The fraud in my stars.

Can I tell you a secret?  I feel like a fraud 99.999999% of the time.  Yep, I spend a lot of time wondering why anyone would give me a PhD.  When I look at myself, a majority of the time I don’t see a great scientist, or a revolutionary thinker, or a promising researcher.  I tend to see someone in a lab coat fumbling her way through the lab just praying she doesn’t burn the place down.  Recently I have been receiving e-mails for job postings…like real big kid jobs.  These positions use words like: conceptualizing, revolutionizing, direct, apply critical thinking, professor, lead scientist, etc., and it sort of makes me want to puke…or shrink back into my safe place.  Can I be that?  What if I can’t?  I have spent 6 years doing what I am doing and I honestly don’t feel like I know anything about it.  What if I am a bad scientist?  What if I end up disappointing everyone?

Why is it that human beings can’t see themselves for who they really are?  Why is it so much easier to see the beauty that exists in the life of others than it is to see in our own?  I think sometimes I struggle to just accept and love the life that I have been given.  In a way, I have an endlessly gypsy like soul.  I believe I may always live with a slight twinge of dissatisfaction.   I don’t know that I will ever really be able to fully own my life as something that I deserve.

I think that when we are younger life seems so full of endless possibilities.  However, as we age we make certain choices, take certain paths, which lead us to a place of: this is what you have chosen.  I think it is in those moments where we find ourselves thinking, “wwwwwaiit, I don’t know if this is really what I wanted.”  Only to have to face the truth that, ultimately, at some points this is what you wanted… it just looks different than you thought it would.  Which is what I think maturity really looks like: owning your part in the choices that you have made that led you to where you are.

 I don’t know about you, but I tend to focus on my things, those parts of life where I feel inadequate or lacking.  The funny part about those things is that they change.  As I live out my life and develop, those things become new things.  I have watched this play out in the lives of my friends as well.  The real problem I see in this way of life is that it seems really easy to forfeit some of the great, real things in our lives so that we can focus on fixing that one area of lack and insecurity.  I can become so focused on my fear of being a bad scientist that I can literally forfeit my happiness and self-worth, so that I can obsess on that fear.  I can stress about my lack so much that I can cast a shadow on my abundance, effectively chocking off my spirit and joy.  I can crush the amazing blessings in my life because I am so freaking insecure about this one tiny, all together meaningless, area of my life where I feel like I am not good enough. Why?  Is this just me who does this?

God’s vision for my life is different from mine.  He has great big plans, and I have moderate sized plans.  He has abundance beyond what I could ever even think up, and I have strongholds.  He speaks life and prosperity, and I often speak death and insecurity.  This all comes about because I had plans for my life.  I saw it being a very certain, specific way… and guess what?  That is not what happened.  What happened was so much bigger than my plans, so much more than I could have imagined, that it frightens me. 

I guess I have two choices.  I can either choose to look at my life and own it, or I can hold tightly to the life I had imagined.  The first choice will allow me to fully explore, break down walls, and find new levels of myself.  The second leads to disappointment, resent, and unhappiness.

I think so often we choose to not accept the life we have been given.  We choose to live in the past or the future, trying to make our life look the way we would like it.  This, in turn, distracts us from our current life, our real life, and we miss the blessing.  We don't get to experience our life as it unfolds and then are forced to look back to realize how God worked in our lives.  I have done this far too often.  I have spent days, if not weeks or months depressed and cut off because of feeling inadequate, or like I am not measuring up to my expectations, or my life doesn't look like my friends lives.  Are we so afraid to be who we are, or who we are not?

God is our strength, and we can accomplish all things through His power within us, but most importantly our comfort abounds in Him.  God’s plans for us are plans of prosperity and life.  He will never abandon us, but rather will do abundantly more than we could ever imagine if we trust in Him. (Philippians 4:13, Ephesians 6:10, Ephesians 3:20, Deuteronomy 31:8, 2 Corinthians 1:5).  I say this more to myself than to anyone who may be reading this.  This is the truth about our lives; the fears and insecurities are the lies that life has taught us to believe.  So, fraud or not, I am going to walk forward through whatever door God opens for me, with faith that He will make all things work together for my good, always (Romans 8:28).