The Trouble with Insecurity

"The thing God does better than any other writer is to create great characters. YOU'RE ONE! Amazing. Look at you, shimmering on the page!" -Donald Miller

I read this quote this morning and it made me smile. Truth be told, I have been in quite an insecurity funk over the last several months. It's been the worst kind of spell, one where there was not a clear inciting event. I've been unable to write it off as silly & superficial because it hasn't been about outward things like possessions, appearance or other fleeting things.  It has been far more personal than that...it has been about my personality.

I have a strong one. I am honest. I am verbal. I like to share my opinion and/or what I have read or learned on a subject. And while I really, really try to surrender this to the control of the Spirit and let it all be tempered with love, I know I fall short a lot. I can sense on people's faces when they aren't quite sure what to do with me.

While I know that women like to think of struggles with insecurity as a sign of meekness or humility, I am learning that they are actually an extension of pride. When I am plagued by insecurity, suddenly my focus is far more about ME than any person God puts across my path. Instead of being sensitive to how they are, what they need, how I can bless and love them, I am twitchy worrying about what they think of me. I haven't been comfortable in my own skin. I have been consumed with me. It is gross.

I have allowed all of this to take up too much disk space in recent months. Instead of my focus being turned up to the Lord and out to others, it has been too often turned in to myself. God revealed to me a couple of weeks ago that being frozen by insecurity has rendered me pretty ineffective for Him.  I have allowed lies from the Enemy to bench me.

In an effort to allow the Lord to have first rights to the messages my heart embraces, I returned to Truth to counter the lies. This graphic my friend Cabell put together came to mind.

I read it then felt the Lord whisper to my heart: Do you really believe what I say about you? How would your life look if you did? Wow.

One thing I have learned from parenting is that my children learn far more from how I behave than from what I say...so what is my life teaching them about security in Christ? their identity? their worth?

I am still chewing through it all. Asking the Lord to keep me rooted and established in His Word, His Truth and His Love. Clearly, I am a person in process--which was His idea. If we were perfect, there would be no need for Him. We would worship one another. If we were all the same, the body of Christ could not function.

“I would rather be what God chose to make me than the most glorious creature that I could think of; for to have been thought about, born in God's thought, and then made by God, is the dearest, grandest and most precious thing in all thinking.”-George MacDonald 

You be you. I'll be me. And let's spend more time loving each other up in Truth than tearing each other (and ourselves) down with lies. All for His glory!