I'm speaking tomorrow in the YWAM school I'm staffing. Panic! What will I say? How will I say it? How will I do? I don't have enough time to prepare!

Strange that no matter how much time I have to prepare the sense of panic lurks close. The franticness I feel inside demands that I prepare NOW! and get it all done NOW! even if I've only been working on it for an hour.

Something else lurking close is the feeling of judgment. No matter how well I do or don't prepare I will be judged by those in attendance. They will deem me a pathetic loser, a failure at all things speaking. Of course, they will say nice things at the end but their real thoughts are revealed when they don't invite me back or when their compliments are vague and unsubstantial.

Since when did speaking become a value statement of who I am? Why am I a failure if I do poorly?

To combat this very thing, I went on to do poorly. I unconsciously decided that since I can't be perfect and since I will always be judged, why not do poorly to show them that their value statement didn’t control me?

My unspoken rebuttal was, "Unlike what you think, my value does not come through speaking. Thus I will fail at it to show you that your judgment has no hold on me and that I think of myself acceptable and valuable no matter what I fail at."

That may be a step in the right direction, but it's a far cry from wholeness. Instead trying to perform to their standards to no avail, I tried to un-perform to their standards... to no avail. They, the masses of humanity who sat in judgment over me and my actions, who decided my worth by how I performed, still had me on strings. I was a puppet, reacting to every yank and pull.

To fight lies a person must first identify the lie and then bring truth to it, that's what I keep telling the students anyway. Easier said than done. Identification can be a long mysterious process, but once the lie is discovered it suddenly seems extremely obvious. I can see it everywhere. Now the key is to catch it when it enters my head and retrain my brain.

My worth is not dictated by how well I perform, nor do I have to prove to the world that I'm not succumbing to their judgment. I am fully accepted and loved today and forever. I have already been judged by the one true judge and I've passed! I've been brought into his family as his own child and he thinks I'm pretty darn amazing.