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Does It Hurt When Someone Underestimates You?
Dear Brother Ron
We have these family friends who use to be very close to us. Whenever my mom
has problems regarding our family, including financial problems, she shares
them with these friends. We are not really very poor but because we don't
have a father anymore, we are always having financial problems. There are
six of us in the family and three of us are in college right now. Even
though I have two brothers who are helping my mom to send us to college, it
still not enough.
Our family friends are not rich either. Actually we have about the same
status of living.
But sometimes they are acting as if they were someone higher, and as if we
don't have space in this world. The youngest of them who use to be our
schoolmate now in college asked me one time, "Oh, it's so good you are going
here now."
He meant the school cafeteria. I feel like I was so small at that time. I
felt insulted but I just kept it and even smiled at him. It hurts, right?
Nessa
Dear Nessa
People have been underestimating me all my life. My parents were both in the
beauty business. I worked with them helping them to run the largest beauty
school in Oklahoma for 19 years. Since I was a man in the beauty business,
everybody thought I was gay.
I was a Marine from 1966 to 1972. This was when the Viet Nam war was going
full blast. The war was very unpopular. Since I was a Marine, everybody
thought I was a soulless baby killer.
I was a professional musician for many years. Of course everybody knows
musicians are a bunch of drunks and dope addicts. In truth, I am not gay, I
am not a drunk or a dope addict and I have never killed babies or innocent
civilians.
The point is that nobody knows enough about you to make judgments about you
but you and God. All your life, people are going to assume they know enough
about you to make judgments. They are wrong. That won't stop them from doing
it.
You need to realize that you are a child of the living infinite God who
loves you. If you are good enough for God to love, you are good enough for
you to love. If God loves you (which He does) and you love you, what the
ignorant people think does not matter.
By the way, I can relate to the problems your family is having with trying
to finance multiple college educations. Please visit the education page of
my career ministry at
http://opng8.org/education.html. There you will find links to
many scholarship search engines. Hopefully, you will be able to find sources
of financing which can ease your financial burden.
Let me know if I can be of further assistance.
Best always
Brother Ron
