Imagine for a moment ... the year is 2011. Blogs are basic, but taking off. Instagram is a year old and there are no "influencers".
For a beginning blogger ... I actually had quite the following. I posted multiple times per week, collaborated with multiple bloggers, and was making connections right and left. I was growing right alongside bloggers that are EXTREMELY successful in 2020. And, if fact, I was gaining popularity VERY quickly.
AND THEN I QUIT.
I didn't quit because I didn't like what I was doing. I didn't quit because I didn't have the time. I didn't quit because I got burned out.
I quit because ONE PERSON made fun of me for it. ONE PERSON who had NO PLACE speaking into my life. ONE PERSON that knew nothing about me. ONE PERSON that I've found over the years attacks people due to her own insecurities. ONE PERSON that decided that using her words to destroy my identity was a worthy cause in her life.
For me, I look back on that conversation (that I wasn't even a part of ... it was a conversation between two other people that I was told about later), and I realize how much I internalized that fear of rejection. I took on that shame and wore it as my own. I began to define my abilities and my interests as wrong and unacceptable. I picked up that fear of rejection and filtered my life through it.
Every time someone would say something negative about me or my hobbies or my style or whatever ... I internalized it and began creating my identity from it.
I found myself constantly worrying about approval. When I'd be out shopping, I'd have serious internal conversations about whether or not people would like the clothes I was buying, rather than buying the clothes I liked. I overspent on clothes and shoes for my step kids just to try to prove I was a worthy mother (why?!). I tiptoed through life feeling undesirable, unloved, and unable to keep up.
My business suffered too. It had an identity crisis for years. I truly apologize to the people that followed me through the past few years wondering what new direction I would take next ... I bounced back and forth between names and focuses and products ...
After 8 years of this traumatic lifestyle, I actually had something truly traumatic happen to me - I miscarried. Life basically stopped for me for a few weeks. I felt like a stranger to myself, due to my skewed identity crisis, and now felt like stranger in my body.
I spent a lot of time wrestling with God over the reasoning behind our loss, and spent moment after moment praying and reading the Bible and begging for answers. When I came out on the other side of my trial I felt like myself again - I had remembered who I was. I had remembered who God said I was. I was determine to blaze my own trail without any care about what people thought about my path. If they didn't agree or support me, OH. WELL.
In all this, I look back and think to myself about the NINE YEARS I lost in my passion focusing on pleasing other people and their opinion of me. Where would my business be today if I just stayed true to myself and who God says I am?
I encourage you to look deep into your heart and remember what GOD says about you and who you are. He gave you the passions deeply rooted within your soul - pursue them passionately. He created you and has a distinct purpose and personality that was gifted to you to be uniquely yours. Please, don't do what I did and sacrifice that blessing for worldly opinions.
Ephesians 2:10 "For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them."
Luke 12:7 "Why, even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not; you are of more value than many sparrows."
1 Peter 2:9 "But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light."
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