For insecure people

I think the worst thing a person can be is a slave to fear, and to insecurity. I mean seriously, this fear is not even based on anything real. It is all comparisons and standards and shame in your own mind and it is horrible. I am really not one to talk because I have dealt with this my whole life, but when you get to look at it from another persons eyes, when you get even a fragment of what it looks like to God's eyes than you see it for what it truly is: ugly.
I have never been able to understand what God saw in people. I've always questioned Him: why did you keep us? Why didn't you go and start over and make something that could actually succeed? What do you see in us that makes you love us? I have never been able to understand it. But now I am starting the point. If you look at a child, the one's who have never been exposed to the world and it's hardships, the joy and freedom that it has in innocence. The way it throws it's head back and laughs, it has no shame, it has no fear, it only enjoys what is around it. Sometimes I see that in the people around me as well. When a person is hyper and they just laugh and they just be themselves without focusing on themselves, and they just speak and talk and are just happy, it is contagious. It is beautiful. There is something unstoppable and absolutely wonderful to them and you can't help but love them. But then the same person can go from that beautiful thing to a mess in one instant. When we start looking at ourselves and start becoming a slave to fear.

A man is a slave to whatever has mastered them. It is a horrible thing when what masters us becomes ourselves: gratifying our lust, our greed, our fear. But especially fear. Why do we do this to ourselves? Why do we hate what God has made to love? How do we get so caught up in our own mind, our own fears about what others might think of us, our failures or our fear that we might fail, that we are a slave to it? But it is so ugly. When we constantly put ourselves down, we constantly hate ourselves and ignore reason, ignore what other people are saying to us. "You are amazing! You are worth loving! People like you! You don't need to hate yourself! You are so much more than you think you are!" I just want to shout it in people's ears so that they can believe it! Because it is true, but no matter what I say or how I say it, it is not going to make a difference to them. They will not hear it. They are too caught up in the lies that they are crap, when they really are not. If only they could see themselves the way everyone else does, if only they could let go off all their fear and become the person they are in those moments of freedom. Because that is who they are, these beautiful, shining, joyful creatures, laughing and free in the light of the sun. They are untainted and spotless and beautiful, and that is how God sees them.

I think I am finally starting to understand. All those verses about how God loves us, all those verses about how we are spotless and untainted and His beautiful bride, I never got it, but now I do. These people, us, we are that beautiful bride because that is how God sees us, He sees us the way we should be. Just like you can't see yourself the way other people see you, we can't see each other the way God sees us. But to Him He sees us in the moments that we let down all of our guards and just be, and He thinks we are amazing. He loves us, He can't help it. We just make Him laugh, we just make Him so happy.

But then we start hating ourselves, and that shrouds our loveliness with what is ugly. But we are blind and self-consumed. Maybe if we took our eyes off ourselves, we would actually do something cool, and then we wouldn't have to feel this way. And maybe we would actually let God change the way we think.

I mean, it's kind of hard to understand this and honestly some of us don't want to. But we need to because it is important, it will change everything. Christ died so that we could be free from our sin. And when Christ frees us from our sin we are FREE! We don't have it anymore, it is gone, and we can walk way white and perfect. Fear is a sin that Christ has freed us from. Why don't we walk in that? We don't have the fear, it is gone. But we imagine it's there, we imagine it is binding us, and so soon what we imagine turns out to come back and we become bound, and then we'll never be free. We think we will never be free, but honestly, is anything too big for God? Answer me that, is anything bigger than God? Is there anything out of His control that He cannot do? There isn't/ So our fear is gone, we just need to believe that it is. Trust that He has freed us. Because He has. And He sees us differently than we see each other, He sees the beauty in us. So we should live in such a way that we display that.

When I find identity in myself

Sometimes I wish I was better.
Better at everything,
Better at life.
It's like I live for the approval of other people,
the approval of myself.
Like the fickleness of what I see in the mirror is really going to change me.
Like the flickering thoughts around me, their inconsistency is going to tell me who I am.
But then again, I am not so constant myself.
I am like a pinwheel, every little flutter of the wind has the power to move me.
A sandcastle built too close to the shore, the waves lap at my base and it flattens, all the intricacies that made me unique dissolve in to solid mass,
 but it's like I wanted them too, I do not value them as much as I should, but without them I lose much.
I wish I was stronger,
A house built on the rock will not be moved.
A life founded in the Giver of Life will not be shaken.