I’ve decided that my sketching capacity limit is set at four hours.

From 10 am until 2 pm today I sat in the hallway of Baton Rouge’s Crowne Plaza Hotel drawing participants in a statewide meeting of apprentices in various industries. One of the local businesses that participates hired me to represent them by sketching people on paper they printed for the occasion.

I did just fine for all four hours. But as I walked across the parking lot to my car, I realized I was pooped. I would not be good for anything the rest of the day. The 70 mile-drive home was about all I could have managed.

In mid-November, I’ll be sketching fellow Baptists at the annual meeting of the Alabama Baptist Convention in Huntsville for a couple of days. The state paper–the Alabama Baptist–has printed a poster announcing the hours I’ll be at their booth, from 9 to noon and from 1:30 until 4:30 that afternoon. That’ll work. But I can promise that at 4:31, I willl head back to the hotel room and collapse and not be worth shooting the rest of the day.

Something occurred to me today while–once again–trying to help the subject I was drawing deal with low self-esteem. It happens so frequently, I can see it coming a mile away. The party reluctantly slides into the chair opposite me, looks in every direction except mine, and when I manage to get his/her attention, refuses to look me in the eye. Asked to look at me and smile, the party mumbles a variation of “I don’t smile.” Or, “I don’t like my smile.”

Today, I said on two or three occasions with more than a little impatience, “Look, I could understand that if you were 13 years old. But you’re a grownup. Get over this. Everyone looks better with a smile, including me and definitely including you. Now, look me in the eye and show me a smile. You’ll like the picture a lot better.”

Then, when no one else was around, I tried something with this young woman.

I said to her, “Look, no one else is listening in on this and I’m old enough to be your grandfather, so don’t take it the wrong way. But you are beautiful. God gave you a great smile and a wonderful appearance. Personally, I don’t think He’s happy when you’re always putting yourself down. Now, stand up straight and look the world in the eye and be the lovely person God made you.”

That’s risky, I know. It would be so easy to misinterpret that.

I just get so impatient with people who have the world going for them and who act like they were born paupers and damned to be eternally deprived.

I know where this came from. I really do.

They picked up this low self esteem from someone else.

A critical daddy, a frustrated mother, a jealous classmate, a sniping husband or griping wife. A disgruntled neighbor, an unthinking peer, a carping boss, a thoughtless school-teacher, an unkind pastor. A cruel uncle, an authoritative aunt, a controlling grandparent–someone they trusted betrayed that confidence by sticking the knife in and twisting in.

In an old interview aired this week on television, Michael Jackson told how his father would criticize his nose when MJ was in his teens. “It’s too big and too wide, boy. You didn’t get it from my side of the family.” Asked how that made him feel, MJ said, “It devastated me.”

Jackson told how he and his brothers encountered a woman in an airport who recognized them. “Where’s little Michael?” she kept asking, looking around as though she expected him to be about knee-high. “Right there,” one of the brothers said, pointing to the adolescent Michael. “Ew,” the unkind woman said, “What happened?”

“When I got to my room, I cried,” he said.

I’m not a psychologist, only a Baptist preacher. But my observation is that no one is born thinking of themselves as terrible and rotten and ugly. Quite the opposite, in fact.

Poor self-esteem is the by-product of people with bad mental health who try to feel better about themselves by downing others. If they are observant, they eventually discover that no amount of disparaging others alters how they really are inside, but the damage done to the others is often deep and permanent.

“You’re stupid,” said a mother to her daughter. What the mother was actually saying–I know this situation well–was that in trying to assist her small child with her homework, she herself felt helpless and out of her depth. Instead of honestly admitting her own shortcomings, she erupted onto the youngster with venom and unkindness.

That child, who in time would become my wife, grew up talented and bright and smart as well as attractive, but without any idea this was the case. It took years–decades, actually–to overcome the thoughtless and callous remarks of a mother (and perhaps a poor schoolteacher or two along the way) who truly loved her daughter but because of her own poor education felt inadequate to assist her.

In her early 40s, my wife Margaret graduated from Mississippi University for Women with a bachelor’s degree (cum laude, mind you!) in social work.

My fear for the young woman I tried to minister to today is that my words may have lifted her too high.

If she went out of that room feeling how wonderful she must be and how beautiful everyone surely finds her to be, she’s no better off than before.

If my positive words can exalt her too high, the negative words of another can prick that balloon and send her cascading down into the depths of self-pity.

If one person’s esteem can make us feel great, another’s ugliness can erase all that in a heartbeat.

The trick–if we may call it that–is for each of us to feel so confident in who we are and how God has made us that the words of other people about how they find us are irrelevant.

If they think we are brilliant and talented and the best-looking thing in town, fine. Thank them, then shrug it off. Their words have little to do with anything. They were being nice, and nothing more. (My brother Ron says, “Flattery is like perfume: it smells good but if you swallow it, it’ll make you sick!”)

If they call us weird, think we’re ugly, and tell someone we are stupid, that’s also fine. Ignore that also. The problem is theirs, not yours. For some sick reason the speaker felt the urge to discharge their shotgun of venom while you were in their sights. Believe me, if it hadn’t been you, it would have been someone else. Keep telling yourself: it’s not your problem.

Michael, your father was always weird and is still weird today. What he said about your nose being too wide was stupid, but don’t get yours bent all out of shape over a mental-health problem that is all his.

Michael, that so-called fan who “ewwed” you in the airport, was no fan. She is the enemy. Laugh it off. She too is weird.

We wish we could go back and say those things to that talented little boy singer.

And we wish that saying those things would make a lasting difference. Alas, it rarely does.

This kind of disease usually does not respond to positive words, but is aggravated only by additional bad ones. Don’t ask me why; I’m just the preacher, not the therapist.

Strong self-esteem comes from a cadre of loving people around a child: parents, siblings, grandparents, teachers, and friends.

A wise parent will monitor the input his/her child is receiving from those he/she trusts and take prompt action if it turns out someone is abusing the youngster.

Guard your treasure, friend. (See II Timothy 1:14)

The ideal balance is a place situated halfway between thinking too much of oneself and too little. Here’s how Paul put it in Romans–

“For through the grace given to me I say to every man among you not to think more highly of himself than he ought to think; but to think so as to have sound judgment, as God has allotted to each a measure of faith.” (Romans 12:3)

Not too much, not too little.

Warren Wiersbe, in his commentary on this verse, tells of two men he knew who had wonderful spiritual gifts. The first never used his and constantly belittled himself. The other used his gifts but constantly boasted of his gifts. Both men were guilty of excessive pride, Dr. Wiersbe writes.

Do not think too highly of yourself.

Do not think too often of yourself.

“Set your mind of things above.” (Colossians 3:1)

Do that and I can almost promise you, you’ll feel just fine about yourself.