The New Me!

Last time we talked, I told you all about my journey to fully trusting God. The Wrestling Match that God was having with me was the point of my last blog. This time, I want to finish the story I started.

As a little girl growing up, I never wanted to be a bragger. I believed that quality in my personality was not what I wanted to be. I decided to take the complete opposite end of the spectrum and live in a world of “humbleness.” God tells us that in the Bible, right? Except that I took my pursuit of being humble too far. I wanted to be humble. I wanted to be the complete opposite of a braggart because I knew some of “those people” and I did not want that as part of my life. I didn’t want to boast to others about my talents or gifts. I didn’t want other people to know I had this gift of writing, or my magnetic personality. I allowed the shame that I felt from always being told I was less than desirable to paralyze my sense of normal confidence.

That image I had in my mind of what it was like to be humble was me. I thought that having no confidence was being humble. Boy, how wrong was I! This whole year long lesson God has been teaching me also included the lesson of confidence.

See somewhere along the line, I misunderstood. I thought being humble meant having no confidence at all. Here I am a grown adult woman and didn’t know this! I am sure that I must have insulted God. All the gifts and talents that I have been blessed with and I won’t even recognize them for what they are. It was like I was throwing that right back at him and saying I am not these things and this makes me humble. God must have had a great laugh at me.

All of these lessons I learned came at the perfect timing in my life. I knew as an adult that people would tell me positive things about myself or my students would say things about me being their favorite teacher or that I was the first teacher that they had ever had that really helped them. I had people tell me that my laugh was the best thing ever. I even had a friend say the the word that describes me best was vivacious. One time a student even said I sparkled. I didn’t see any of this in myself. I didn’t want to. If I accepted these gifts, I would have to put down my shame. I didn’t even recognize that I carried that baggage let alone was wielding it as a shield.

I kept telling myself that I didn’t know what people were talking about or that they didn’t know what they were talking about. All the while God was watching and waiting for me to be taught the lesson.

What I learned is this: it is okay to have confidence when it comes to the gifts that God has given you. If you have a beautiful smile and people tell you that, listen to them. Then, pause and process that God has given you a gift. The gift of warmth and welcome by using your face! If you can solve one of those math problems like, train A leaves the station and passes train B and turns into train C, embrace your gift. Thank God that you will always know when to get off that train and have money in the bank! If you have the gift of creating with any kind of medium, tell people thank you when they recognize your talent. If you send people cards just because, you have that talent of outreach. Just remember, when we take that confidence and act as if we gave ourselves the talent, that is when it becomes a sin. God does not like that either. Both ends of the spectrum are bad- not having confidence because you’re trying to be humble and being overly confident of your own ideas about yourself-either end is the same. SIN!

I had a friend once that didn’t know how to accept compliments. She would brush them off and deflect them. I now realize I was doing the same thing. I would say thank you, but then file that compliment away as I pulled out the shame folder that I thought it should be filed under. Lesson learned.

I heard a woman once tell a young pianist that she was grateful that God had given her the talent, but that she was using it to glorify him. When I heard her say this, I was blown away. She was acknowledging the talent, but that it came from God and he was using them to share it. I started trying to remember to say things like this to young people. Maybe if I had heard statements like this I might have clued into the fact that God gave me the talent and I should be confident in using it to glorify him!

Recently, my grandfather passed away and I spoke at his service. Afterwards, a great aunt said what a talent I had for public speaking. Many people said this to me over the next few days. But, I get it now. They are right. I do have an incredible talent. Now, to continue to work towards glorifying God with it. When I told my great aunt thank you, I also said it’s not me but God. I am just his vessel, and I hope he keeps using me. That was the piece I was missing. I am HIS vessel. What I have comes from him. Now seeing the new me makes me smile. I know this is a pecan. A true blessing that comes from him just for me to pick up! I hope I can continue to pick up His blessings all of my days.