Calvin Nowell, a manager and Gospel singer, recently came to sing at my university. While helping lead worship at our weekly Wednesday night service, he told us about the lies the devil had told him when he’d looked in the mirror that morning.
What are you doing, leading worship at a huge school like that? You shouldn’t be here.
Tempted to believe this doubt, Calvin looked himself in the eye in the mirror and sternly told himself, “I belong here.” He encouraged us that whatever position we currently have, God has placed us here and this is where we belong.
Which, unbeknownst to Calvin, I had begun learning over the week leading up to his visit.
The professor I do research for had emailed me for an update and I had responded, slightly flustered, that I was behind, which we had previously discussed. As I walked from my dorm to main campus, I felt as though the check was almost a personal attack, her polite way of focusing on where I was lacking, and that she was almost demanding too much.
Didn’t she know how stressed I was returning from an international trip, trying to balance school and some things that were going on in my personal life? She couldn’t read my mind, of course, but didn’t she somehow intrinsically know, as I did, that on the inside I was a scared, unworthy little girl doing her best not to make a colossal mess out of her life?
As I continued to walk and think, I began reflecting on God and how He sees me. To Him, I was not a scared little girl. I am a twenty (soon to be twenty-one) year old woman who has survived much in her young life, who has passions and dreams, and who was made to serve Him beautifully and uniquely.
As I marveled at the signs of spring warming me from above and blossoming around me, it finally began to dawn on me that the reason I sometimes don’t meet expectations and find it hard to rise to high expectations is because I believed, deep down, that I could not do it. I saw myself as that scared little girl and assumed everyone else did too, so they would go easy on me. When they didn’t go easy on me, I resented them for placing the bar so obviously out of reach.
But here is the truth that Calvin so incredibly reminded me of: I belong here. At this university, as an Odyssey editor-in-chief, as a research assistant, and in every other facet of my life. I am not a scared little girl- I am a growing woman of God who can do anything I set my mind to. I am capable and I can rise to expectations. I just need to try.
And this is true for you too. Wherever you are, you belong there. If you have to, remind yourself of that truth every day. Look in the mirror and do not just say, but believe, the words “I belong here.” And rise.
