“As a prisoner for the Lord, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received.” –Ephesians 4:1
His little face grimaced in defeat. I saw the tears welling up behind his glasses, and I knew from past experience that he was about to erupt.
“Why don’t you go take a walk, George?” I said. Walks in the hallway were our agreement to calm down his anger when something in class escalated his emotions.
As George made his way to the edge of the classroom door, he yelled at himself, “I’m so stupid! I’m never any good at games! I never win!”
George was one of my students on the autism spectrum, and while he was exceedingly intelligent, he was perhaps the most self-deprecating student I had that year. He was in his second year of Spanish as a seventh-grader and had never held below a 97 average in my class. Yet when we played games to help cement grammar concepts, he seemed to lose his self-control.
As I sat watching the rest of my students shouting verb conjugations and moving game pieces, I felt bad for George pacing in the hallway. How could he not see how gifted he was? Why did he think a game was the end of the world, when he made some of the best grades in the class? Because of the way his brain worked, he had little filter over what came out of his mouth, so I got a front row seat to his daily barrage against himself.
And then it hit me. It was as if the Holy Spirit twisted the light bulb in my mind from dark to full illumination. I realized that poor George and I really weren’t very different at all; he just had no filter over what came out of his mouth, while I kept my self-hatred to myself.
I spoke to myself the way George spoke to himself all the time. Yet instead of being a seventh-grader creating a spectacle in class, I kept the lies buried in my internal vault, always ready to unlock and unleash them whenever I made the smallest mistake. While George alienated himself by speaking his thoughts out loud, I appeared strong and confident while no one knew the inner degradation I heaped on myself each day.
It took seeing a reflection of myself through my student to realize how much havoc my self-assaults wreaked. Just like I knew how astute George was and I could see how he had a vast propensity for the Spanish language, it was as if for a second I got to see how God viewed me, full of potential but limited by the boundaries I created and the lies I believed.
Many times we think criticizing ourselves is humility, but it’s not. Even if we can convince others half the time, we’re not fooling God or the enemy. Some of us flesh this out through inner self-degradation, while others project our insecurities through self-deprecatory humor. For some, our insecurities actually project themselves as arrogance to hide the insufficiencies we fear the most.
No matter how we are portraying the holes we believe we have in our character, abilities, or godliness, our cover-ups are preventing us from living out our divine purpose on this planet. In fact, true humility should often appear as confidence, walking in the security of who God made us to be while acknowledging our need for a Savior each day.
One of my favorite quotes swung open on the door when George opened it to the hallway: “There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that others will not feel insecure around you. When we let our lights shine, we unconsciously give others permission to do the same.” If only we had both took those words to heart, perhaps we could have walked more fully into a life that was worthy of the calling we had received.
by Tera Bradham
Tera Bradham is an author, speaker, podcast host, and fitness coach, but she has also been a Spanish teacher, a swimming coach, a journalist, and a travel vlogger. After growing up in Round Rock, Texas, she swam for the University of Arkansas and for Texas A&M University before heading to South America on a year of missions with the World Race. God added another plot twist to her life when she met the man of her dreams, who happened to be from Montana. She now relishes the beauty of Bozeman’s mountains each day with her husband, Jacob. Her heart’s deepest passion is for others to know her extraordinary God who makes every day a miraculous adventure. More information can be found at terabradham.com.
