Stand Strong: You Can Overcome Bullying (and Other Stuff That Keeps You Down) (9 page)

I know you’ve heard phrases used like “gentle as a lamb” or “gentle as a dove” or even in commercials for laundry detergents that companies claim are “gentle as a mother’s touch.” But real gentleness, the value that we should all strive for, is much deeper than those phrases would indicate.

Many of the strongest and most admirable people I know are gentle spirits who don’t have to prove how tough they are on the outside because they are so strong on the inside. People with
that quality are my heroes. They have this calmness and quietness about them, but you know their character and their faith are so strong that nothing rattles them.

When I was a teen, I had a tendency—okay, a really bad habit—of wanting to win every argument and especially to always be right. If someone pointed out that I had a fact wrong, I’d still try to bull my way through it just so I could claim I was really right. One day a friend who was fed up with this bad habit of mine said, “Nick, just because you are right doesn’t mean you have to tell me about it every time.”

Zing!
She killed me with kindness! She was both telling me and showing me that the real power lies in being gentle and kind and a good friend—not in being argumentative and forever insistent on being the authority on all things. Selfishness and pride can make us want to be heard and respected, but instead we lose touch with the value of gentleness and quiet strength.

The next time a bully darkens your path, don’t take the bait and respond to taunts with your own harsh words. Instead, consider that maybe God is using the bully to test your inner strength, your quiet power—your ability to be every bit as gentle and strong as Jesus Himself.

The Fruit of Self-Control

A friend asked me to do some counseling with a young guy who had married into his family. Tim was barely into his
twenties. He and his wife had been married a couple of years. They had two kids right off the bat, and Tim wasn’t handling his new responsibilities very well. He hadn’t made the switch from the mentality of a single guy who could do anything he wanted, anytime he wanted, to a married guy whose wife and children needed him to be there for them.

Tim also had admitted that he’d been in trouble at work, which had set off alarms in his wife’s family. Basically, he lacked maturity and self-control. I told Tim he needed to be a better example for his kids. “You want them to be proud of you and to see you as a role model, don’t you?” I asked. “As a father, you have to put their needs and their welfare above your own. It all comes down to self-control and realizing that your responsibilities have expanded.”

We had a very friendly, deep discussion. He knew I was just trying to wake him up. I could see that Tim took it to heart, and his actions from then on reflected it. He has been a much better husband and father. He still has ups and downs when he needs to practice more self-control, but then most of us feel that we could benefit from more of this fruit of the Spirit.

The Bible says, “A man without self-control is like a city broken into and left without walls.” As a teen, I can remember teachers constantly telling me and my classmates, “Okay, everyone, get it under control.” It was strange to hear that back then, because like most teens, I didn’t think I had control over much.
I lived with my parents. I had no job and no money. What did I control? Our dog didn’t even listen to me most of the time!

Bullies don’t have control over themselves. They taunt their targets, push them around, and socially isolate them because they are too weak to control their worst impulses and emotions in more productive ways. That’s why using self-control in response to bullies can be so effective.

When you refuse to respond to taunts or you don’t let a bully’s shove trigger your own violence, it shows that you are operating at a higher level of maturity and self-control. If the bully continues to pursue you and you feel seriously threatened, you may have to defend yourself or flee or get help. I would never tell you to let a bully beat you up, but violence should be your last response. I’ll offer more advice on this later in the book; for now I want to encourage you to adopt all the fruit of the Spirit as values and make them part of your daily approach to life.

We are born into this world kicking and screaming and demanding that our hunger and thirst and comfort be tended to. It would be nice if we could stay in that mode for the rest of our lives, but unfortunately, even the most doting parents get over the whole diaper-changing thing pretty quickly.

We may still have the same primitive urge to be the center of the universe, but as we enter the teen years, we’re expected to keep many of our desires and cravings in check for our benefit
and the benefit of everyone else. A lack of self-control leads to poor choices.

You can use self-control and still have fun; it’s just a matter of doing things in moderation and knowing when to say enough. If you find yourself losing control or lacking it altogether when faced with a bully or an offer of drugs or the temptation of sex, you can ask God to provide you with the strength to stand strong and stay in control.

If you build your life on the bedrock values and virtues of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control, I have no doubt that you will reap the fruit of the Spirit. And I believe among the blessings you receive will be the self-confidence, courage, and resilience to deal with any bullying, ill treatment, or challenging circumstance that happens in your life.

Once you accept that you have value and purpose, take responsibility for your own happiness, and build your life on strong values, you can create a safety zone where no bully, or any other person or event, can make you feel badly about yourself. Think of it as a safe room or a storm shelter that isn’t in your house or your school. Instead, it exists within your mind. You can go there to feel secure in who you are whenever you encounter a threat from a bully or a bad experience of any kind.

This isn’t about protecting yourself physically from bullies who want to hurt you by beating you up or otherwise harming you. I’ll offer some advice on that later in the book. This safety zone is created to protect you emotionally so that you won’t become stressed out or depressed by bullying or other negatives in your life.

Your safety zone may exist only in your consciousness, but its impact on your life can be very powerful. And it will always
be there, no matter where you are, for the rest of your life. I taught myself to go to my own safety zone mentally when a bully or a bad experience shook my confidence or made me question my value and my future.

I’d go off by myself somewhere, mentally step into this shelter, and say to myself, “I am a child of God, and He created me for a purpose. He has a plan for my life. No one can take that away from me or make me feel diminished. I am loved, and I have value.”

You may be thinking,
Well, that works for you, Nick, but it probably won’t work for me
. So let me introduce you to Jenny, who happened to write an e-mail to my website describing what is essentially her own safety zone process. She doesn’t call it that, but as you will see, it works much the same.

Jenny was teased and bullied in grade school and high school because, like me, she doesn’t look like most other people. It’s sad but true that she was not noticed for the beauty that was in her heart and mind; instead she was picked on and treated harshly because she was born with Apert syndrome.

After reading Jenny’s e-mail, I had to look up Apert syndrome because I was not familiar with it. This seems like a cruel disability. Some studies say one in sixty-five thousand children born have it. Most have malformations of their skulls, faces, hands, and feet. I mentioned earlier that as a child I often felt sorry for myself because my disabilities were so obvious and
couldn’t be hidden. It’s very humbling to think that Jenny dealt with a much more severe physical disability with such grace, though she admitted that she, too, had her bad days, as you might expect.

“Suffice it to say that it took much faith in God, the support of my family, especially my mom and dad and my sisters to help me figure out that I was OK despite what the ‘world’ thought,” she wrote to me. “I LOVE YOUR testimony on this. I especially LOVE what you said on the
20/20
[television show] interview that ‘it’s not what the world thinks of you, but what YOU think of you.’ I have lived by that same motto for a LONG time.”

Jenny said she graduated high school, college, and grad school with good grades while also playing the trumpet and singing in her church choir. She also wrote that music plays an important role in her own safety zone, just as it does in mine. I often play music when I’m stressed out or feeling sad. I’ve done this since my teen years when I was bullied. Music soothes me, and Jenny said that it does the same for her.

“I don’t know that I would be the same person had it not been for music,” she wrote. “It’s where I find my peace, my soul.”

One of the great things about creating your own safety zone—whether in your mind or a special room or space—is that you can fill it with whatever puts your soul at peace: your
favorite music, images of loved ones, prayers, inspirational messages, quotes from Scripture, or even mental or real images of your favorite inspirational people (I am available of course!). It’s your “room,” so feel free to decorate it any way you want.

Another valuable item that I recommend you take into your safety zone is your purpose or mission in life. If you haven’t decided what that is yet, that’s okay. Instead, bring along thoughts of your passion, whatever it is that you enjoy doing most. Let that feeling of happiness and fulfillment wash over you.

Think about how you might build your entire life around that passion. If it’s music, maybe you could be an entertainer or a music teacher or work in the music industry. If you are a computer wizard, you have even more opportunities out there creating software or apps, developing new search engines or operating systems. Let your imagination take you away from what’s troubling you now and into a much better future.