How much are you concerned with what others think of you? I just finished editing a sermon for print that one of my most favorite - barnone - speakers, Pastor David Asscherick, gave at a youth conference some years ago. The sermon is called "Because of Those Who Sat." It is about the "Godience" - a word he coined to convey the importance of concerning oneself with God as an audience of one. At one point, he cites the words of a famous rock-climber lady who was scaling craggy walls before it was acceptable for a woman to do so. She (her name is Jan Con) said to the notion that her hobby was uncouth, "What others think of me is none of my business."

What others think of me is none of my business.

Don't you love that?

At times, I've been obsessed with what others think of me. Family. Church members. Bosspeople. A born people pleaser, I have been consumed by conversations that I rehearse in my head, some of which will never play out.

I went to StrollerFit class the other day and I was totally bringing up the caboose in all the exercises, eating the ever living dust off the heels of the other hottie fitty mamas, totally getting burned by their toddlers who were wearing Crocs that were slipping off their four year-old feet. I started to think what they all must be thinking of me, pushing the lightest of the strollers there, and still getting all tomato-faced. But then I congratulated myself for having been spliced open four and a half months ago and having all of my major organs displaced to pluck an 8 lb. Purdue human out, then healing to the point where I can run and not look like a deranged duck being chased by a predator.

What others think of me is none of my business.

*** I'm much more interested in other kinds of business. Primarily silly business....