Have you ever walked into an event feeling pretty confident? Maybe you even checked out your reflection in the car door as you walked by and thought "looking good, lady" only to be approached by someone so stunning that your confidence literally melted and you suddenly felt like a sewer mutant?
A little while back I went to an event and I dressed up—well, for me. I wore a frilly top with shorts and strappy sandals and I was really feeling put together when up walks this lady to introduce herself and my immediate thought was “is this the Real Housewives and will I be on this episode?!”
This lady is not real life—she is nine feet tall, she has long blonde hair, perfectly beautiful while barely wearing any makeup because I think this is just her face. She is dressed in brands of clothes I probably cannot pronounce and wouldn’t know where to buy. All of this while effortlessly strolling in platform shoes.
Seriously, this woman surely has one of those thousand dollar purses that has a raincoat. I generally can’t remember an umbrella, but this lady is the type whose purse has its own raincoat.
I just know it.
As I snap back to reality from my enamored stupor, I am immediately sweaty palmed and hyper-aware of the scuffs on my shoes, the poor condition of my fingernails and whether I have lipstick on my teeth. I always have lipstick on my teeth.
How did I do that?
How did I, in the snap of a finger, go from checking myself out in the reflection of the car to channeling the most insecure version of my sixth-grade self?
I went from feeling good about myself straight to feeling small in a matter of two seconds flat when faced with someone I perceived as more put together than me. She didn't make me feel that way - she couldn’t have been any nicer or welcoming.
She was being the best version of herself and because all of a sudden I felt a sense of being “less than,” I quit being the best version of myself.
This feeling of smallness or being “less than”—the feeling of inferiority—for me isn’t so much about wanting what other people have as much as it is feeling like by comparison I’m not enough.
The funniest thing about this is that even though I can be reduced to this feeling in an instant, I have committed myself as a parent to bolstering my daughter against it. We have little bedtime talks where we discuss where her value and worth comes from.
We talk daily about how her value is in her heart. God put it there when He made her and no one can take it from her. She can't do anything--good or bad--that will change her worth in God.
Her worth exists because she was made perfectly by God in His image. (Psalm 139:13-16, ESV)
I tell her every night that God made her to be herself and to be the best version of herself. I encourage her to remember that when it's tempting to emulate someone else to remember that God made her entirely unique. I remind her that emulating someone else is abandoning her God-given purpose and light that she's supposed to shine.
She's really little now and she loves yelling “God!” when I ask who made her. She yells “nobody!” when I ask her who else in the world is like her.
I pray with her about how special and strong God made her. I hope like I have never hoped for anything before that inculcating this sense of ceaseless God-given value and worth while she is young will help her to strongly and wisely shield against what the world will try to take from her later.
II Corinthians 3:4-5 says “Such confidence we have through Christ before God. Not that we are competent in ourselves to claim anything for ourselves, but our competence comes from God.”
What a relief, right? It’s not even up to us. We don’t have to come up with it – our confidence, our value and worth is given to us in ceaseless supply at birth by our Maker.
No matter what I do or haven't done, no matter what I have or don’t have, no matter what I achieve or don’t achieve, no matter what someone else thinks of me - I AM ENOUGH.