It’s been a struggle. Not today, or yesterday, or even this past week, but every single day since I was old enough to know that I am not the same as everyone else. Some days the work of the struggle threatens to take me out, knock me down, leave me on the ground forever, unable to stand or fight or breathe. Some days, though, the struggle sits quietly in the background, awaiting the perfect moment to come back into the sunlight.
But the struggle….it’s always there.
It’s the struggle to simply believe. The struggle to look at my reflection or think about who I am and just believe that I am okay. Just the way I am, I’m okay. Because while this is what you all see when you look at me…
….that is not what I see. All too often, there is a sink full of dirty dishes that have lingered for too long, or an unfolded pile of clothes, or a supper that I (and no one else) deem unsatisfactory, and I feel as though there is a big, bold declaration of my inadequacies imprinted on my forehead. A reminder to myself – lest I ever should forget – and to anyone else that I’m just not all that I could be. I’m not as good as I should be. I am…
…a failure. Big and bold and insistent, it presses into my head as though it were real. FAILURE. The statement of hatred that really comes from no one but myself. Jess, you are not good enough. You’ve fallen short. Again.
If I were content to sit in that, there would be no struggle. If I were content to simply believe that and allow myself to be defeated from the inside out, there would be no fight. I would sit and slowly die from the poison that creeps in from my own mind.
I refuse to be taken out, though. I refuse to believe something that cannot be true. I will not sit idly by and allow myself to be crushed by something that is so contrary to everything my God tells me is true.
I am loved. I am cherished. I am beautiful, and I am wonderfully made. I am God’s child, and He created me the way He did on purpose. When He saw me, He was pleased, and though I am not perfect, He still is.
He loves me.
I am favored, and when He looks at me, that is what He sees. FAVORED. Precious. Beloved.
I don’t always feel it, but somewhere inside, I believe it. I do, and so I struggle. I fight against the lies that I am not or ever will be what I should be. I fight the lies that tell me that there is something wrong with me. I struggle and I fight it because – as I was reminded by one of my dear friends recently – His vote is the only one that counts.
3 of your thoughts:
I don't know if you realize that you are just like everyone else in that we all struggle like that. We just don't show it (like you usually don't) and so you don't see it and you look around and see happy, perfect people who are similarly broken and feeling inadequate because they're looking at everyone else who also appears happy and perfect.
It's a good reminder that the FAILURES we see written on our forehead are in our sight alone. That He sees FAVOR written there. I don't believe it though, Jess. I want to believe it and there are times when I think I do, but I honestly STILL struggle with feeling that I'm the exception to God's rule of love. That the scripture really says, "For God so loved the world, except Becca, that He gave..."
And I really REALLY want to know how you put the words on your picture. For Noelle's 34 week old picture we accidentally wrote 35 and then didn't get around to re-taking it until it was too late...
Thanks Jess! As we said the other day, the Lord lets us hear what we need to hear, when we need to hear it. And I needed to hear that today!!
I can identify with this so much. Failure is always the word I see when I see myself. Thank you for reminding me about favored. Sometimes I struggle to know that that is how God sees me.
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