Princess Toes
Austin’s comment on my “Dear me” post, about stepped-on toes, got me thinking.
The analogy makes sense — as she said, someone can either step on your toes intentionally or accidentally, but it still hurts. And to minimize my feelings about being stepped on is to minimize me.
Well, that’s exactly what I’ve learned.
I should be minimized. I’m too much, too big, my toes are too easily stepped on and I stick them places they don’t belong. The problem has to be me, right? No one gets stepped on that often…
I got called “princess” once when I was recording my dulcimer album What Child Is This?. I was distracted by the sunlight and asked the engineer to move some of the baffles around to block it, and he called me “princess” — in fun, but it still hurt a bit.
It’s about sensitivity (and intensity and willfulness).
Remember “The Princess and the Pea”? A real princess is so sensitive she can be bruised by a pea under a hundred mattresses.
Sensitivity goes both ways — it has its positive side and its negative side. One of the negative things is that I’ve got extremely tender toes that hurt if someone even thinks about stepping within a mile of them.
I hope we can all learn to live with my princess toes, because I don’t think they’re going to go away; maybe we can even catch some glimpses of the positive side.
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I love Austin’s blog. I love her artwork and the way she writes about living with Dissociative Identity Disorder.
Wow~I haven’t been here in a long time, and I really enjoyed catching up! Amy is beautiful~like her Mom! LOVE the pics!
It’s funny how we’re all so different in our interests and understandings and baggage and problems. I so totally WANT to lose myself in the LORD! As a matter of fact, I was watching something the other day, and the coversation was about denying yourself being bad or wrong or something… and that makes me picture this society of people responding to their every urge and living in anarchy! LOL! I guess when I think of the saints throughout history, they denied themselves sooo much as they pursued holiness, to be able to achieve the incredible works they did, etc. I so wanna be that! and I’m very frustrated when/that I’m not…. (((((HUGS))))) sandi
Comment by sandi — February 18, 2007 @ 9:10 am
Hi Sandi, so nice to see you again.
I think “deny yourself” just means different things to different people. It can mean sometimes making sacrifices of one’s desires for the sake of someone else, which is good. But to some of us it feels instead like denying your Self — your very being, your identity, your personality. And that is bad and wrong. God created us as selves. We are most fully ourselves when we are clinging closest to him, but we never ever lose our selves in him.
Comment by Marcy — February 18, 2007 @ 9:19 am
My toes are not sensitive at all, they’re thick skinned, callaced. I don’t feel much pain immediately, even when there is reason to feel it immediately I don’t. It takes several days to realize my toes have been smashed. The delayed pain reaction is a strong one, as strong as those with sensitive toes who feel pain right away.
We show a good amount of insight when we are able to stop and ask ourselves, is this me or him/her? Am I taking this wrong or is the person wrong? Is this wrong out of malice or out of human error? Sometimes we have to dig deeper into a matter to know how to react. We are all only human, capable of both good and bad, being such we sometimes have to take a look at the who, what, when, where and why to figure out how to respond. Doing so shows growth and is indicative of a good heart condition.
smiles to you and yours,
Austin
Comment by Austin — February 19, 2007 @ 3:04 am
Austin,
I think I was like that when I was little — it took me a long time to realize that some people really didn’t like me or wanted to hurt me, particularly schoolmates, and some others. I think that’s one reason I’m equally introverted and extroverted — I was too outward at first, then too inward, and have been working on figuring out good boundaries.
Comment by Marcy — February 19, 2007 @ 12:44 pm
I definitely have “princess toes”, and I hate it. I am SO overly sensitive about EVERYTHING! ARGH! Can’t seem to change it though…. (((((HUGS))))) sandi
Comment by sandi — February 20, 2007 @ 10:42 pm
Oh Sandi, I think it’s worth us trying to find the good side of princess toes. I don’t think sensitivity is one-sided — we can learn to manage the negative side better, but I pray God will show us both (and all the others out there) the positive side — in increased empathy and compassion and understanding and appreciation and creativity and things like that.
Comment by Marcy — February 21, 2007 @ 8:50 am