Learning that the voice in my head should sound a little more like the heart of my Father.
A few days ago, a coworker said something to me that I haven't been able to stop thinking about.
It wasn't some incredibly deep conversation. It wasn't a moment where I was pouring my heart out or explaining all the things I've been carrying.
It was just a simple observation.
He overheard me telling a story about something I did and I had called myself an idiot.
He said:
“You have to stop speaking so negatively about yourself. You wouldn't let anyone else speak that way, so why do you?”
Ooof.
I don't think he realizes how deeply those words hit me.
Because he was right.
And the more I've thought about it, the more I've realized that his question goes so much deeper than the way I speak about myself.
It made me think about the way God speaks about me.
And how different those two voices have become.
Because somewhere along the way, I became comfortable speaking to myself in ways that God never would.
I call myself stupid when I make a mistake.
I call myself a failure when I fall short.
I convince myself that I'm too emotional, too sensitive, too much.
I replay conversations in my head, wondering if I sounded ridiculous. I question whether people actually enjoy being around me. I apologize for things that don't require an apology.
And when I have a difficult day, I don't just acknowledge that it was difficult.
I make it mean something about who I am.
That I'm not doing enough.
That I'm not good enough.
That maybe everyone who ever made me feel inadequate was right.
And the saddest part is that I've become so accustomed to this internal dialogue that I hardly even recognize how cruel it is.
I've spent years trying to heal from the words other people spoke over me, only to realize I've been repeating those same words to myself.
I've learned to recognize when someone else is being unkind to me.
I've learned that love shouldn't make me feel small.
I've learned that I don't have to accept someone's criticism as the truth about who I am.
But apparently, I haven't quite learned how to stop being the person who criticizes me the most.
And that realization hurts.
Because I would never allow someone to speak to my children the way I sometimes speak to myself.
I would never look at my daughter after she made a mistake and tell her she was a failure.
I would never tell my sons that their emotions make them difficult to love.
I would never look at someone I care about, someone who is exhausted and trying their absolute best, and tell them that their best simply isn't good enough.
I would extend grace.
I would remind them that they're human.
I would tell them that making a mistake doesn't make them a mistake.
I would speak to them with patience and gentleness and love.
So why do I believe I am somehow the exception?
And more importantly, why have I convinced myself that God looks at me with the same disappointment I sometimes look at myself with?
Because He doesn't.
And I think that's the part that has been sitting heaviest on my heart.
God knows me more intimately than anyone ever could.
He knows every insecurity I carry.
Every mistake I've made.
Every moment I've lost my patience.
Every time I've fallen short of the woman, mother, friend, or follower of Christ I desperately want to be.
He knows the parts of me I try to hide.
The thoughts I don't say out loud.
The things I am ashamed of.
And yet, when I open Scripture, I don't find a Father who defines His children by their worst moments.
I find a Father who is merciful.
A Father who is patient.
A Father who corrects because He loves, not because He wants to humiliate.
A Father who calls His children beloved.
And somehow, I have allowed the voice in my head to become harsher than the voice of the God who created me.
God would never look at me and say, "You're such a failure. You'll never get it right. You're too much. You're impossible to love."
Those are not the words of my Father.
Those are words I've learned through hurt, through criticism, through years of questioning my own worth.
And maybe I've heard them so many times that they started to feel like truth.
But familiarity doesn't make something true.
Just because I've thought something about myself a thousand times doesn't mean God has ever agreed with it.
I keep coming back to Romans 8:1:
"There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus."
No condemnation.
Not less condemnation.
Not condemnation only on the days when I get everything wrong.
None.
And yet, I have spent so much of my life condemning myself.
I have confused conviction with shame.
I have confused humility with thinking poorly of myself.
I have confused holding myself accountable with believing I deserve to be punished for every imperfection.
But those things are not the same.
God can convict me without crushing me.
He can show me where I need to grow without telling me that I am worthless.
He can call me to repentance without making me question whether I am loved.
The Lord's correction leads me closer to Him. My self-condemnation only makes me want to hide.
And I think that's an important distinction.
Because I don't want to stop growing.
I don't want to become someone who refuses to acknowledge her shortcomings.
I know I have things to work on.
I know there are moments when I could be more patient, more disciplined, more thoughtful, more gracious.
But I am beginning to understand that I don't have to hate myself into becoming a better person.
I don't have to tear myself apart to prove that I'm humble.
I don't have to constantly remind myself of my failures to demonstrate that I recognize them.
And I certainly don't have to speak about someone God created and loves as though she is a burden.
Because that's what I'm doing, isn't it?
When I speak so cruelly about myself, I'm speaking that way about someone God loves.
Someone He created intentionally.
Someone He sees fully.
Someone Christ died for.
Someone He has not given up on.
And I wonder how much of my healing has been focused on learning to reject the cruel things other people have said about me, while never considering that I also need to reject the cruel things I say about myself.
I have spent so much time learning to extend grace to people who have hurt me.
Learning to forgive.
Learning to love deeply despite what I've experienced.
Learning to see people through the lens of Christ's compassion.
But I rarely stop to consider that His compassion extends to me, too.
That I am not somehow excluded from the grace I so freely offer everyone else.
That the command to love my neighbor as myself assumes something about how I should be treating myself in the first place.
And that maybe learning to see myself the way God sees me is not prideful.
Maybe it's obedience.
Maybe agreeing with what God says about me is actually a form of humility.
Because humility isn't insisting that I'm worthless when God has already called me His.
It's recognizing that my worth was never something I had to manufacture in the first place.
It's recognizing that I am imperfect and still deeply loved.
That I am growing and still accepted.
That I can have a hard day without being a bad mother.
That I can make a mistake without being a failure.
That I can be emotional without being too much.
That I can be a work in progress without being a disappointment.
And I want to learn to believe those things.
Not just for myself, but for my children.
Because I don't want my daughter growing up hearing her mother constantly apologize for who she is.
I don't want my sons believing that being hard on yourself is the same thing as being a good person.
I want them to know what grace looks like.
Not just in the way I treat them.
But in the way I treat myself.
I want them to see a mother who can admit when she's wrong without tearing herself down.
A mother who can laugh at her mistakes without making herself the joke.
A mother who knows she needs Jesus, not because she is worthless, but because she is human.
And a mother who believes that the love of God applies to her just as much as it applies to everyone else.
I don't think my coworker had any idea that one simple comment would lead me here.
I don't think he knew that his words would challenge years of deeply ingrained beliefs.
But they did.
And now, every time I catch myself saying something unkind about myself, I hear his statement again.
"You have to stop speaking so negatively about yourself…"
And lately, I've found myself asking this question.
Would my Father in Heaven speak to me this way?
Would He call me stupid for forgetting something?
Would He tell me I was unlovable because I had an emotional moment?
Would He tell me that all my efforts were meaningless because I didn't get everything right?
Would He reduce the entirety of who I am to the worst thing I've done that day?
No.
He would tell me the truth.
He would lovingly correct what needs correcting.
He would remind me of my need for Him.
But He would not define me by the shame I've spent so many years carrying.
And maybe that's where I need to begin.
By learning to recognize the difference between the voice of condemnation and the voice of my Father.
By asking God to help me unlearn the things I've believed about myself that He never said.
By remembering that I cannot claim to believe His Word while continually agreeing with every cruel thought that contradicts it.
And by extending to myself the same grace I believe so fiercely that everyone else deserves.
Because the truth is, I am not always going to get it right.
I am going to make mistakes.
I am going to have days when I'm impatient and overwhelmed and emotional.
I am going to fall short.
But none of those things change whose I am.
And perhaps the most beautiful part of all of this is realizing that God has never needed me to become someone worth loving.
He loved me first.
Before I got it right.
Before I learned how to heal.
Before I became the woman I'm trying so desperately to be.
And He loves me right here, in the middle of becoming.
So maybe the next chapter of my healing isn't about proving to myself that I am enough.
Maybe it's about finally believing that the God who knows me completely is not looking at me with the contempt I've learned to look at myself with.
Maybe it's about learning to speak to myself like someone who belongs to Him.
Because I do.
And if my Father speaks about me with love, patience, mercy, and grace,
who am I to keep speaking about His daughter with cruelty?
Still learning. Still healing. Still growing.
And still so deeply loved by God.