My 5 year old Ella exudes confidence. She is sure that everyone she meets wants to be her friend and is hanging on her every word. There have been just a handful of times that I can think of where her confidence had been shaken. She believes that she is smart, cute and funny. Why, because daily she is reminded of this by her parents, teachers and total strangers.
One of these confidence shaking experiences happened last summer. She was playing with other children at our local YMCA. Ella is very tall for her age and in mixed age groups often ends up playing with kids a couple years older. She also is very energetic and often ends up playing with the rowdiest boy she can find because what he’s doing looks a like a lot more fun than playing with dolls. On this particular day she was playing a game with another little boy who was a couple years older. Ella kept losing this game. Did I mention that she is persistent? Finally the little boy told her, “You’re a loser!”. Ella protested and moved on to something else but when I picked her up after my workout she was obviously deflated.
I gave her my best pep talk on our way home. We talked about how losing a game doesn’t make you a loser. The look on her face said that she wasn’t convinced. We had some lunch, she had her nap and woke up her old self. The next morning she was especially anxious to go to the Y. I just thought she had some extra energy to burn but really she had a score to settle. As I was getting her twin brothers out of their car seats in the Child Watch area I see Ella pulling something out of her backpack and marching her way over to the little boy from the previous day. What she had was her dance medal from her Spring recital earlier in the year. She was swinging that red, white and blue ribbon in this little boys face saying, “You see this? I am a winner! Winners get medals!”. I think she scared that child. I couldn’t hear what he said but when she was done talking she put the medal around her neck and they went back to playing (now that she had cleared that up for him).
I had not thought about this in a while and last week my pastor taught on insecurity and this memory came to the forefront of my mind. I have a lesson to learn from my little Ella. When people, my past failures, or those voices in my head make me feel insecure I should do just what Ella did. I need to go to the place where there is proof of my worth and abilities. What does the Word of God have to say about me and my situation? Then I can take the Word and silence those taunting voices (figuratively, I am not suggesting waving your Bible in someone’s face)! God did not spare his own Son to save…me! I have infinite value! Romans 8 says it best,
“31 What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? 32 He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? 33 Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. 34 Who then is the one who condemns? No one. Christ Jesus who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. 35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? 36 As it is written: “For your sake we face death all day long;
we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.”[j] 37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons,[k] neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, 39 neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. “