Do you ever look in the mirror and think “I’m not good enough?” If so, you’re certainly not alone.
“I know women that say that they’re too much, ‘I always mess things up,’ ‘God must be disappointed in me,’” explained Amy Donathan during the podcast Priority Now. “We take the lies that we have, that we’ve believed, and we not only react from them in our relationships with people here, but in how we see God.”
Donathan is one of three certified therapists on the podcast. She is a licensed marriage and family therapist and Christian life coach.
Donathan shared how she’s suffered from thinking she’s not good enough. Her parents divorced when she was young and only saw her father sporadically.
“In my brain, my little girl brain, I’m not wanted,” Donathan shared. “And a lot of children that I work with in my therapy practice that have divorced parents are like, What did I do wrong? I’m not good enough. If I was better…”
Even 40 years later after getting married she can still find herself believing she’s not enough or wanted, like recently when her husband’s parents were visiting.
“He was cleaning the bathroom,” Donathan said. “In my brain, I was like, ‘He’ll clean the bathroom for his mom, but he won’t clean the bathroom for me. I’m not good enough for him to clean the bathroom for. He doesn’t love me enough. He cares more about what his mom thinks than what I think.’
“I know he loves me dearly, but I said, ‘Oh, you’ll clean the bathroom for your mom but won’t clean the bathroom for me?’ He turned around and said, ‘I don’t care how the bathroom looks when my mom gets here, but you do.’”
Believing the lies
Proverbs 23:7 in part says for as he thinks in his heart, so is he. “If you keep believing those lies over and over again, and you keep telling yourself that that’s who you are, then that’s how you live,” Donathan said.
Donathan noted that it doesn’t matter, our past or what others think of us, God will use our whole life; the good, the bad and the ugly for His glory.
“We’re God’s workmanship. In Greek that word is poema and it means poem, and so it’s a work of art, so we are a work of art…” Donathan explained.
“God weaves our stories together, so that bad part of your life, is still a stanza in that poem. Without that, your poem wouldn’t be complete.”
Donathan will be joined by Leslie Davis who is a counseling ministry director and Carla Powderly who specializes in grief and loss.
Taking our burdens to the cross
Another story Donathan shared was about a conference she attended and how eye opening it was.
“We had a cross sitting up front and then we had name tags like ‘Hi, my name is.’ Everyone had to write the lies that they believed about themselves on that name tag,” Donathan explained. “And then they took it up and they put it on the cross. I thought maybe three people would do it, but everybody did it.”
Some people put three or four lies they have believed about themselves. “It was so sad to read because one older lady put ‘I’m so stupid.’”
Many women are not able to step out into what God has planned because of fear.
“The cross was covered,” Powderly repeated. The cross made a statement, she said. “The cross covered it all. I mean, that’s the freedom that you’re talking about.”
“In Philippians 2:13, it says that God will work in us toward his will and work for His good pleasure,” Donathan responded, “so doing this is not a solo journey.
“God isn’t waiting for you to lay all the lies down and work to have that freedom. He’s saying, ‘I am here, just lay them down, and I will walk with you to help you.’”
EDITOR’S NOTE — This story was written by Kayla Houchin and originally published by the Illinois Baptist.
