I woke up today to a messy house. It wasn’t a disaster or anything. We just had a crazy day yesterday, and that combined with a whole lot of clean clothes from a laundry marathon this weekend left me a little behind.
I don’t like starting a day like this. I don’t think any of us do. All I can usually think on days like this is how much I must have messed up to get it this way. Failure. That’s the word that haunts me.
As I go through the day, bringing everything back into order, I’m filled with quite a bit of fear. Fear that I just can’t do it. That I’m failing. That the task is too big for me, or perhaps more accurately, that I’m not big enough for it.
And then I look at the other things I’ve undertaken in the last few months. I’ve emerged from that cocoon many of us go in during the earliest years of motherhood, and I’m starting to get more involved in other areas of life. Most pertain to mothering or my children, but still, it’s a step forward.
These activities excite me and inspire me, but they too scare me. What if I’m stepping too far out? What if I’m not good enough? What if I’m fooling myself?
I’m lucky to be surrounded by amazing, intelligent, passionate, insightful women in my life. And I wonder if I belong. I’m haunted by that fear. That insecurity.
There’s this phenomenon that happens sometimes in people with anxiety. It’s called imposter syndrome. It occurs when people with anxiety achieve something. They tend to think they are imposters. That people will find them out, will find that they really aren’t good enough.
Now I don’t particularly consider myself a high achiever, but I do see myself trying to grow in a few areas of my life. And in those areas, I’m surrounded by some pretty great role models. And that’s where my imposter syndrome comes in. Do I deserve to be here?
Back in the day when my anxiety was extreme, I used to have this intense fear of touching the world. On the physical level, I was terrified of spreading germs. Germs I probably never even had. But on the other level, I was afraid of impacting the world. I was afraid of making any waves, making any imprint, leaving any mark. I believed myself to be so defective that any mark I made would necessarily be bad. I didn’t feel like I deserved to exist, and so I had to make sure that my existence was as negligible as possible.
Luckily I don’t feel that way these days, but there are still lingering remnants that remain.
But I came across a Bible verse tonight that I’m sure we’ve all heard dozens of times. But tonight it touched me a bit more deeply.
“I praise you for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; that I know very well.” (Psalm 139:14)
The girls and I went on a hike on Sunday. We stopped to see some gorgeous flowers along the path. We talked about how God made all of this that was all around us. We talked about how beautiful these gifts are.
And I thought of that when I read the above psalm tonight. If God could make the oceans and the streams and the flowers and the animals, if He could make the Heavens and the Earth, if he did all of that and he still decided that the world needed a me? That’s pretty special.
We don’t all have to be wonderful at everything. We don’t have to succeed at everything. Sometimes we can accidentally bite off more than we can chew.
But when amazing things come our way, don’t we have a responsibility to give it a try? Don’t we have to go out there into the scary places, the places that seem too big for us, and just try to swim? Perhaps we might find out that we can do more than swim.
I think so many of us, women especially, tend to look at where we fail, where we falter. We want so badly to be so much to so many people that we fail to see what we already are. We fail to see that God doesn’t make mistakes and that despite our failings, we probably also are probably doing fairly well.
God made us, and He made us great, and He will equip us with whatever tools we need to succeed at the tasks He sets before us.
So next time you feel like a failure, and you see the messes piling up to the ceiling, just take a step back and look around you and realize that while you stand in the middle of His amazing creation, you are His masterpiece weaknesses and all.