Dealing with Insecurity

One of my favorite pastors I follow on Instagram is Bianca Olthoff. If you don’t follow her, you should. Recently, she posted about her struggle with her weight. She stated, “The first step to breakthrough and victory is admitting where you’re at. Even if it’s ugly.”

Bianca is so joyful and on fire for the Lord; she continually inspires me. I appreciate her vulnerability because I believe that vulnerability can be a catalyst to unveiling the truth of where we all truly are. I believe that we go through seasons in our life in order for us to connect to another person’s story. Her confession in her struggles gives me the confidence to confess my own.

So here it is:

I struggle with insecurity. It’s an awful balance of feeling not enough and then also feeling too much. How can one balance not feeling like they are enough, but then also feeling too much (to handle)? One of the first times I felt insecure was in elementary school; I was a little bit of a chubby kid and someone called me “Jenny Craig”, insinuating that I needed to lose weight. I was in the first grade. I’ve carried the words of fat, ugly, and the names that were spoken over me as truth for far too many years. In middle school and high school, when I wasn’t asked to the dance or asked on a date, I thought it was because of my weight or that I wasn’t good enough, pretty enough, etc. In college, as I began to find my confidence and personality and giftings, my boisterous, uninhibited laughter would be too loud for some. I felt as though I was too much to handle or that I wasn’t worth someone's time. The balance of feeling not pretty enough and weighing too much often conflicted in my own heart and mind, and it’s something I still struggle with. But something happened when I got through my mid-20s and entered my 30s. I began caring well for myself and valuing the ways that God uniquely gifted and created me. I surrounded myself with those who cared well for me and valued me and spoke truth over me. God spoke clearly through others in my life to uniquely love me. Don’t wait as long as I did to take your insecurity to Christ first; he is waiting for you to lay down your burdens, insecurities, doubts, and anxieties.

Dear friend, I must tell you, if you hear anything in your ear other than the word “BELOVED”, it is not from God and it is a lie. You are more than enough and you will never be too much for God. Do not let the words of others shape your life; don’t let your own negative self-talk shape your life either. Let the words of God shape your life and shape who you are as a person.

“Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?” - Matthew 6:25-26

I want to leave you with some lyrics by Tyrone Wells’ “You're Inside Out” that inspired me this week: “No amount of makeup could ever take the place of your heart. Every time you wake up, I want you just the way that you are. I don’t know how you could ever get any better. One look, I’m shook babe, no, that’s not the hook of what keeps us together. It’s more than your body, it’s more than the way you smile, all that you are, I love you from the inside out.”