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Growing up, having the 3rd child syndrome caused me to always look for ways to get attention and be noticed.  But for me I had two older brothers that were good at everything they did.  So in a way, that pushed me to want to excel and be better than both of them.   So my life became about being the best at everything that I was involved in.  That was great and my competitive nature really allowed me to have the desire to put in extra time and get good at everything that I touched.  After years of working on my coordination, game smarts, foot skills, hand eye/foot coordination, and creativity; everything began to become easy for me.  And if I had never played a sport before, I just naturally could pick it up and do well.

So my identity started to revolve around success and being good at things.  This made me feel like I was accepted by others.  If they could just watch me play, I could gain some respect and be looked up to.  That was my drive, so when that didn’t happen my identity shattered and I had nothing to stand on.  I felt like everything that I was, was found in my performance.  So I started to fear failure because I new that would put me in a vulnerable stage of feeling like I wasn’t accepted.  If somebody would try to teach me something to help, I would make an excuse on why I wasn’t good at something.  “I hurt my ankle, or must be an off day.”

I really didn’t know how to handle somebody telling me that I wasn’t good at something.  So in my adulthood, this carried over and had a huge impact on my life.  Even when I became a Christian I still feared man and what they thought about me.  This idea of acceptance was something I really struggled with.  So on the outside I felt like the only way that people would like me, even in the church is to be a perfect Christian.  Make sure everything is good and don’t let anybody down.  I feared failing people, and even failing God.  This idea of fear of failure almost ruined my life.

It set the stage of creating a front that would only show my good side.  Behind the scenes when I was struggling with sin, I didn’t want anybody to know, because then they would know that I am imperfect and make mistakes.  In my eyes, that would close all credibility of anything else that I did.  But a few years ago, I learned something.  All this time I had been living under a works based love.  Trying to earn love from people by doing what I thought would get their attention.  But what I found was it turned into a constant lifestyle of trying to please everybody I knew so I would feel good.  The more I read my bible the more I saw that I didn’t have to earn peoples approval to be loved, I could just be myself and know that I was accepted; failures and all.  Jesus was the example of the unconditional love that I never saw when I was growing up.  He showed us what love truly is, by dieing for our failures(sins) so that we would be accepted by God because of what he did on the cross purifying our lives.

We don’t have to fear failure and let it ruin our lives.  We have GRACE, and because we are all sinners, we can be real with one another and confess our sins so that we can love each other more like Jesus.   We don’t have to act perfect anymore and we don’t have to pretend to have it all together.  We just have to love God and allow Him to change our lives.  There is no greater love than the unconditional love that God gives, so we just have to accept it and find comfort in Christ.

“Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” Romans 8:1

Please share if you think you know somebody who struggles with this 🙂