Confidence.

I’ve been thinking about confidence lately.

I really don’t have much confidence at all if I’m being honest.

It’s the ultimate reason for why it’s frustratingly impossible for me to take part in class discussions. It’s why I worry about what I look like. It’s why I trail off on my sentences or take back what I said. It’s the reason I second-guess myself and can’t make decisions. It’s why I get nervous before things like presentations or going somewhere new or talking to someone I don’t know.

It all goes back to confidence.

But in all of that, I’ve realized that not being confident in myself means I’m not confident in God. He made me. He made my passions, my knowledge, my opinions, ideas and thoughts. He made my appearance. He made me exactly how I am for a reason and a purpose. So, I should be confident in that because it’s from Him, and He is perfect. Because He is perfect and knows all things and sees all things, I can be confident in Him and trust Him which means I can be confident and trust myself because He is in me.

I was listening to The Artist by Rend Collective on my car ride home and it says “You make all things bright and beautiful, wild and colorful. You make our lives bright and beautiful, wild and colorful. You are the artist.” It’s so good and so convicting. It’s so easy to love God’s creation and other people because of the beauty in them. (For the most part, anyway.) But I struggle so hard to love myself and find that beauty in me. Why, though?

I’m just as much His creation as everybody else. I’m loved like everyone else. I’m forgiven and given grace and mercy. Jesus died for me too. But I seem to forget that.

I think it’s hard because I don’t want to be selfish. I don’t want the attention to be on me because then I’ll look self-absorbed. I want to care about others so badly that I tend to neglect myself. That thought process is almost prideful, though.  It’s almost prideful of me to not be confident in myself. It’s prideful to want to be better or prettier because then I’m hoping to change how God created me. I am perfectly Mikayla, and you are perfectly you. We’re not perfect, but we’re the perfect one of us because we’re the only one of us.

I’ve learned that it’s nearly impossible to love others the way you should if you don’t love yourself like you should.

So here’s my challenge to you and me… embrace yourself. love yourself. be yourself.

Be exactly who God made you to be, and don’t let anyone especially yourself give you a reason not to be confident in that.

I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;  your works are wonderful, I know that full well. -Psalm 139:14

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