Flawed

But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.
- 2 Corinthians 12:8-10

I am aware of a wide variety of personal flaws in my life, yet many of them are interconnected and have the same source. I certainly am flawed in other ways that are unrelated, some of which have been described in a previous entry.

I have found that the source for many of the issues I struggle with is this: and definite lack of self-confidence. It seems like such a minor thing, and yet it infiltrates many fragments of my life. I believe the issue to be strictly self-confidence and not self-esteem, for I do not question my worth, for I know I have great value in God's eyes. No, I am instead constantly questioning what I am capable of. I find myself often doubting my competence and intelligence, leading me to fail at things I may otherwise succeed at.

I believe the root of this issue to be my grade school years. When I was younger, specifically in my fourth to eighth grade years, I was picked on profusely at school. It was everyday, and it was brutal. I remember coming home crying on occassions, telling my parents that I never wanted to go back to school again. I was told by many people to simply ignore it, and the bullies would stop. I tried, yet the bullying never ceased. Everything I did was mocked. I began to believe that I couldn't do anything right. I doubted my every move. This had several repurcussions that I am still struggling with today.

It made me hide in my comfort zone. I began to blend into the background, for only there did I feel safe. In your comfort zone, you do not risk failure, and you do not expose your flaws. As an adult, I have begun to realize how much I hate allowing my weaknesses to show. I do not like appearing vulnerable. When my weaknesses are exposed, I open myself up to ridicule. I still have issues staying in my comfort zone today, for it is there I feel safe. For instance, I get very nervous talking in front of people. If I know I am going to be up in front of a group, I allow myself to become quite nervous about it for some time before it, dreading it, for I do not want to get up there and fail. When I do stumble on my words or appear noticeably nervous, it is due to the fear I have built up inside myself. I have built up that fear due to doubting my own abilities. I doubt my own abilities because I have failed before, and I do not want to appear weak. I hide in my comfort zone and often do not step out from it, for I do not have confidence in myself to succeed outside of that comfort zone.

The other major repurcussion is that it made me build up emotional walls. I put myself in an emotional shell to protect myself. I stopped caring what people said about me. I made my emotions inpenetrable. I would no longer let myself be hurt by the words of bullies. On one hand, this allowed me to repel insults. I could (and still often do) make fun of myself. This has led to my overuse of sarcasm. That being said, this also led me to put other people at a distance. If they're not close to me, they can't hurt me. I put my emotions in a safe and did not allow anyone access to it. This means that I have not allowed myself to be as good or as close a friend as I should have been with some people. I have often not been as emotionally available to friends when they needed it. There have been stretches of years where I have not cried. (I mean really crying, not just getting "teary-eyed.") Even now, I believe I have not cried in three or four years.

It also caused me to become what some people may describe as a "pushover." I often do not interject my opinion into things and am rarely assertive, and I usually let other people have their way. I do not enjoy debates or heated discussions where other people have different opinions than I do. I do not like people thinking less of me because of my opinion, so I often keep it to myself.

I rather enjoy writing and believe I may have some ability in it, yet there have been times in the past when I have gone stretches without writing, because I doubted my ability in it. I doubted whether anything would ever come of it. I doubted if I had the talent to make it worthwhile. I had no confidence in myself, and why would I work so much on something, when I had no confidence in its ability to succeed?

I do not want to be seen as a failure. I do not want to appear incompetent. So I do not allow myself certain opportunities, because I do not want to allow myself to fail, and I do not want to have people look down at me because of it. I stay in my comfot zone and do not let people too close, for in my comfort zone, I will not fail, and if I keep myself in an emotional shell, I will not let people close enough to see my weaknesses. I try to remove all possible vulnerabilites from my life, for I do not want them to be exploited. I do not want to be looked upon as weak, or as a failure.

At the end, there is a reason I am sharing this. God has granted me the opportunities and the strength to step out of my comfort zone more in the past couple years. I have done things that, only a few years ago, I would never have done. I have much more room for improvement, yet I believe that God will continue to work in me, and that plan will be fully carried out in my life.

We all have our own weaknesses and faults. We all have limitations that are holding us back in some way. Perhaps only we realize them, or perhaps everyone but us realizes them. The truth is that God knows and understands our weaknesses, and yet loves us and uses us anyway. He has great plans for each of us, and those plans will succeed despite our weaknesses. We must not allow our own fear and our own faults to limit what God can do in our lives. It's not really about the weaknesses themselves, it's about admitting that we are weak, and that only by placing our full trust in God can we truly become the people He made us to be.