Words...

Something has been rolling around in my mind for the past month or so.  I finished my first semester with really good grades... but I started the semester with so much anxiety and doubt.  And fear, add in a large portion of fear.  I was anxious that I would fail... or that my grades wouldn't be good enough to get me into clinicals next year.

Everyone around me was encouraging me and telling me I would do great, that they weren't worried because they knew I was smart and would do well in school... but I was not convinced.  I just knew that I was going to fail.  Fast forward to the end of the semester when someone said to me "See? I knew you had this... you had nothing to worry about."

When she said that, I suddenly realized one huge source of my anxiety.  When I was young someone told me repeatedly that I was stupid, that I would "never amount to anything", and that I would always be a failure.  Without really knowing it, I have allowed those words to cast a shadow on pretty much everything I have attempted - or not attempted - throughout my life.

So then I asked myself... why is it so much easier to let negative words affect me than positive ones?  If 20 people are encouraging me and lifting me up... why do I let that one person's words drag me down?  And why is it so hard to erase the tape playing those negative words?  I know that a part of it is that words can take root in childhood... it's easy to leave those tapes playing and not even realize they are anything other than truth.  You can become so accustomed to hearing those ugly words because they've "always been there" that you don't think to question them. 

In this situation I didn't have a conscious memory of those words every time I felt I would fail, and I certainly didn't associate them with my anxiety... but in one moment God showed me they were the source.  I know it's an issue that is common to us all, or at least seems to be.  But why?  Why is it so much easier to let the negative words affect us?  As to the why of it... I can't give my opinions in a concise way, but I want to make a more intentional effort to shut off the negative words and replace them with positive ones.

Lies are like weeds... they have to be uprooted or else they will begin to choke out the truth. They grow and multiply and then suddenly they are all you can see.  But God can replace the lies with truth, no matter how overgrown they may have become. 

God doesn't think I am stupid, worthless, a failure.  He created me... not on a whim but with thought and planning.  I wasn't an accident or a mistake. To Him I am amazing, wonderful, beautiful, capable, intelligent...  He doesn't ever look at me and hang His head in shame or disappointment so any words that make me feel like a failure or a disappointment are a direct contradiction to what HE says about me... and it's what He says that matters.