I am a person who was raised in fear. My life only knew fear, which pushed me to do something about my fear. It was killing me. As a child, I was not given the comfort of security by having parents who nurtured me with confidence. Instead, I was raised in a stringent, perfectionist environment. Everything I did was either criticized as not being good enough or completely wrong.
As an adult my insecurities caused me to be afraid of everything. All my choices were never black or white because I never had the confidence to make a choice. Everything was grey instead. I had no confidence, I was deeply insecure with very low self-esteem.
Having no confidence affects everything you do. It stripped me of my identity. I had no idea who I was.
I only knew fear. I was afraid of everything I did around people. I was always afraid that I would be judged and performance anxiety took over my life. I was trapped in myself, completely alone.
Depression became my best friend. I thought that I would always be this way without anyone ever understanding me since I never had the courage to tell anyone or was able to identify with myself enough to explain to anyone how I felt. I was also extremely afraid to tell my story.
I know anxiety very well. Anxiety attacks kept me in the dark for most of my life since if I ever tried to fight the fear in myself an anxiety attack would happen. Social events were the hardest for me to strum up the courage to be a part of. If I was ever around people, I was always the quietest one in the room that hoped that someone would talk to me, but was deathly afraid to be part of the conversation, so if someone did, I would never say anything. I was kinda boring.
I am a fighter though, and this is my advice to you:
Don’t let the darkness, lie to you! Fight it! Darkness wants to keep you to itself. Darkness is a thief and a coward. Once you discover that it is actually powerless, it has absolutely no hold on you.
The secret is to constantly hold on to truth. Truth is the light. Truth is the things you have to tell yourself when the lie is trying to tell you differently.
Truth is who you truly are, which is who you were made perfectly by the hand of the perfect God. You are not a failure, and you can get rid of all those “what if this” or “what if that”… Those voices are the darkness trying to entice you to lose confidence in the light of truth in yourself.
The darkness has made God a lie. The darkness has tried to convince the world that there is no God, there is no good .. there is no light, but has it convinced you?
God is not a lie. God is all things that are beautiful in you.
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Shannie Alvarez 