I’m going to be honest, in the last couple of weeks, I have been feeling like my confidence was knocked out of me. I know that I present on social media, at work, and with friends as a confident person which I mostly am but LET ME TELL YOU the last couple of weeks have been hardt.
I wanted to dig deep to uncover the reason I was feeling insecure, jealous, and experiencing such deep bouts of FOMO and almost resentment towards my friends, so I went on a fact-finding mission. I realized that I was experiencing residual hurt from the many false starts and L’s (losses) in the love department, and I felt rejected or ignored by people that I liked. Me feeling rejected/ignored by these supposed “love interests” made me reminisce about all the failed attempts, the relationships that were “not quite there” and unfulfilled promises of romantic love in the last 2 years. This took me to a dark place of hopelessness which then turned into self-criticism. After all the common denominator in all these failed “relationships/situationships” was me…..it was at this point that the devil saw an opportunity to knock me down even more. He planted a seed in my mind that said I was just simply no good at dating, and that although I had worked hard on myself mentally, emotionally, and spiritually all of last year it was all B.S because it still didn’t translate into a healthy romantic relationship. He really had me believing that I needed to do more, be more, say more, and worst of all, he convinced me that the reason no man was checking for me is because I’m overweight. ALLLLL the work I had done on my body image and finally feeling comfortable in my own skin all came crashing down with that one thought. Knowing in my heart of hearts that my body could not sustain another fad diet and my hand couldn’t take another “before” picture that never led to an “after” result and that my spirit could not survive another trip down the tumultuous road that is the relationship I have with emotional/stress eating, I basically gave up.
You should have heard me, at every chance I got I complained about everything because I felt extremely insecure. I was envious of friends on social media getting engaged, getting married, and having children, I was jealous of friends having fun without me, I was judgmental about myself and my thoughts…….how in the world did I become “this girl”?! the girl that doesn’t seem to be genuinely happy for her friends? Couldn’t find the silver lining of the season? The girl that was saying negative things to herself with no self-compassion?......I sat in that denial for about a week, judging the fact that I had all these negative feelings without asking where they came from or trying to fix them. My roommate extraordinaire /friend/sister asked me to take those feelings to God but I really didn’t know how to do it….I just kept hearing God say “be still” and I just felt like God I’m soooo loooooow right now, I need a word, I need an action, I need a sign but yet I kept hearing “be still”. In the most Ibiyemi fashion, when I heard God say “be still”, I said ok God ill be still BUT like……. how can I be still in the most efficient way? Like what books do I need to be reading? what podcasts should be on rotation? how many pages do you want me to journal? I was really trying to “hack” stillness but yet all I got was “be still”. So I decided to surrender my control to God…..I even wrote about in the last blog post Talking to Jesus, what’s good? p1 but still I was feeling helpless.
You know the world is funny……when you are lacking confidence, the world tells you to go inward, to look at your accomplishments, to look at your intellect, to accept your body and its imperfections and ultimately accept yourself…..it says, “just say the words and manifest a more confident person and you will feel better” BUT the truth is, a lack of confidence is actually a trust issue. Yes, I said it, it’s a trust issue that stems from you making a mistake or you getting rejected for something you thought you were qualified for. It makes you doubt your abilities and the longer it festers, it turns to jealousy, envy, bitterness, and ultimately deep insecurity. So, with that definition, I can understand when the world says rebuild your confidence by basically building trust within yourself however that has not been my experience. As a Christian woman, I grew up learning the scriptures and memorizing them but for whatever reason, I forgot about a very important one……Proverbs 3:5-6 “Trust in the Lord your God with all your heart, lean not on your own understanding, in all your ways acknowledge him and he will direct your path”. Well, I was not trusting God, I damn sure was leaning on my human understanding on how to build confidence. I didn’t acknowledge Him in all my ways because I felt ashamed BUT yet he was still trying to direct me. It wasn’t until I went to my church’s mid-week service Thursday Night Live that I got some freedom. Our pastor made us say the words “faith is confidence” like 6 or 7 times and then it clicked…..belief builds trust, trust builds hope, and hope builds confidence…..MORE importantly, he talked about how we can be confident in God and his ability to come through even when we can’t see it. I then remembered the teaching from a past sermon that said we can essentially borrow faith from our community and family until our faith was built up and that even if we had faith the size of a mustard seed, God can use it…. I left in tears knowing that God had done a thing in my heart.
I say all of this to say that it’s a FREAKING journey and that insecurity can hit anyone at any time BUT it’s important to turn back to the source, to take your insecurities to him, and then to exchange them for HIS truth. I pray that anyone reading this in a weird season of their life will get a fresh revelation from God and that he will show up for you like never. In the meantime, while you wait, you can borrow some of my faith if you need it.
Woooooooosh…..I’m tired BUT God is good.
Till next time,
Ibiyemi