What People Think

I'm one of those people who spends a lot of my thought life wondering what other people think about me or things related to me. I hate to admit that I struggle with this fear of man, but I do. I just had a conversation with a friend today that left me thinking, What do they think of me? (In regards to a specific situation). It plagued me most of the evening until I was rocking Hope to sleep and had time to think about it further. Hope has a stomach bug so she got the rock-treatment tonight!

As I sat there, overwhelmed by the events of this week and the fact that my little one is sick to the point that I may need to take her to the hospital tomorrow, I thought to myself I don't have time to care what people think of me! A righteous disgust for the schemes of the enemy rose up in me as I considered how much time I've lost to worrying about what people think. I am a pretty much full-time working mom who has to worry about my child, my husband, my clients, my family, my leadership at church and my friends. How the heck can I fit in time to ponder whether or not my clothes are cool enough or if what I said sounded stupid? I can't. . . and today I declare that I won't!

After thinking about it with this perspective, I am so embarrassed by how much my silly fear of man has robbed my thoughts. What an idiot I am to have allowed this to take over my mind. None of us has extra time on our hands that would warrant such an unproductive and even destructive use of it. I know this is something we all deal with to some extent and so tonight I felt compelled to admit the struggle and encourage each one of us to consider how we might overcome it. For me, I believe tonight's epiphany will help me take these thoughts captive. Now, anytime I encounter these plaguing thoughts, I will think about how busy I am with things that really do matter as a reminder of how little this does matter.

Our great God has created each one of us with such a unique make up as well as a very specific life story. How dare we waste time trying to figure out why we are the way we are or why our story reads differently than someone else's. Let us trust His design and instead spend our days focused on what He thinks of who we are and how our story will bring glory to Him.