Insecurity Sucks

 

Insecurity is a beast! I have wrestled with it at varying degrees for as long as I can remember. I think that when I was younger, I thought that with adulthood, braces, and some acne medicine would come some form of resolution for every ounce of insecurity dancing around in my head.

Not!

In fact, with all of that has come even more tons of “I shouldn’t have . . .,” “What will they think . . .,” “Why did I say that!?,” “I don’t fit in here,” and “Who told me I could (fill in the blank with anything admirable).”

During one of my many “woe is me” segments, I was convinced that close friends were shunning me, family members were avoiding me, and associates were dreading sharing space with me. I had conversation after conversation with myself cataloging all of the offenses I must have been guilty of that led to all of these grievances with these people in my life that I so desperately wanted to accept me, but in my attempt to be accepted or understood, I came across as repulsive and here I am, repulsed. Not liked. Unfriended. Needy. Extra. Insecure.

Yes, I am a motivational and inspirational speaker and writer who struggles with insecurities. How is that? Don’t ask me. I’ve been trying to figure that out for years. If you want to understand this irony you’ll have to ask the God who created me. I did. And I’d like to tell you what He told me.

Mind you, I’m assuming that I am not the only lady out here who is plagued by insecurity. A lack of confidence, a lack of assurance, self-doubt, instability, uncertainty, anxiety, the ups and downs or vacillations—whatever you want to call it and whatever the degree of it you deal with, it simply sucks.

You know why it sucks?

Insecurity sucks because, left unopposed and unchecked, it extracts the truth from our hearts and minds leaving us with bold-faced lies about who we are and about what actually matters.

And I’m tired of it all. So, I asked God about it. The talk went something like this:

“God, how is it that I feel called and gifted to motivate and inspire others to believe in themselves, yet I, at times, can’t even get over the fact that I sent a text to a friend and she has yet to respond and must therefore be offended and want to cut my family and me out of her life forever more? How is that even a thing? In Jesus Name, Amen.”

 Well, I did not get the audible answer I’d hoped for. He did not write out an answer on a stone tablet. Nor did He draw my insight in the sand with His finger. What He did was He had Isaiah write a letter. In it he reminded me that “[God] will keep in perfect peace those whose minds are steadfast, because they trust in [Him]” (Isaiah 26:3).

 Trust.

That’s it right there. The heartbeat of my insecurities, and perhaps yours as well, is a lack of trust in God. While insecurity sucks the truth out, trust instills it back in—way deep into our hearts and minds where it belongs.

Confession: “trust in God” is a hard phrase or concept for me to fully understand. It feels really abstract or “other worldly.” Practically speaking, how do we “trust in God?” What do we “do” that constitutes trusting in Him?

Well, here it is: we trust in God when we oppose any thought that suggests His truth about us is false. When I am rehearsing feelings of (or actually experiencing) rejection, I “trust” God when I get those thoughts in check or combat that experience by telling myself the truth: I am loved. (Come on now. . . you know it’s true: we are all loved by at least one family member, and maybe 2 friends. (haha))

For sure, we are all loved by God. His Word says it. Even when I don’t feel it or believe it, it is the truth. Therefore, no matter how loud the tune of insecurity chooses to play in our heads, we can choose to drown it out with our trust in His Words about us and about what actually matters. You are held. You are free. You are His. You are loved.

Insecurity has us believing otherwise. Well . . . guess what?

Insecurity sucks!

Try trust.