Piropos

Two men followed me on my way home yesterday. They weren’t together – they followed me at different points on my walk home. It’s nothing to be scared of, they were just two men looking for a date in this finally beautiful spring weather. It's always a little creepy, though, and it makes me uncomfortable, because I don’t know what to say except what I said to one of them who kept trying to talk to me, “I don’t really know you so I don’t know why you’re talking to me.” It feels really weird to be rude like that, because I like to be friendly and kind to everyone, but when someone is following you who you don’t want following you, trying to talk to you when you don’t want to talk to them, aren’t they the one who is being rude? The other guy didn’t say anything – he came along later and just kind of started walking with me. I’d slow down and he’d slow down, I’d speed up and he’d speed up. I finally managed to ditch him by crossing at a light that is very confusing – there are a lot of those where I live. The light will be red for one direction of traffic and green for another and the sign won’t ever say walk, so you just have to know how the cycles go and take the chance sometimes. I crossed right before the light was changing and he was stuck on the other side of traffic, thank God.

It’s really crazy what this kind of weather starts to do to people who have been cooped up in heavy winter clothes and all of a sudden they’re able to go outside and be comfortable in a light jacket. One time I was walking through a park, again on my way home, and I heard this guy on his cell phone, commenting on every woman who walked by and what she was wearing as if we couldn’t hear him. At one point when I walked by, he said, “All the legs are out today!” I wanted to kick him with mine. It was as if we were on display for him and him alone. I wasn’t dressed in any particular way today, and I wasn’t that day either. I was on my way home from work both times, and I always wear respectable things to work. I remember once when I had so many comments on the street that I called a friend up to tell him about some of the more outrageous things I’d heard and said, “Maybe I should start wearing a burlap bag.” He replied, “That might make it even worse.” He’s probably right – it doesn’t seem to matter what you wear, the comments and hello sweethearts and want to be my girlfriend? Will just keep coming no matter what.

What is it that makes some men think it’s ok to follow women around and talk to them? What is it that makes them think it’s ok to say stuff – some of it really graphic? There’s a word that one of my Spanish teachers taught me, “Piropos,” and she said that in some parts of Spain it can get so bad that it’s almost dangerous. I remember seeing a video someone made, I don’t remember now what it was for or where it was done, but it was something that someone made to show how common it is in some places. They had a hidden camera at a cross walk, and they caught so many men making so many comments to so many women, it was truly astounding. What do they get out of it? Why bother? A friend of mine made a short video with me and another friend years ago – she called it "Lemon Talk," and she wrote it about a guy who makes a comment to a woman one day in the East Village. The title refers to something he says that I won’t repeat here – you have to see it some time. In that video I was all dressed up in this great outfit she found - platform shoes and a tight pair of pants with a tiny strappy top with my midriff showing, but even in my business clothes I get the same comments.

There’s a guy I know who is so attractive that women melt in the streets when they see him. He’s very shy and quiet – I don’t even think he knows how attractive he is. He’s smart too, and funny and fun, while also being a real man. A guy like that you wouldn’t mind talking to you out of the blue, but these other guys need to get a grip. Why is it that people like that other guy don’t know how great they are while these other guys are putting on a big macho show as if they’re God’s gift to women and you’re just so happy they’re saying the stuff they’re saying to you? It’s interesting too because this other guy has some powerful gifts from God that make him a gift from God, and I don’t think he even knows he has those either. God reveals things to us sometimes about other people, and He showed me what this guy has – he’s a healer, and such a powerful one that he doesn’t even need to lay hands on people. He could do that too, but he doesn’t need to. The healing power is in his mind. He has the power of touching someone by just thinking about the person – they can feel his hands and his healing touch even if he is half a world away. I've told him he has this gift, but I don't think he believes me - he knows I like to encourage people - that's a gift that I have from God - and I think he thinks I'm just trying to encourage him. But the thing about God's gifts is that they are real - just as his gift as a healer is real, so is my gift as an encourager. I can't say things that aren't true to people just to make them feel good about themselves - I can only tell them what God has to say. So here he is with this super power of a gift, a smile like sunshine and a face that could launch a thousand ships, and he just thinks he's an ordinary guy - maybe even less than ordinary, and certainly never thinks he's extraordinary.

Those are the kinds of people who God works through. The people who don’t think much of themselves and don’t know what He’s put inside them. I heard someone going on and on the other day about being put in a position by God to be a “shepherd for a flock,” when all they were really doing was lording it over the people they were in a position of power over. They went on and on about how they were doing such a great job of keeping everyone going, when all they were really doing was tearing everyone down and lifting themselves up. A friend of mine said to me once, “God don’t like ugly,” and it’s true. We may be in a position that He’s put us in – because He is the one who puts everyone in the positions they are in - but He decides how long you’ll be there based on how you act when you’re there. If you wash the feet of the people you’re leading, if you serve instead of oppress, if you learn how to support with love and compassion, you’ll find His strength working through you and His help sustaining you. But go in the other direction, start treating others with contempt, start acting like you’re better than someone else and that everyone else is wrong except you? Watch out, because God don’t like ugly, and if He’s not happy with you, it won’t matter what you say about yourself or how you try to justify what you’re doing. He’ll make it clear to the world that you’re not His.

It can be very confusing sometimes for the people who are doing things His way, because so often they don’t know how great they are. They see themselves as less than, and that is exactly why God can work through them. There’s a saying that, “God will use the least likely to do the all mighty.” This other guy that I was talking about is that kind of person. I don’t see him as the least likely, and other people don’t either, but he sees himself that way. It also gets confusing because spiritually other people can see the anointing and the power and the blessing, and depending on their own agenda, they might try to sabotage it. You see that all over, even in churches, even with people who say they’re your friends, even with family members sometimes. Jealousy can be a very dangerous thing, and people who are under its power truly don’t know what they are doing. They feel threatened somehow, they feel like they have to fight to maintain their power and position, and so they go after the one who is blessed by God. The examples are all over the Bible. Saul and David, Cain and Abel, Jezebel and Elijah. The thing they don’t understand is that they’re fighting with God Himself. He tells us, “I will contend with those who contend with you,” (Isaiah 49:25) and that “No weapon formed against you shall prosper, and every tongue which rises against you in judgement you shall condemn. This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord, and their righteousness is from Me, says the Lord.” (Isaiah 54:17) But in order for us to believe that those promises are for us, we have to know that we are His, and so often the people who are really His servants don’t know that they are.

A friend of mine wrote to me after reading my blog about why faith was hard that “even the prophets struggled with faith – and they were prophets!” And that’s just it – the servants of God often don’t know that they really are His servants. They can feel so lowly and like they are nothing and have nothing to offer – why would God use them? But that’s the way that God works. He uses the things that are foolish to confound the wise (1 Corinthians 1:27) He’ll use a humble man who is as handsome as a Greek god and doesn’t know it, a man who has a brilliant and powerful mind who feels like he’s foggy headed, a man who has healing in his hands and the power of God working through him who thinks he’s just someone ordinary, to do the extraordinary.

The next time you look in the mirror and wonder what the point of you is, the next time you look at your life and think it all means nothing, the next time you wonder what your purpose is and if you’ll ever have one, think again. Start looking at yourself in God’s mirror, and you’ll start seeing the wonder and the beauty and the strength and passion that lies deep within you. You’ll see how everything that you are, even those things that you’d rather forget, even those things that you wish never were, are things that God can use to bring love and healing to the world. Psalm 139:14 says, “I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.” Don’t ever forget that – because that is your heritage as a child of God, and your righteousness is from Him. It doesn't matter what anyone else says - not even you - it's what He says that matters.

Blessings,

Jannie Susan