Insecurities are an equal opportunity offender. They affect us all. But if we are going to teach our children how to live courageous lives and push past their own insecurities, we are going to have to learn how to push past our own.
I used to be very insecure. Still am at times.
But while my insecurities used to have the final say in my life, they no longer do.
For as long as I can remember, I struggled with feeling insecure.
My birthmom was raped and I was the result. Growing up, that translated into…
You should have never been born. You weren’t just unplanned, you were a woman’s worst nightmare!
As a child I couldn’t help but notice my mom seemed to cater to my brother. He was her son by birth, I was her daughter by adoption. And although I knew my mom and dad loved me and my mom always told me I was selected, not just expected…
I couldn’t shake the feelings of insecurity that haunted my heart and made me wonder if she was happy that she had adopted me.
From the age of 3 until I was 12 or 13, I was sexually abused by 2 different people in my family. Those consistent abuses skewed my view of life and love and all things in between and left me wondering if I was worth anything at all…
Feeling like a throw away girl whose life didn’t matter, I wrestled with feeling like I had no value and was born to be used and abused.
As a pregnant teenager who was married at 17 and a single mom by the time I was 19…
I couldn’t help but feel like the decisions I made would mark me for the rest of my life and those feelings of insecurities wreaked havoc on my heart.
Never feeling smart enough, good enough, pretty enough, thin enough, likable enough, lovable enough, strong enough, popular enough or wise enough, I kept making the same mistakes over and over never realizing that I had allowed my past to define who I had become.
But when Jesus saved me and changed my life in 1987, He began chipping away at those old insecurities.
I remember when I first became a Christian being struck with the realization that I didn’t have to prove my love to anyone, I just had to accept God’s love for me. That if the God of all creation loved me enough to die for me, it didn’t matter what anyone else thought about me.
But that didn’t mean I was done dealing with my own insecurities. It just meant I didn’t have to be defeated by them any longer.
We all have insecurities.
Some more than others.
Some have strong ties to abusive backgrounds and destructive decisions.
Others just can’t get past feeling like they don’t measure up.
But as God started peeling back the layers of His Word and revealing what Scripture says about who I am in Christ, it began to slowly revolutionize the way I saw myself.
No longer was I that little girl that had lost her innocence and had no hope or no voice. I was now a child of God, loved by my Heavenly Father who saw me as completely pure.
I was treasured by the One who created me and His Word says He not only delights in me, He longs to hear my voice and He is my hope.
I don’t know what your insecurities are. I don’t know what you struggle with or why.
But I know you struggle with something.
We all do.
Today and tomorrow, we are going to learn to PUSH PAST OUR INSECURITIES.
Today, I wanted to be transparent and share my own insecurities because I think it’s important that we are real with each other. It’s so easy to look at other people and think they have it all together… like they don’t have any struggles, any insecurities or any issues.
But we all do.
Let today be the day you begin your journey to freedom from insecurities by identifying what insecurities you struggle with and why. This is the first step to learning to push past them. In our next post, we’ll get a glimpse of the damage our insecurities can do and start unpacking the process of how we can push past them.
QUESTION? Do you struggle with insecurities?
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