So Long Insecurity Read online

  The wounded in this war are not always the ones we would expect. In my twenty-five years of conferences and retreats, no group has ever fostered more anguish in my heart than professional athletes’ wives. Most of those I spoke to personally had souls that were in shreds. Those who didn’t poured their lives compassionately into those who did. They knew the pain of insecurity. The trap of it. Some of them knew how to escape from the game of it—and I’m not talking about the comparative child’s play on the field. Each time I’ve had the opportunity to serve a group of professional athletes’ wives, they were the most gorgeous women I’d ever encountered. The kind who make you gawk. I might have envied how some of them looked, but I never once envied what they faced.

  Don’t miss one of the chief purposes of this chapter: Be careful who you covet. Be careful how you judge. Be slow to size somebody up and think you know all about her type. She’s not so different from you. Nobody’s unbreakable here on this planet. Only the dead don’t bleed when they’re cut. We all fear that we aren’t who we are pretending to be. The more careful we are about what we’re projecting, the more driven we tend to be by fear.

  Maybe you’re onto the fact that many of the women I’ve pinpointed with chronic insecurity are physically attractive. I won’t keep hammering the point, but I want to establish early on that if you’re thinking really attractive women don’t have this issue, you are out of your darling little mind. If you happen to be thinking that average looks are the problem, they’re not. An injured soul is the problem. Improving her appearance can make a woman feel better about herself and arguably improve some quality of life, but it still won’t heal her insecurity. The more she thinks it will, the more she’s setting herself up for another blow. Each woman has within her capabilities various ways of looking her best. Not somebody else’s best, mind you, but her own. If our pursuit has moved from reasonable attention to a veritable obsession, however, we’d better search our souls for what’s driving us.

  Do you ever stop in your tracks and ask yourself out loud, “What am I doing?” Boy, I do. It’s a terrifically important question, but it needs a few others to follow it up, like, “Why am I doing what I am doing? What am I hoping to achieve?”

  Thankfully, we don’t always get a scathing result when we perform a soul search. Sometimes we might actually discover that our motives are not that off base. The more afraid we are to ask ourselves hard questions, however, the more we probably need to. Sometimes we may have a pretty acceptable motive, but the outcome is something altogether different from what we expected, and we can’t handle it. Case in point: a woman I know got liposuction last year and decided recently that she looked good enough to get a better man, so she dumped her husband. They have children, for crying out loud. Something’s whacked somewhere. Needless to say, not everybody who gets liposuction leaves her spouse. Something much deeper than the desire for smooth thighs drives an outcome like that.

  There’s a woman in my neighborhood who has been the envy of other women around here for years. Her face is nearly flawless. Worse yet, so is her body. Amazingly, she has kept it up for what seems like forever. Lord have mercy, does this woman ever have an off day? I’ve stayed physically active, but trust me when I tell you this: we are not running bases in the same ballpark. I can remember many times power walking through the neighborhood when she’d nearly blow me off the sidewalk, sprinting like a twenty-year-old in her black and red spandex. I always thought how terrific she looked and marveled that she was only a few years younger than I am. Recently I was on my millionth walk through this subdivision where we’ve lived for twenty-five years when she whizzed past me again. This time on a bike. And in spandex. And looking fantastic. But suddenly I felt sorry for her. I thought, Shoot fire, that must be exhausting to keep up. And I felt a little sorry for myself, too. Sure, I want to keep my own stuff up as long as I can, but what about when I can’t? Is that okay?

  I hear that voice deep within me saying, Don’t ask if that’s okay with them. Here’s the real question: is that okay with you? You and I are going to have to come to a place where we stop handing people the kind of power only God should wield over us. Change will not come easy. Old habits die hard. But we can make the radical decision to rewire our security systems.

  Before we do so, we’ll need to widen the scope on those false assumptions. Not only do we misunderstand attractive women to have fewer insecurities than others do, we also misunderstand married women to have fewer insecurities than single women do. I won’t argue that a good man and a good marriage can’t vastly enhance a woman’s sense of well-being, but you can mark my word on something: if a woman is married to a man who somehow feeds her sense of inadequacy, she has double the issues of her single friend. A bad marriage can make you feel worlds more insecure than singleness. The answer for the married woman is not to dump her husband, nor is it for a single woman to marry someone just for emotional coverage. The answer is to deal with the insecurity, believing that everything God says about us is true.

  You see, the trap is not only in placing our security in something that gives a false positive. It’s also in fighting like a mad dog to keep it there. Whether our false positive is appearance, marriage, moneymaking, position, education, or notoriety, it only works enough to keep us seduced and distracted, and we never get to the real issues. Even if we could make everybody believe we were “every woman,” we ourselves would know better. Self-doubt would devour us. In one way or another and sooner or later, we’ll give ourselves away. Security in any earthly thing simply cannot be sustained.

  Right now I’m completely eaten up with this subject. Every woman I encounter for any amount of time inevitably becomes a book in my library of research for this message. If she’ll open up, that is. A few days ago I met a really good friend at our neighborhood mall. She’s years younger than I am, but we have similar tastes in coffee and in clothes, so we have a blast together. She said, “Hey, somebody at your office told me you were writing a book on insecurity.” This friend is refreshingly honest about her weaknesses and could have well gotten away with hiding them behind an exquisitely put-together exterior, but she plowed right ahead: “Girl, you know good and well that’s my big issue! I want the first copy!” See what I mean? Refreshingly bull-free. She continued on. “You know, Beth, people who don’t know you really well would never be able to imagine that you struggle with insecurity.” Then she made a comment that really got my mind rolling. “After all, you’re so tiny.”

  That’s when it hit me. Most of us have what I’ll call a prominent false positive: one thing that we think would make us more secure in all things. You want to know how you can pinpoint your own prominent false positive? The thing you tend to associate most with security? Think of a person you believe to be secure and determine what earthly thing he or she has that you don’t feel like you possess, at least in matching measure. That’s liable to be your prominent false positive: the one thing that would make you more secure in all things. Needless to say, we would all like any number of things to give us the security we’re after, but we each have a tendency to prioritize one above the rest. Our attachment to it is not a cerebral thing. Few of us would reason that the weight we’re giving to the object or circumstance makes sense intellectually. It’s an emotional thing. Often we’re not even aware of it, but we demonstrate it by the inordinate power we assign to it.

  My friend conveyed (openly, because that’s her style) that much of her insecurity is tied up with her weight. That’s why she would be inclined to think that I would be more secure. Her prominent false positive might be thinness. Her exact struggle is not so much mine. And trust me when I tell you, mine is not so much hers. Lord have mercy, does she ever have some things I don’t have! Mind you, my friend has a fabulous shape most women would envy, but she says she has some pounds that drive her crazy. Two other women could have taken the conversation a totally different direction. Picture a different writer and a different friend:

  “You know,
_______________________, people who don’t know you really well would never be able to imagine that you struggle with insecurity. After all . . .

  . . . you’re married to the most fabulous man in the world.” Prominent false positive: A great man would make me secure.

  . . . look at this house! Girl, you never have to worry about money.” Prominent false positive: Financial success would make me secure.

  . . . you’ve got the best personality of anybody I know. Everybody likes you.” Prominent false positive: Popularity would make me secure.

  . . . you’re young and in the prime of your life!” Prominent false positive: Recapturing youthfulness would make me secure.

  . . . you’re gorgeous! I’d give anything to see that in the mirror!” Prominent false positive: Beauty would make me secure.

  . . . you run this whole corporation. Look how people jump through hoops for you!” Prominent false positive: Power would make me secure.

  . . . everybody looks up to you!” Prominent false positive: Prestige would make me secure.

  . . . look at all those degrees on your wall. Are you kidding me? You’re the smartest person I know!” Prominent false positive: Credentials would make me secure.

  . . . you’ve got tenure! What are you worried about?” Prominent false positive: Job certainty would make me secure.

  I’m not naive enough to think that any one of those things couldn’t add a layer of security to a sliver of our lives. At least temporarily. I’m saying none of them, nor all of them in sum total, would fix our core issue. We’d still slosh around in self-doubt or worry over whether or not we’ll have tomorrow what we have today. Most of us would wrestle with how much we don’t deserve what we have, and that alone can make us feel insecure. Acquiring your prominent false positive is like putting a finger in the crack of a bulging dam. You can try to stop up a leak in one place, but the pressure’s going to build up in another, and one day that levee’s going to burst. Having a dab of security here and there is a long way from being a secure person, and that’s what you and I are after.

  I know some folks who think publishing a book would totally cut it for them. No, it won’t. Neither will a nose job. (Obviously, I can’t tell you that from experience.) Neither will money. Neither will breast implants. Neither will a big house. Or a man who calls you six times a day. Or great hair, although I’m often happily seduced by the hope that it will. Neither will a big office in a financially solid corporation . . . if you can still find such a thing. Not even losing that proverbial ten pounds will fix what insecurity has broken. Any of those things might soothe the savage beast for a while, but it will inevitably wake back up, and the hope deferred will make it angrier than ever. No one solitary thing on this entire planet has the power to secure everything else. Not even a long-awaited child, as dear as he or she would be. I write those words with compassion and tenderness. There are countless amazing things children bring into a life. Just don’t put security in that Pack ’n Play. Children will bring out every insecurity you’ve got. Count on it.

  I guess you know I’m not casting stones. You’re safe with me even if your false positive is the furthest thing from mine. After all, at least you don’t have such a chronic case of insecurity that you are willing to become a public poster child. Frankly, I don’t care who knows I struggle. What kind of nut would think I don’t? I’m on my way to freedom and bound and determined, God willing, to take some women with me. The journeys that brought the two of us to this juncture may be as different as day and night, but the one that will take us to the security that sticks around longer than a circumstance is very much the same.

  Not long ago I was having one of those days all women have—at least occasionally—feeling down and probably hormonal. You know the kind: those days when we look in the refrigerator and wonder when somebody’s going to go to the grocery store, and in the closet and wonder why in heaven’s name we bought all that hideous stuff. Those days when we look in the mirror and mumble, “Sick.” Or if we’re more spiritual, “Bless your heart.” Those days we are too down on ourselves to lift ourselves up, so we usually go looking for someone else to do it. It should have been God, but for me that day it was Keith.

  If I don’t feel like I look good, somehow I rationalize that since God looks on the heart, He’s not the threat, so I don’t need to go to Him. When on this earth will I learn to go to Him about every single thing? Instead, I rationalize that Keith could be the threat. He may not love me as much if he doesn’t think I look good. You know the pathetic drill. I wouldn’t have been caught dead asking him the real question: “Am I still beautiful to you?” It would be too humiliating. Leave me too wide open. As I tell on myself, humor me if I choose not to imply that I’m more pathetic than I am. I’ll save that for better opportunities. I’m being as honest as I know how when I tell you that, while I hope other women think I’m cute—and if not in looks, at least in personality—I don’t have a deep emotional need for them to think beyond that. My primary “looks” issue is tangled up with my husband. He’s the person whose attraction I crave and to whose occasional bouts of disinterest I cave. He’s the one holding the arrow that can hit this particular Achilles’ heel.

  So instead of asking Keith the question on my mind, I simply tried to see if I could get him to volunteer the information. Otherwise it doesn’t count. Please somebody fess up to doing this too. Don’t leave me hanging here. I put on something I thought he would really like: the jeans and sweater kind of thing, because Keith doesn’t like a skanky look on his woman. I then proceeded to walk between him and that interminable fishing show no less than twenty times. Nothing. Not a word. Well, maybe a “Hey there, sweetie,” but I wasn’t fishing for “Hey there, sweetie.” I was fishing for a mere “Man, I must be the luckiest guy on earth.” Nothing. Two hours later, still nothing. Keith can be affirming, so it wasn’t a far-fetched idea. It just didn’t work this time.

  I eventually plopped down at the table on my back porch and heard a voice from my own handicapped soul mimicking Keith’s: No, the simple fact is, you’re not still beautiful to me. Not surprising coming from the voice of my soul; self-condemnation is the strong suit of people with my kind of background. But that’s when the freaky part happened. A moment later I heard a deeper voice—not out loud, of course, but from the innermost place within me—say, Yes. Yes, indeed you are. The thought came out of left field. In fact, it shocked me. Listen, I’m not given to those kinds of thoughts when I’m in that kind of emotional funk. I knew that voice was not mine. It was Christ’s. I also knew that it had absolutely nothing to do with my looks and everything to do with the kind of beauty that really is sustainable—even improvable—no matter what happens to us, who rejects us, how handicapped we are, or how old we get.

  The thought had occurred to me before but never in this context: sitting at that porch table, I realized with fresh astonishment that, although we may have something unhealthy deep inside of us, those in whom Christ dwells also have something deeper. Something whole. Something so infinitely healthy that, if it would but invade the rest of us, we would be healed.

  I don’t know. Maybe this isn’t a big revelation to you, but I am so thankful that at no time since I received Christ as Savior have I ever been a total wreck. Partial? Lord, have mercy, yes. Humiliatingly so. But total? Not on your ever-loving life. And if He resides in you, neither have you (Romans 8:9). Jesus is not unhealthy. Not codependent with us. His strength is made perfect in our weakness. This thought never grows old to me: He has no dark side. In Him is no darkness at all.

  That, beloved, is our challenge. To let the healthy, utterly whole, and completely secure part of us increasingly overtake our earthen vessels until it drives our every emotion, reaction, and relationship. When we allow God’s truth to eclipse every false positive and let our eyes spring open to the treasure we have, there in His glorious reflection we’ll also see the treasure we are. And the beauty of the Lord our God will be upon us (Psalm 90:17, NKJV).
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  Chapter 4

  Good Company

  If you’re coming to the same conclusion I did—realizing you have a sizable issue with insecurity—take heart! We are in fine company. I started flipping through Scripture looking for telltale signs of insecurity, and I had a veritable field day. In fact, with your indulgence, I’d like to select winners in both the male and female categories for the most insecure people in Scripture. I’ll never make it past the Old Testament without doling awards. There are too many winners to resist.

  I would start with Eve as our first runner-up, because I feel sure that all our female troubles began with her. But since the only real hint of insecurity I can find is her affinity for fig leaves, I’ll leave her alone. Insecurity often displays itself in a woman’s wardrobe, but who can blame Eve for grabbing the closest thing on a hanger? There wasn’t a darn thing in her closet. Not many women are secure enough to walk around for long without some kind of leaf. I have a wraparound monogrammed towel that I wear when I blow-dry my big hair. Keith calls it a red potato sack because it doesn’t have any real shape, but actually it’s just a huge wraparound, terry cloth leaf, and I, for one, am thankful for it. Enough about Eve. Or was it me? Let’s move on to better candidates like Sarai and Hagar.