A few days ago I met a friend for lunch. I looked forward to it all week and had a great time because she totally rocks, but I left wondering, "Why on earth does she choose to spend time with me???" I mean, I'm shy and somewhat awkward with people and not exactly super fun most of the time, and she has plenty of other better options. Why me?
Then yesterday I started reading through my list of blogs to catch up and found a new post on her blog... all about HER insecurities. I almost started laughing because so much of what she said could have come right out of my mouth, but I was also totally shocked because in my mind she has absolutely no reason to feel weird or want to be different. She's fabulous just the way God made her, and I often wish I had her faith and diligence, not to mention her awesome sense of humor. But she feels insecure just like me.
The obvious lesson is that I should probably listen to all the people telling me I'm being ridiculous to think that being my friend is a waste of time, so perhaps I'll try a little harder to trust what they say. The deeper realization has been that I'm a lot more insecure at times than I realized. If you'd asked me if I liked myself I would have said that most of the time I do, but when I started thinking about it I noticed that while I do like a lot of things about who I am now, there are definitely traits I wish I didn't have. I've learned to be ok with being quiet because it gives me a chance to be a really good listener, but there are times that I wish I was better at talking to people (like this morning at church during the awkward silence after greeting the woman next to me). I'm glad that I feed on deep conversations with my close friends, but some days I wish I could be ok with just having fun and staying on the surface. It would certainly make life simpler! And there are TONS of other little things about how I interact with people, things that make me who I am, that I'm not so sure about. It turns out I may not be as content with how God made me as I thought.
Anyhow, it's nice to know I'm not alone, and I'm going to have to do some serious rethinking of my perception of myself. I should probably infuse a little more God and a weed out a lot of me. Amazing how that tends to fix things...
Happy 4th of July! And just for fun, a link to the other blog I read yesterday. I guess it's the topic of the week. :)
