Never Good Enough...

I can still see, hear and feel it as if it was yesterday. Mommy had gone into the basement with her friend who had been watching me (I was three at the time). I wanted to go into the basement too after the lady's son, who was my age, followed them. But my Mom tells me "Oh, Eliana can you watch the baby and make sure she doesn't get hurt?" I was disappointed, I wanted to go into the basement. I watch as the baby comes into the kitchen and starts playing under the table, she toddles over to me. I'm standing at the top of the stairs to the basement watching, longing, hoping that they would come back so I could go down too. Then I think to myself that if I carefully helped the baby down the steps I would be keeping her safe and get what I wanted.

I carefully take her hand and go down a couple steps in front of her, turn around and try to coax her down. She gets down the first step and I gently pull at her hand again, she resists. I pull a little harder and lose my balance. As the baby falls past me I let go to catch myself from falling. Shocked and horrified I will never be able to let go of that sight or sound of her little body hitting every single step - head, feet, head, feet. The smack as she hits the cement floor of the basement. I remember freezing with both of my hands over my mouth, screaming with no sound coming out of my mouth. I remember her laying on the floor crying as everyone down in the basement surrounded her. Everything after that was a blur. I still to this day cannot get myself to ask my parents what happened after even though we've mentioned it here and there. I cling to the fact that she cried that things turned out OK but I don't know and I don't want to know.

This moment in my life kinda became the internal lens through which I saw myself and the world around me. Choices and decisions I made since that point were made to help myself avoid the horror, embarrassment and shame that came from that moment. When I began babysitting I literally shook every time I had to carry a baby down the stairs. I would have these sensations of them falling out of my arms suddenly even though I was doing everything right. When I was at school I had to be perfect because the one time I messed up I got in trouble or someone else got hurt. I wasn't good enough. When other traumas happened and I couldn't protect myself or I said or did something hurtful to someone else, I wasn't good enough. When prom came and no one asked me to go, I wasn't good enough. When I went through college and I struggled to keep up with the demands of that time period I wasn't good enough. When two sets of best friends walked away from me, I wasn't good enough. When the man I fell in love with (knowing he didn't reciprocate) fell in love with someone else with me standing right beside him, I wasn't good enough. When I couldn't get into grad school, I wasn't good enough. When I felt God calling me into a sort of missions field with my job at Medica and He became silent after the abortion calls, I wasn't good enough. When I'm 25 and no man has expressed interest in me, I wasn't good enough (I'm too fat, I'm too afraid, I'm not pretty enough, I'm too emotional, I'm not connected with God enough, I'm not flexible enough, I'm not relationally competent enough, etc.). When I struggle to balance work, life and school, I wasn't good enough. When I struggle to connect with God after months of extreme stress and traumatic experiences, I wasn't good enough. When almost every relationship in my life becomes disconnected from me, I wasn't good enough. When God doesn't allow the desires of my heart to happen as I watch it happening to everyone else, I wasn't good enough.

I have lived my life with this mantra going on inside of me, labeling me as "never good enough." The lies, the deception, the struggles with feeling worthy. It's hard. Really hard.

"Faith is the confidence that what we hope for will actually happen; it gives us assurance about things we cannot see." Hebrews 11: 1

Looking at my life I struggle to believe the truth that God speaks over me - that He has called me worthy, that He loves me unconditionally, that He has good things planned for me. I struggle to hold to faith because it tells me "things we cannot see." I will never be good enough. I will never measure up in this world. God has chosen to make me so different from the rest of the world, so intensely wired to connect deeply and meaningfully with others that I really struggle with relationships. I will never be good enough and that's OK. Because the truth is when we become redeemed through Christ the perfect Lamb of God, the only one without spot or blemish, becomes our identity. 

To those of you reading this who also struggle with feeling not good enough I feel ya! There is something wired into us since the fall of Adam and Eve that we long to be considered good enough. I wonder what peace would come into our lives, what ability to love and know love would come to us if we believed the gift that God gave us. Our old selves look and long and seek, our new selves, being made into the likeness and image of Christ, are satisfied and complete. It's this constant tension within ourselves to be the new man or to be the old self. But I'm tired, I'm drained from all the efforts to measure up by my own works. I'm tired of the depression I fall into with each mistake, the image of the baby falling down the steps going through my mind as I find myself hurting someone I cared about. We are flawed and sinful, and yet God loved us. He chose us. He deemed us worthy. And He just wants us to know His love.