Dear sister,
I’m not sure when the feeling began. Maybe it came from some childhood experience, or perhaps my personality just lends itself toward feeling this way. What I do know is that infertility and miscarriage made it even worse. I’m talking about inferiority. Even the words “inferiority” and “infertility” sound similar. Coincidence? I thought not.
After I had a miscarriage, I just thought I was in a club nobody wanted to be in. After my second, I began to get a sinking feeling. And after three and four, it was so clear to me that God thought less of me than the other 7 billion people he put on this planet. Sister, it hurt. It hurt so bad. All I wanted was to believe what I was taught: that we are all created in the image and likeness of God and that each of us are loved beyond measure. But how could I believe it? I wanted to serve the God I had been told loved me through the call to motherhood. But what kind of God would continue to lay that desire on my heart, allow me to conceive and then take away the baby?
A God, I decided, who was very disappointed in His creation. In THIS creation.
My faith began to falter. How on earth could I worship an all-loving God week after week but believe He made a mistake when He made me? When you believe that God makes mistakes, that opens a very deep, dark path. One that comes straight from the Kingdom of the Netherworld, from a so-called king who wants nothing better than to sow the seeds of doubt among believers. With those seeds of doubt come moments in our lives when we must decide whether we are following Jesus and reject Satan’s lies, or let ourselves be deceived by darkness, despair, and desolation.
I wish I could tell you that I chose The Path of Life immediately, but I can’t. I’m human, after all. But in all the times I rejected God’s life and truth and mercy, he didn’t give up! He redeemed my life from the pit and crowned me with loving kindness and tender mercies (Psalm 103:4). In my self-imposed hell, His voice called to me to trust Him just one more time with my desires, my heart, my life. This familiar voice of Love calling was balm to my soul! And so, I allowed myself, very vulnerably, to enter into the very heart of God again.
I also wish I could tell you that since that moment, I’ve only chosen God and His love, but I cannot tell you that either. I praise God for the gift of being Catholic, for we get to enter the confessional and begin again when we have failed. Every day, multiple times, I must reject the lie that I am inferior to the rest of God’s creation, that I am less than my human siblings. No! I am made in God’s image, and I am fearfully and wonderfully made (Genesis 1:27, Psalm 139:14).
Sister, trust Him.
Run to Him. Embrace Him.
When you fail and give into the lies of Satan, run to His Mercy.
Reject the lies that you are not enough.
You, beautiful sister, are enough.
You are MORE than enough.
This is part of our “Letters of Encouragement” series. To read all of the letters, search the “encouragement” filter on the blog.