After the first day of archery camp, Minky jumped into the car full of excitement. “Every shot was a bullseye, Mommy!” he embellished. “I love archery! I’m really good at it!”
The next day, Minky’s brother joined in the fun. He had been absent the first night with a bug. After that night, Sony was thrilled by the experience but Minky was out of sorts. During class, the coach had sought me out to find out Sony’s experience level because Sony, a beginner with two less days of experience than Minky, was actually nailing bullseye after bullseye. Sony was a natural. Minky had gotten wind of the converstaion and had now decided that he hated archery.
The next day, Minky’s brother joined in the fun. He had been absent the first night with a bug. After that night, Sony was thrilled by the experience but Minky was out of sorts. During class, the coach had sought me out to find out Sony’s experience level because Sony, a beginner with two less days of experience than Minky, was actually nailing bullseye after bullseye. Sony was a natural. Minky had gotten wind of the converstaion and had now decided that he hated archery.
“I stink at archery,” he told me the next day during a walk, “I’m no good at it.”
With the love of a mommy I responded, “But you loved it on Monday. You said you were really good at it.”
“Yeah, well…” Minky responded, “that was before Sony came. He’s better at it. Compare me to him and I’m no good.”
While Sony often lives in Minky’s shadow because Sony is a low maintenance, easy going kid and Minky is more high strung and demands more concerted effort and attention, Minky often lives in Sony’s shadow when it comes to academics. On that second day of camp, Minky had discovered that Sony could be good at something other than spelling, reading or math. His discovery of Sony’s natural archery talents had caused his own archery spotlight to dim - at least as far as he was concerned.
“Compare me to him and I’m no good,” Minky said. I responded as only a pastor-mommy could. I responded with God talk. “I don’t want to compare you to anyone, Minky. I want to celebrate how much fun you have when you do archery. It doesn’t matter if somebody is better at it than you. God created you to be you, not to try to be like somebody else.” Years of therapy conversations came pouring out of my mouth – it wasn’t until my 30s that I began to understand and attempt to grasp the message I was sharing with my usually-wise-beyond-his-years 8 year old. I can only hope that the words were planted deep inside the core of who Minky is and that he might already be on the journey of loving and accepting himself as made in the image of God. That's the bullseye I pray for him to hit.
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