose faith in God.… Just because you don’t see God, it doesn’t mean that He isn’t there.”

He wrote that his life has changed radically since he stopped trying to be like those who bullied him. Instead, he uses what he’s learned from that negative experience to create a more positive life for himself.

“I am proud of who and what I am, what I accomplished and what good I did in this world. I am more open now. I am not as shy as I used to be. I can talk to anybody freely. I can understand, forgive and love any- and everybody,” he wrote.

As he opened his heart to others, Peter found that they responded to him. Even those who had bullied him became his friends.

“People who have actually hated me at some point love me now because I have changed and I can love them as well.… And God has also gifted me with amazing friends who accept me how I am and just don’t care about how I look or what I can and can’t do,” he wrote. “Now I know that I am beautiful, that I am special, that I have a purpose in this life and I will never give up.”

Peter’s first response to bullying was to buy into the negatives. He let bullying drag him down, and he even became a
bully himself. That happens all too often. There is another choice, another path you can take, and thanks to the girl who befriended him, Peter found it.

He rejected the negative self-image that bullying had given him. He realized that he was a child of God and therefore was worthy of love. That seems like a simple thing, yet look at the results. He was no longer isolated. He found a girl who cared about him. The people who had bullied him became his friends. He wrote that some people even brought their own concerns to him for advice because he had grown so much in their eyes.

I believe the same can happen for you. Don’t let a bully turn you into a victim. Instead, make the choice to turn a negative into a positive. Reject the bully and accept God’s love. Use His strength to build a better life. Join Peter and me in saying, “I refuse to let a bully make my life worse. Instead, I will use this experience to make my life better than ever before!”