Worthy or Unworthy

We grow as little children hearing adults around us saying things about us. “Look at her isn’t she cute? Isn’t she smart? Isn’t he so brave?” Or we hear them compare us to our siblings. “She loves school but her brother can’t stand it. She’s so outgoing but her sister is just so shy.” And some of those children grow up hearing things like “What’s wrong with you? Are you stupid? Why did you go and do something so dumb?” The last scenerio is when children grow up hearing nothing at all. This is when the child fills in the blanks for them, usually in the form of negative self talk.

All of this is what’s called shame. It’s a portion of what shame is. And it happened to me. For me, it was no words at all. There was no put downs, no comparisons, and there was no praise or words of endearment of any kind. So I filled in the blanks. When I failed at anything, I had some pretty harsh words to tell myself. And it went on for 43 years. Until recently, when I learned what it was and why it was there and how UNHEALTHY it is for a person.

The Lord has set me free from it! I’m so grateful for that. I see now that I always felt unworthy of nice things, unworthy of love, unworthy of normalcy, unworthy of everything. That unworthiness led me to early alcohol and drug abuse. Even when those things were removed from my life, the unworthiness was still there because I was still filling in those blanks. That is until the day I decided to let God work in me and fill in those blanks for me. He has shown me I’m loved, liked, cared for, important and the list now goes on…

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