Ruth Gledhill: Church tells kids to 'Get a Life'

April 11, 2008

Joanna writes: It's hard to know how to react when the Church of England sends you a book entitled 'Get a Life'. Tempted as I was to do so, I find myself blogging about it on a Friday night instead.

Turns out that it wasn't an abusive missive after all, but a new course for Christian teenagers who want some guidance as to what to do with their lives....

...But the meditation at the end of the course is perhaps as good a guide as any to maintain a teenagers fragile self esteem even if it doesn't show them what to do with their lives.

Everything I look at shouts back at me telling me to change
Be like this
Wear that
Change your life
Have a makeover
You are what you eat
Everything I look at shouts at me telling me to become someone else
But I can't
A label is only a label
Food is just food
I look in the mirror and want to change how I am because of all that
I am not good enough
I look in the mirror and because of all those voices I don't like what I see
Someone I read about whispers back at me not to change:
'Be yourself
I will clothe you
I will be the change in your life
I made you, you don't need making over!
Feed on me.'
Someone I read about whispers back at me to just be me!
How can I?
With all those voices - I can hardly hear the whisper I want to hear.
I look in the mirror and still want to change.
Surely I am not good enough.
I look in the mirror, and someone looks back at me and says:

'I love what I see because I made you and formed you
Before you were born, millions of cells multiplied into you
Hand crafted into what you see now and what I see now.
You are one in a million
You are unique
Utterly loved without condition, without exception,
Just the longing that you will love me in return
And be you!

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