Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Competence Unmasked

My daughter has had occasion to say,"I'm an idiot. I can't do anything right. I am horrible."

My response at first is to panic. Ahhh! The voice inside my voice says,'what does this mean? How did she form this opinion? What have I done wrong????' And then I take a breath and calm down from the drama in my head.

Sometimes, the "I'm an idiot card" is played to mask a deeper issue. Sometimes it comes out when the situation needs to be manipulated and sometimes it comes out when frustration is happening.

I sat back and prayed and asked God to show me why this kept coming up.
We talked briefly about believing lies about ourselves and believing God's truth about us (Sharing). We practiced writing out the Scripture "I am fearfully and wonderfully made" for copywork today. But I felt God tugging at me to go deeper on this one. So I inquired a bit more.

And it turns out that "I'm an idiot" is code for "I don't like making mistakes."

I can relate to that feeling, can you?

Now, I'm off to dig out my notes on Competence and to find some good Bible stories of people who made horrendous mistakes and God turned things around.

1 comment:

Therese said...

Often words don't say what we mean. This is why process questions are so helpful in getting to the root of the problem.
"Self talk" is also a good thing to look at. What we say to our self can often result in how we perform.
Thanks for sharing this episode.
-A good thing to keep in mind.

-Therese M.