Have you ever considered what you’d say if you had the ability to write a letter to your younger self? It’s an ‘If I’d known then what I know now’ concept that’s interesting to ponder.
It crossed my mind today while driving in my car. On the radio, I heard the song: Dear Younger Me by MercyMe. In it, the singer imagines writing a letter to himself when he was younger. He dreams of giving himself an advantage in life by teaching valuable lessons without having to experience any of the pain he went through. He envisions sharing wisdom to help him avoid mistakes and keep him from making the wrong choices.
It made me pause to consider what I would tell my younger self if given the opportunity. Surprisingly, in just a few short minutes, the answer was crystal clear to me. It centered around the idea of perfection.
The lie I believed & the truth I found
I could have saved myself a lot of pain if I had recognized much earlier in life that no one is perfect, and therefore, I don’t have to be perfect either.
You see, I grew up believing a lie. The lie was:
My value and self-worth = My performance + The opinion of others
When in reality, the truth is:
My value and self-worth comes from God. He knows I’m not perfect and loves me anyway. He made us all human and none of us are perfect.
Oh, the pain I could have saved myself if I had recognized this sooner. Oh, the freedom that would have come with not caring so much what others thought of me. If only I’d had the ability to try things without the fear of failing or even the fear of simply not doing as well as others.
I was in my mid-30s before I truly understood God’s love for me in this way and grasped that my value comes from Him alone.
When I was seeing a counselor in 2017, I worked through a book called Conquering
Codependency – A Christ-Centered 12-Step Process by Pat Springle. It was this book that helped me realize the lie I was believing about performance-based value. It taught me to replace the lie with the truth of God’s love for me.
If only, but what’s done is done.
As I drove on, I snapped out of my reflective daydream. “If only…” I thought. “But I can’t change the past and write a letter to myself. What’s done is done.”
Then another truth hit me.
I don’t have the power to change the past, but I do have the power to influence the future.