From flat city streets to rolling hills and country roads, from an over-populated city school to a smaller suburban school;  in every way, my life in Pennsylvania felt drastically different than my life in Queens, NY.  

When I lived in New York, I don’t remember a time in my life where I felt like I had to strive fit in.  As far as I could remember, I loved playing duck-duck goose, enjoyed slumber parties, arm wrestling school boys (and dominating them…seriously I did, lol); and also, doing my absolute favorite — flipping around, with my gymnast friends.

As a young child living in NY, I didn’t feel the need to hide behind a façade, but when I moved to Pennsylvania, something shifted. 

In some parts of my new life, I adjusted well. 

I found a new game I loved to play with my teammates — pretending to be Dominique Moceanu in the Olympics. 

But school…well, that was a different story. 

All in that same year of moving, I was held back a year in school, was put in special ed, and was diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) .  

I struggled in my academics and everyone knew it.  In the middle of class I was often pulled aside by a special education teacher, so I could have one-on-one learning time. And if I wasn’t being pulled out of class, the special ed teacher would stand next to my desk in the classroom.  I hated this, so.very.much.  

I know my teachers and parents wanted the best for me, and it was out of love to help me, but I couldn’t help but feel even more inadequate among my classmates.  It made me resistant to wanting help because I didn’t want to look different or weak in front of others. 

As a child I hated these weaknesses, and as I moved into middle school and high school I grew to despise them with a passion.   

As I got older, some kids grew mean and bold in their jokes. 

There were a few boys in my home room laughing at me and calling me the name, ‘Special K’ because I was in special ed. At times like this I didn’t want to be seen.  It felt absolutely embarrassing when someone highlighted my weaknesses in front of everyone. 

Lets face it, who wants to be seen for their weakness? Not me.  Just like everyone else, I wanted to be seen for my strengths. We all think that, in our strengths we will find our comfort zones and our confidence. We all think that this is where we can shine and boast to the world. But even in my strength’s, I was still insecure. 

What was my strength as a young child? Doing backflips. Backflips on the playground and cartwheels down the grocery isle. But you can’t do back flips in a classroom. And you can’t do back flips for straight A’s. No matter what, when I struggled to solve the math problem at the chalk board in front of the entire class, I still failed and it was still embarrassing. My strengths don’t take away any of my weaknesses. And my strengths don’t make me anymore confident in my weaknesses. 

I realize now, that I honestly didn’t know how to handle these insecurities.  My insecurities felt HUGE to me; and feeling slightly different than the other kids, overwhelmed me. 

I wanted nothing more than to get off my ADD medication and get out of special ed., because I thought this defined me as stupid. 

I looked at the strengths of other kid‘s and compared myself to them. I envied their God given gift of a brain, that by my definition as a child, ’worked properly’. I concluded that my brain didn’t function right because nothing came easy to me, but it all seemed to come so easy to 99% of the kids around me.  

Even though I didn’t think my brain worked properly, I still had goals. And those goals were only set to prove to my parents, to myself, and to other students around me that I was smart and I didn’t need any extra help. 

Even though I accomplished the task of making high honor roll, I always felt as if I was fighting this losing battle of getting off of this medication.  

To my crushing disappointment, I achieved the good grades, but then never got what I was promised — to be out of special ed and off the medication. I would bring it up over and over again and I fought hard for these changes, until the news was finally broken to me:

I remember in high school, my mom telling me she will never take me out of special ed., because if I happen to need it again, it wouldn’t be easy for her to get me re-enrolled into the special ed. program. I would have to re-test into the program, which I was told was a complicated process.

 I let it it go.

 Thankfully by this point, no special ed teacher stood by my side in class or pulled me out of class as long as my grades stayed up. 

Of course I continued to study hard. I loved getting a test paper back with a big red A, that I would place proudly at the edge of my desk, in hopes other students would see. As I pushed my grade to the edge of my desk I would think to myself, “See…I’m not stupid”.

Doing these things out of an insecure and wrong attitude of my heart, has done nothing but birth a stone-cold heart of pride in me.

Now don’t get me wrong, its ok to accomplish some goal and be proud of that, but that’s not the only type of pride that grew in my heart. I grew the kind of pride which also comes with the baggage of rotten fruit. And it smelled really bad. 

When my grades improved, I did not feel compassion for others who were also in special ed and struggled with their grades. No. Rather, I avoided them and did not even want to walk down the hall with them, because I feared that being seen with them would hurt my reputation. I greatly feared that this would encourage kids to laugh at me even more. 

My heart became like a gymnasts calloused hands. Hands that were once soft and pure, grew spots of thick and hard skin, due to the pressure and friction while performing on the bars.  These calluses formulate all over the hand as a defense mechanism to protect itself. 

That was me. 

Just like, soft pure hands ruined by the pressure and friction of the bars, so was my heart ruined by my sin nature, insecurity, and the pressure put on by the world. 

 I felt the pressure from my peers and also put pressure on myself to perform for others, so that I would not look weak.  Trying to resist these weaknesses by doing everything in my power to ‘feel’ confident, hardened me.

As a gymnast, when I looked at my own hands I never thought there was anything wrong them. Having hard patches of skin was just the way they looked, but I would forget why they look like that — gymnastics. Often times, I would forget what hands actually are supposed to look like. 

We are fenced in on every side by other people’s cold hearts, hard reactions, and hurtful interactions; that we forget what a soft, compassionate, and merciful heart should look like. We become numb and desensitized to hurting others. 

The world is so blind and confused on what is the right thing to do. For me, the right thing to do, started with me and ended with me. The right thing and the wrong thing was all dependent on my feelings and my experiences and had nothing to do with thinking of the person next to me.  

Most of the time I was so blinded by my insecurity, that it was usually hard to see past myself and my own problems, because I made things about me and focused only on what made me feel better.

But then one day I picked up this book that changed not just my life, but the desires and motives of my whole heart. I began to immerse myself in the Word of God and was surrounded by some new friends – The Father, The Son and The Holy Spirit. Who says the knowledge of this world is foolishness to God. (1 Corinthians 3:19)

The word of God awakened my conscious to see things in a whole new way.  

 It wasn’t until I came to Christ that I realized, I relied on hurtful and hard coping mechanisms that aren‘t acceptable to God, no matter how acceptable it is to people.  

It is so difficult to think of the effect insecurity has done to me. It really is hard to wrap my heart and mind around how I treated others and how I talked to myself.  Thank you Jesus for saving from my-horrible-self.

As I write this, my heart aches for all of the little girls who have tasted this shame and all the little girls that have been hurt my lack of willingness to walk beside them down the school hallway.  It hurts me think that I may have been a person who contributed to their very own deep insecurity. 

If I could go back in time and tell this little girl, who felt so overwhelmed by her insecurities, I would tell her this: