Have you ever felt, for whatever reason, that you just weren’t good enough? Did you ever get the impression that no matter what you did or how hard you tried, you just couldn’t seem to measure up to other people’s expectations? Most often, these feelings arise because of some incident that occurred early on in our lives that altered our mindset about who and how we really are. Here’s an excerpt from Chapter 15 of ‘Seeing Beyond the Natural, Student: Me … Professor: God’ that captures John and Lucy’s experience:

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When Lucy first met her husband, John, she was instantly attracted to him. While dating for a few years, Lucy noticed really good qualities in John as well as some unappealing traits that she figured, in time, would go away. She loved him so much that she thought she could never live without him. She was ready to live the fairy-tale life and looked forward to a future filled with love, joy and endless romance.

John loved to watch love stories on television and listen to soft music. Lucy discovered early on that he was quite the poet as well. However, and quite ironically, he had a harshness about him that seemed to always rub her over the wrong way. This trait showed up frequently in the way he expressed himself. Although he was friendly and could be quite funny, his somewhat abrasive demeanor was not the type of thing Lucy was ever exposed to prior to them getting together and she struggled with it constantly. John would say something, and to Lucy, it sounded disrespectful because it wasn’t put mildly. She was immediately offended. Over the years, she felt like John wasn’t respectful enough, not affectionate enough and certainly not attentive enough. She felt that he was overly critical and nothing she said or did was good enough. Lucy started to feel unloved, unappreciated, deceived, and her heart became hard. She stopped caring; didn’t respect him as much anymore, and she certainly stopped trying to please him. Eventually, she began to feel such deep resentment inside for John and many times thought of divorcing him. When the resentment set in, she did not realize that she had opened a door for Satan to enter in and wreak more havoc in her life.

Lucy was certain that John never really loved her, but deceived her for his own selfish purposes. On top of all that, his actions made the devil’s lies even more convincing. After a series of negative events that almost certainly sent the young couple to divorce court, God prompted them to search their own hearts and what Lucy saw in hers grieved her.

God took her back to a time when she was just a child. While growing up, she never thought she was good enough for anyone. No one ever told her that she wasn’t, but she remembered one time her mother compared her to another young girl she didn’t even know. She remarked that Lucy should look more like the other girl. Her mother was referring to the girl’s size which happened to be a little smaller than Lucy’s frame. Instantly, something took root in Lucy’s heart that convinced her that she wasn’t good enough and that she had to be good enough in order to truly measure up to other people’s expectations.

Lucy never felt that she was special in her mother’s eyes and in spite of always wanting to see others comfortable and happy even as a child, she didn’t notice much of a reciprocation coming her way. When the Lord brought this episode to the surface of Lucy’s mind, she wept like a baby, knowing that what happened long ago was the source of her painful emotions and the attachment issues she had toward her husband in earlier years. She had always looked for acceptance from the people she loved and Satan conveniently used her husband’s imperfections to feed her pain. So when she felt like John was criticizing her, that negative feeling fed the sense of inadequacy she already had from years earlier and she put up a huge protective wall. Over the years, Lucy really thought John hated her, but as they embarked upon the healing process, he revealed some things that made her finally understand why he always acted the way he did. http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00IT2GIOS

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I would like to say that no matter what you’ve been through or who said what to you to convince you that you are not good enough, it is a total lie! You are not mediocre – by no means. You are God’s Masterpiece. You are special and until you see yourself the way He sees you, you will allow the negativity that others threw at you to remain a part of you – a heavy burden that you were never meant to carry. Release that negativity today. Reject the lies and accept the truth of who you are. You were made in God’s image and from the very beginning, you were indeed good enough.

‘Seeing Beyond the Natural, Student: Me… Professor God’ is available at: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00IT2GIOS

Change Your Mind, Change Your Perspective, Change Your Life!