Insecure. I love to pour out my feelings and thoughts on the internet, but I balk from doing it in real life. I think of what it would sound like if I told you these things in person, and I get this … um… horror in my mind thinking of what you might think when I tell you the ugliness of what’s in my head.
It’s fear. Fear is making me insecure, and this verse keeps running through my head day after day. 2 Timothy 1:7, “For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.”
I know that Jesus Christ wants us to WALK in the light as HE is in the light, and one of the biggest lies of the devil I’ve been giving into this year is that ‘people don’t want to walk with you in your darkest valleys and see the ugliest parts of you.’
1 John 1:7, “But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.”
Something a friend told me this past week was that you need to find people that you will the very most ugliest parts of you, the people who know everything about you, and my mind recoiled at that. ‘Why?!?!?!’ Why would I want them to know?
In a way that sounds good, but it also sounds absolutely terrifying.
You see. I only find myself revealing the vulnerable parts of me, the parts that I’m most comfortable revealing, and I hold back the parts where it feels like it would really hurt to tell people those parts.
What are those parts that I often hold back?
– the deepest desires and disappointments of my heart
– my deeper spiritual struggles or doubts
– the dreams that I have because I’m afraid if I say it it won’t happen (isn’t that such a silly fear?)
I love to smile, but the past few weeks of being back from New Zealand have held a lot of insecurity and fear for me. I know I was walking back into my familiar space, and with your familiar space, also comes those familiar battles, the battles that you weren’t facing when you were gone in a foreign country.
I fought more food battles on vacation.
Now the battles are more emotional, fear-based around having relationships or not wanting people to actually know me.
The battles are me thinking I don’t ever want to get married or have a relationship that’s deeper outside of my family because it’s ‘too complicated’ or ‘too scary.’
But that same friend. That same friend encouraged me by reminding me that Jesus Christ came to restore relationships, not to destroy them, and I should want to do the same thing. I should want to be in relationship with people and do the hard work to be in relationship because of my Savior and Lord Jesus Christ.
My hope and prayer is now that I will step outside of that comfort zone and back into deeper relationships although they’re hard and they hurt.
Trying to keep yourself immune from hurt is impossible, and I know from personal experience that it might ‘feel safe’ but Jesus Christ engaged in relationships with so many people (without ever saying one word about ‘relationships needing to be safe.’).
I’m scared guys.
I’m scared gals.
I’m scared of what relationships could bring, deeper ones that reveal the ugliest parts of me to people, but I’m also hopeful.
Hopeful that I won’t always be this insecure about relationships or about how people view me, this selfish and proud girl that thinks too much about what others think of her.
I’m insecure about many things, but the Lord is my security, and I’m learning that He will never ever let me down. He will not leave or forsake His kids, and when it’s time to engage in relationship with other imperfect human beings like myself, I know He will walk with me into that too.
Now I’m just praying for the courage and the faith to do it.
