Insecurities {And a new wardrobe}

Call us crazy, but a group of dear friends and I have embarked upon a journey of vulnerability to expose our insecurities and deal with them. Surrender them to our Heavenly Father. Face what we’ve been fighting scared.

Armed with Beth Moore’s book “So Long, Insecurity,” we met for the first time at Panera and confessed how we hide the things about ourselves that we hate. Over soup, salad, and crusty French bread, we confessed how angry the proposition of this journey makes some of us. Admitted self-esteem issues stemming from weight, image, personality, rejection, insensitivity, past wounds, and the list goes on.

My bet is that we aren’t alone. My bet is that most of us haven’t walked through life unscathed by insecurities. If so, please tell me your secret. If so, please share. If not, know this morning that you aren’t alone.

We all have our favorite facades for different situations that best mask our weaknesses and pathetic attempts at ignoring the root issues. Root issues such as bad health. Weight gain. Abuse – physical, mental, emotional, verbal, or sexual. Abandonment. Rejection. Heartbreak. Death and loss. Sudden change. Family brokenness.

If teaching middle school has shown me nothing else, than it has clearly pointed out the fact that some of our lifelong issues stem from those few unstable years of trying to fit in with cruel, insensitive peers. Maybe that was you. I know it was me at various points. I knew I was a misfit.

Enough on that for the moment.

Daily interactions with close friends and perfect strangers clearly demonstrate that many of us haven’t grown much past middle school. We are better at hiding it. We don’t often have a total meltdown in the lunch room (emphasis on often). Yet, we’ve built walls. We’ve learned to live with the expectations that unworthiness presents. We’ve learned to hold friends at arms’ length so we don’t have to expose our vulnerabilities. We’ve learned to avoid people that challenge those insecurities or simply given us an excuse for irritation. “How dare they ask me that?” we mutter.

I’m only in Chapter 5 of Beth Moore’s book and only 25 years into this journey we call life. However, I’m hopeful. Full of hope. Tasting the appetizer to this full course meal of healing. Some of us are more wounded than others. Still, no hurt is too great for our Heavenly Father. Nothing too big. If a sexually abused friend can consider marriage, than I would say that nothing is too deep for Christ’s healing balm.

To be perfectly honest, the past years of infertility have left gaping holes in my own soul. Where joyful expectation resided, a nervous fear now has taken up residence. I don’t think even a positive pregnancy test could fix what years of bad news, failed attempts, discouraging medical practitioners, and several early miscarriages have engraved on my heart. Somehow, I’ve come to expect grief to be my lot. Talk about a spiritual handicap.

I’m wiling to expose my current pain to you in hopes that you might search your own soul. What old wounds still linger? What new ones are red raw?

More importantly, what are you willing to do about it? Are you going to keep fighting scared or do you think it is time to surrender? Not to the pain, but to the gentle probing and healing of our Heavenly Father. Yes, surgery hurts. Yes, scars take time to fade. But fade they will if we stop empowering them. If we stop excepting their shame and choose to walk into freedom.

That’s why this blog will be changing in the next couple of weeks. I’ve been hiding some of my passions out of fear of rejection. I’ve been afraid to discuss the diverse topics I’m curious about. What if you don’t care? What if you think they are insignificant or annoying? What if you don’t care how to make fall soup? What if you don’t care whether or not there are good sources of vegan DHA and EPA? What if you don’t care about running or reading? What if I lose all my readers? What if you don’t care for my brand of spirituality? What if I’m too radical or too pacifist?

These are questions that must stop weighing down my growth. I hope you are inspired to return to what you love and what you wonder about by my own quest, even if you share no interest in the things I may choose to write about this year.

Still, perhaps we can share a new joy? A new freedom? The freedom of prisoners walking free from cells of fear and insecurity.

I hope so. I want to be more than inspired by blogs such as Aholyexperience by Anne Voskamp. I want to LIVE the principles that I read about. Thanksgiving. Expectations of good. Trust. A new identity unmarred by years of people-pleasing, grief, and infertility.

I’ve got my eye on a new fall wardrobe.

Join me?