I was in an elevator a few years ago with a mother and her young daughter. The little girl was just being a little girl, very energetic and excited. She wanted to push the buttons herself, but mistakenly pushed the wrong button. To my amazement, the mother scolded her and called her stupid.
I wanted to pick up that girl and say loudly: “You are not stupid. You are an incredible person and God has great plans for you.”
That mother’s words broke my heart. Can you imagine what it did to her daughter? I still think about that incident and feel sad. If a person will disgrace her child in public, I couldn’t imagine what happened in the privacy of their home.
People can be so cruel with their words:
“You’ll never amount to anything.”
“You never do anything right.”
“You aren’t very bright, are you?”
“You are not a good wife.”
These are lies that are hard to forget. They sink deep into our innermost being like a quarter going down the gumball machine:
Clink. I’m stupid.
Clink. I’m worthless.
Clink. I’ll never amount to anything.
It’s so easy to replay these negative words over and over in your mind, and the more you replay them, the more you believe them, the more the negative ideas become part of who you are.
But you must know today that the person who spoke negative words over you did not speak the truth. You are not what people say about you. You are God’s creation and what He says is the truth. He says:
You are an incredible person, full of greatness.
You are valuable.
You have a beautiful mind, one of a kind.
You are gifted like no other.
Put that in your think tank! Replay that over and over again until you believe it and begin to act like it.
(Excerpt from You Are Made For More!, Chapter 8)
