So Long Insecurity Read online

  One woman described with these moving words how insecurity robs us:

  Insecurity makes us settle. Insecurity makes us distracted. Insecurity robs our confidence in our rich inheritance from God. Insecurity makes us put our gifts on a shelf to gather demonic dust. Insecurity disturbs our sleep. Insecurity derails our life.

  The next and final story got me. I won’t bother giving it a label. It speaks for itself.

  My father left my mom when she was pregnant with me. He only came to visit my sister and me two or three times a year. When he came, I had a strong need to hold his hand . . . and I held it and held it and held it. He would take us out for dinner, and I remember holding that hand and thinking to myself, Look, look everybody! This is my daddy! I was very insecure in my relationship with this stranger/father of mine. I’m thirty-eight years old, and this is still one of my strongest childhood memories. But praise God I’ve got an Abba Father who is no stranger to me at all. Not only does He hold my hand, but at times He carries me. He never leaves, and I’m definitely not insecure in my relationship with Him. But I must say, I still have that childlike longing to say to the world, “Look, look everybody! This is my daddy!”

  What might surprise you is to know that God, too, delights in being able to say, “Look, look, everybody! This is My child!” Yep. Even after all the foolishness. David, a veritable emotional volcano constantly threatening to erupt and a man after God’s own heart who, incidentally, also made a fool of himself, inscribed these words on a scroll:

  As a father has compassion on his children, so the LORD has compassion on those who fear him; for he knows how we are formed.

  Psalm 103:13-14

  God Himself formed human emotions. He knows how easily the heart can be broken. The mind can be marred. He knows life hurts . . . because people hurt . . . and then hurt people. He also knows the resilience with which He made us and the innate capacity within each one of us to be restored. Remade. He knows we are capable of loving even when we feel unloved because He loves us enough to cover those who don’t. He knows we are not nearly as fragile as we think we are, but we will act like who we believe ourselves to be. He knows we have the capacity to be astoundingly extraordinary, and not just in spite of where we’ve been, but because of it.

  God knows we’re insecure. But we do not need to be. And He will not leave well enough alone. He has enough security for both of us, and for those of us who call Christ Savior, He slipped His own secure Spirit within our simple jars of clay. It is in you to be secure, dear one. Do you hear what I’m saying to you? You have it in you.

  Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers.

  Hebrews 2:11

  Or sisters.

  And again He says, “Here am I, and the children the LORD has given me” (Isaiah 8:18).

  Look, look everybody!

  Chapter 8

  A Beautiful Prize Called Dignity

  It’s time we got our dignity back. Even if you’re among the few who managed not to see yourself in the mirror of the last chapter, the fact that you’re still reading this book suggests that insecurity has at least taken some kind of toll on you. After considerable research and a half century of experience, I’ve come to the conclusion that one of insecurity’s biggest disservices is the pure loss of dignity. Follow me here for a minute.

  When we allow a root of insecurity to reside within us and we don’t let God deal dramatically with it, we will either

  give way to it continually or

  try to stifle it.

  If (a) is the case, let me just spit this out lest we waste valuable time: you’re a walking mess. A veritable train wreck. Don’t feel condemned if that’s you right now. I’ve certainly spent some very unpleasant seasons there myself. Persevere through this journey, and if you’re willing, you will find tremendous relief.

  If (b) is the case, you live at constant risk of your stifled insecurities getting triggered. This is exactly where I’ve lived most of my life. I go along successfully, knowing this unhealthy part of me is still present but currently dormant, then something happens to jar it, and in a second flat, it shoots from a root into Jack’s bean stalk. That “something” that happens is what we’re calling a trigger. Let’s look at a few examples, big and small, keeping in mind that what triggers one person to a rush of insecurity may not affect another at all.

  Your boss calls you into his office and shuts the door behind you.

  You get an offhanded comment from a person who has a teeny stench of superiority about her/him.

  Out of the corner of your eye, you catch your man looking at another woman. Maybe she’s a stranger. Maybe she’s your friend.

  Your mom gets that disapproving look on her face over how you parent her grandchildren.

  You get an e-mail from somebody you expected to hear from ages ago, and it sounds forced. Or you get a three-line response to an e-mail that took you a solid hour to write.

  Somebody makes a presentation in class right before yours. And it’s fabulous.

  The guy you used to date walks into your church with a gorgeous girl.

  You met someone you really admire and said something stupid.

  Your guy has seemed distracted and disinterested for a solid week. You get that feeling in your gut that something’s up, but you don’t know what it is.

  Your best friend of five years introduces you to a new friend from work. They laugh about people you don’t know and talk over dinner like you’re not there.

  You have a new haircut. And it’s hideous.

  Your husband’s on a business trip, and you can’t get ahold of him.

  You poured out your heart to someone and she/he didn’t get it. You’re pretty sure you told the person way too much.

  You finally mustered the courage to reconcile with a friend after a hurtful fissure in the relationship. You can tell within thirty seconds that she doesn’t feel the same way. In fact, she acts like the whole thing never even bothered her.

  Triggers. Sometimes we don’t bite the bait. Other times we do. On occasion we’re able to get our game on instantly and not let our insecurity put on a show. Far too often, however, in that sudden, unwanted rush of unhealthy emotion, good sense and sound thinking temporarily fly out the window and head for the nearest hornets’ nest. I don’t know about you, but there have been times when I’ve totally embarrassed myself by saying something or acting some way that instantly exposed my fears and uncertainties. Trust me on this one: no matter how big a fool we make of ourselves on the outside, we feel like a bigger one on the inside. Even if what I’ve done or said wasn’t a big deal to another person, I inevitably feel like an idiot. Even if I didn’t say a word and completely kept my cool, I worry that my expression gave me away. Am I alone here, or do I have some company?

  This chain reaction is not just about feeling foolish. It has a much greater spiritual and emotional implication than that. Insecurity is about losing our God-given dignity. The enemy of our souls loves that. He knows that people who don’t value themselves won’t think they deserve any dignity. He knows that only the person who really believes God will insist on having her dignity back. Our enemy is hoping we’ll get caught in a pitiful cycle of reacting to a sudden rush of insecurity with foolishness, feeling even more insecure, acting even more foolish, and then feeling vastly more insecure. He wants us to keep digging ourselves deeper and deeper into a hole until we feel completely stuck in this miserable corkscrew of self-hatred.

  Listen carefully to me: we can begin to break this cycle this very day. Healing something as innate as chronic insecurity takes a little time as God helps us to see where we’re broken and why. We can start recognizing triggers and responding to them differently today, however. I did say today. The cycle begins to break when even though we may still feel insecure, we make a very deliberate choice to not act on that feeling.

  This isn’t about getting your game on. It’s about responding in a whole new way on the basis of a developing belief system that is m
aking its way into our heads but is still en route to our hearts. Stay with me over the next couple of chapters, and I’ll explain how these new responses work. I’ve been practicing them myself for the last several months, and I am astonished by how much progress I’m experiencing.

  Those of us who have battled insecurity for years tend to have a couple of repetitive reactions to a trigger. In other words, we all have our patterns. Do any of the following look familiar?

  Some get really defensive or display a false arrogance.

  Some binge.

  Some immediately retreat and withdraw.

  Some drink. Or grab some medication to numb the feeling. (I’m not talking here about cases where medication may be appropriately prescribed by a good, solid physician. I’m talking about unhealthy and destructive coping mechanisms for sudden bouts of insecurity.)

  Some shout and go into a rage.

  Some subject their loved ones to excruciating interrogations.

  Some grow completely cold and become punishing.

  Some cry hysterically and beg for acceptance and love.

  Some turn to compulsive self-gratification: pornography, danger, self-mutilation.

  The list could go on and on, but as different as the reactions are, they all have one thing in common: they make you feel worse. More insecure. More prone to a bad reaction the next time. By the time a pattern is well established, you not only feel insecure and foolish, you also feel like a failure. After all, you keep doing the same thing again and again—with the same results. Maybe, you reason, you’re even crazy. You need to know that a whole lot of people—including yours truly—have felt exactly like you are feeling, and some have experienced the exhilaration of overcoming it.

  Over the course of the last year or so as God has graciously pinpointed this area of my life for healing, I’ve come to some stark revelations about the toll of my insecurity. I am convinced now that virtually every destructive behavior and addiction I battled off and on for years was rooted in my (well-earned) insecurity. Not only was I abused, I was also raised in a home where I constantly wondered if my parents loved each other. I was an emotional wreck even as a young child, fearful and tearful. I developed the disturbing impression, whether or not it was accurate, that no one was emotionally healthy enough to carry the heavy psychological load of us five children. By the time I reached early adolescence, those impressions gave way to new and dangerous “freedoms.” While the cats were distracted, the mice were destructive. I was crawling out of the bedroom window with my older sister when I should have still been playing with dolls.

  As God took me through the journey that became the Bible study Breaking Free, He taught me to look for a common denominator among the things that triggered my destructive habits. Even then I came up with insecurity as the dominant answer. Christ performed a miracle on my heart and my mind through His Word and brought a decisive end to some behaviors and addictive tendencies I had battled almost all my life. It wasn’t until the last few years though that I realized we had somehow never gotten all the way down to the deepest root of all: my persisting insecurity. Sometimes you have to shove all the surface stuff to the side in order to see what’s underneath. Keep in mind that it took me a while to identify my ongoing problem because it only reared its head in certain select areas of my life. I was completely secure in others. Finally, those select areas caused me enough misery to make this pivotal God-fed decision: I don’t have to live this way anymore.

  You see, I had an advantage. I already knew Jesus could set a person free from absolutely anything. Insecurity did not have the right to be my exception, even if it had been with me from toddlerhood. Though I was no longer reacting to insecurity the way the enemy wanted me to, I had not yet begun to react in the way that God wanted me to. All too often, insecurity still left me feeling overexposed, foolish, and as if I had somehow lost my dignity.

  Okay, Lord, so how do we begin? How are we going to attack this thing?

  I’ve long since learned that God uses truth to set a person free, and since I was willing to be truthful about my own condition, I knew that God’s truth was going to come to me next—probably in the form of Scripture. The only question was which one He would use.

  She is clothed with strength and dignity.

  No, He didn’t say it out loud. This verse came to me from out of the blue, from the recesses of my memory, blinking like a red neon “Vacancy” sign. Significantly, this is a description drawn from the portrait of Proverbs’ “woman of valor.” You’ve probably more commonly heard her called “the virtuous woman” or “the woman of noble character.” I wholeheartedly want to be a virtuous woman and possess noble character, but in reality, the Hebrew term is most often used to convey valor. In fact, the same word is translated “mighty” in God’s reference to Gideon in Judges 6:12.

  The LORD is with you, mighty warrior.

  Why must it be translated differently in Proverbs 31 just because she was a woman? Is it because it doesn’t take as much courage to be a woman as it takes to be a man? I don’t know what kind of courage it took thousands of years ago, but I know how courageous women need to be today. Even in the context of this woman’s rich role in the family, can’t the home be a fierce battlefield too? Word Biblical Commentary translates this word using its most common meaning:

  A woman of valor, who can find? Her value is beyond rubies.11

  And right there in the portrait of this courageous, effective woman, we find the words that scrolled through my head at the Holy Spirit’s bidding: She is clothed with strength and dignity. I repeated the words over and over, then said them aloud, pausing this time with each word.

  SHE. IS. CLOTHED. WITH. STRENGTH. AND. DIGNITY.

  I stopped dead in my tracks on the word dignity. Weeks prior, God had already brought me to the conclusion that part of any woman’s healing from insecurity inevitably involves reclaiming her God-given dignity. I had not thought, however, that the process could be found in this verse. It was a passage that had never really spoken to me before. But I’d never stopped long enough to really consider the implications of it. With your indulgence, I’d like to unpack the verse in hopes that you, too, will see why it is significant in our journey.

  She . . .

  Scripture’s strong leaning toward male gender references never has bothered me. For instance, when the Bible refers to all of us who believe in Christ as the “sons of God,” I’m perfectly at home with the generalization including females as well as males. Anyway, the way I see it, we women get a big turn on the reference to believers as “the bride of Christ.” Still, when a superbly rich verse with a refreshingly positive spin on it speaks of a “she,” I bask in it like a hot bubble bath. That God would highlight this passage for our decidedly female journey was tremendously touching to me. His Word is never beyond our reach, but sometimes He seems to go out of His way to set it squarely in the palm of our hands.

  . . . Is Clothed . . .

  The word picture sketched by the reference of clothing speaks volumes. I don’t know about you, but if I had to nail down the most common feeling I get when I’ve let my insecurity surface, it is the sense of being overexposed. I’m comfortable with the unhindered gaze of God on vulnerable places in my soul because I’ve come to trust Him so much and know how deeply He loves and accepts me. I’m not crazy about human eyes having that same kind of access, however. Obviously, part of that is my own pride. We’ll deal with that issue soon enough. I have some broken, malformed areas deep down inside of me that I’d just as soon only allow God to see—at least until I receive a little healing. Make sense? Someone might reason that any semblance of hiding is unhealthy, but I’m not so sure about that. Our first reaction when we have a wound is to cover it with our hand. It is only when someone we trust comes to us with a bandage that we’re willing to take our hand away and let that person see it. And even then, the first step toward healing is to clean and dress the wound.

  I have come to a place where I’m willin
g to be transparent with my insecurity, but I find great relief that human eyes have to see it through the filter—the clothing—of my God-given strength and dignity. I don’t have to stand before you or anybody else in total emotional nakedness. I have a scriptural covering that gives me the courage to expose my most personal self. That’s the only thing that makes the disclosure this book requires bearable for me. When you and I are triggered to expose the most vulnerable, broken parts of ourselves through a rush of insecurity, we can train ourselves to immediately recite this truth to our souls: “It’s okay. I’m completely clothed.” And oddly, that very thought all by itself begins the healing. We are not nearly as likely to react with the same level of insecurity when we remember how well covered we are by God. I so hope that makes sense to you, because it resonates so strongly with me that I could cry.

  . . . With Strength . . .

  Proverbs 31:25 tells us this “woman of valor” is clothed by two specific articles that become the perfect pair. The first is strength, and it has a tremendous bearing on our journey. Simply put, nothing makes a woman feel weaker than insecurity. When a wave of it hits us, don’t we despise ourselves for not being able to handle the trigger better? Even if we didn’t give our weakness away to the person nearest us, aren’t we still painfully aware that insecurity got to us—again? Doesn’t it have the most uncanny way of making us feel like wimps? Surely somebody else has said to herself the same thing I have: I know better than this. I know this situation doesn’t have the power to define or diminish me. Why on earth do I let it? Because it makes me feel weak. And a little defenseless. And blast it, I’m not.

  What would happen if, in the moment you feel hit by that miserable wave, you remind yourself emphatically that you are a God-clothed woman of valor and you have the privilege to wear divine strength like a garment? Let’s not kid ourselves here. You and I are women. Nobody knows better than we do that what we wear dramatically influences how we feel. When Scripture tells us to “put off your old self . . . and to put on the new self,” it’s inviting us to think in terms of taking off and putting on clothing (Ephesians 4:22, 24). We are all probably familiar with the process of standing in front of the closet, mulling over what to wear, and then changing two or three times before we head to work or church. Romans 13:14 tells us what frock we need to choose if we want to be successful: “Clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ.” There is nothing weak about Him. Pure, unadulterated power resting on our very shoulders.