Watch your mouth

"She looks just like her Father," EVERYBODY (except for my family members) says to me.
And it gets to me. It gets to me bad.

"Thank God she is beautiful," a friend from church says jokingly, "She looks nothing like her parents."
"Why did you want to have a girl," a woman who I just met at a birthday party says, "Don't you know girls are nice with their dads but their mother's nightmare. Just wait til she's 12 and your worst enemy. And that hair looks messy."

Seriously, what makes people thinks it's O.K. to make these kinds of remarks?
Why does my daughter have to grow to be a nightmare?
And why do you think you can insult me to my face and call it a joke?
"Everything anyone says of Emmalee affects you," my darling husband tells me.
And so, I pondered on both subjects.

On the first one, I was recalling a sermon my youth Pastor Gustavo had given many years ago. I was probably 14 when I heard it and it stuck. The teaching was about controlling your tongue and my readers will know I have a problem with letting my tongue run away with me. The Pastor was pointing out ways we sin with our tongue so that we may be able to more attentive to these situations and learn to control out tongues. The points I remember are: 1. When we speak of others. 2. When we speak in anger. 3. When we speak untruthfully. 4. When we speak too much.
That last one hit a chord. It's the time we sin with our mouths more oftenly without realizing we are using it to sin. We open our mouths too quickly without realizing that what we said was hurtful. No wonder the Bible says:

Proverbs 17:28

27 The one who has knowledge uses words with restraint,

and whoever has understanding is even-tempered.

28 Even fools are thought wise if they keep silent,

and discerning if they hold their tongues.

As to the second point, everything affecting me, he is right. The "he looks like his father" one hits me hardest.
Well, if you look at our baby pictures, she looks more like me than her dad, believe it or not. I'll be posting evidence later. It isn't that it bugs me that people thinks she looks more like her dad because I want them to think she looks more like me. I could care less if she looks like me. It just bugs me because she is a baby girl. She has girly facial features! If she were a baby boy, by all means tell me he looks like his dad. But the truth is why do I care what people say or who they find her resemblance to? She is actually a pretty perfect combination of both and waaaaaaay prettier than any of us anyways. I can't let this be affecting me and making me harvest ill feelings to the people, tons of people, who make these comments.

Proverbs 19:11

¹¹ 

A person’s wisdom yields patience;

it is to one’s glory to overlook an offense.

Well, the Lord is teaching me alright. For someone who has experienced the hurt of her tongue running away with her, most of the time not on purpose, it should be easier for me to see people don't mean wrong. They're just opening their mouth to talk for talk's sake, as you have done many times. Satan is going to try to use that against you. It made you stand up from that table at that party and walk away from that lady. Did you share Jesus with her? Did you open up to form a relationship with her to later introduce Him to her?
And this church friend is known for those comments. You have loved him just the same all this time. Why will you become upset with him just because you are letting the subject of your daughter be a soft spot for you? Will you let it be a soft spot for you?
Remember when you were a teacher and some parents would overreact when you tried to talk about their kid's needs? Well, will you be that kind of parent? Will you be beyond advice, counsel, teaching? So right now what gets to you is the "she looks like her father," what they might say in the future could be much more personal. I'd rather be, as the verse says, wise to yield patience.
Next time people tell you, and you know they will tell you, she looks like her father, just say: "Well, her daddy is very handsome too," which he totally is.