Welcome to a hilarious episode of the Higher Pursuit Podcast, where we dive into the messy and comical side of life! Today, get ready to laugh, cringe, and maybe even shed a tear as we explore the fear of not being enough and the scary notion of stepping into our 'next'!
In this episode, I'm going to share a personal story that I like to call my "ugly baby" moment. Picture this: I've just birthed my brand-new book, and like any parent, I'm filled with a mix of excitement and terror. But instead of worrying about a baby being ugly, I found myself fretting over my book being an "ugly baby"! Yes, you heard it right! I couldn't help but fear that my brilliant creation would turn out to be an absolute trainwreck. Can you imagine the horror?
Join me as I navigate this hilarious, self-deprecating journey through my paranoid thoughts about my book's "ugliness." We'll discuss the fears of not being enough, that nagging little voice in our heads that keeps saying, "What if it's not good enough? What if I'm not good enough?"
But fear not, my lovely listeners! I soon realized that all parents (and authors) have moments of doubt, fear, and anxiety. It's normal to worry about our creations and our ability to sustain them. In fact, it's part of the creative process! So, let's laugh at those crazy fears together and learn how to face them head-on.
Get ready to laugh, reflect, and gain some insight into your own fears and struggles. Tune in to this episode and let's conquer our self-doubts, one laugh at a time!
Follow me at: Linktr.ee/cecily.lachapelle
Hi, I'm Cecily Lachapelle. I'm a speaker and an author and a blogger and this is the Higher Pursuit podcast. Thanks for joining me today. In today's episode, we're going to be talking about something kind of different. Having an ugly baby. I know that sounds kind of strange. But let me explain you see, for months now, I have been in the production phase of my book process. So if you're not familiar what that is, is first of all, you have your writing phase and that took me a few months. And then once you go into production phase, that's when you say, ok, my manuscript is as finished as it's gonna be from me. And then you go into editing and, and book cover design and the editing part goes back and forth and back and forth. And eventually, once you have all your edits done, then it goes to layout and as a new author, I really had no idea how this process was going to go. I had no idea how fast, how slow it was gonna be. And I guess I thought it was gonna be a little faster than it has been and therefore I probably framed this out inaccurately for a lot of my friends and family. So right now I am sort of like that woman who is overly pregnant and everybody's asking her questions. Like, So how are you feeling? Are you having any contractions? When do you think you're gonna have the baby? It can really drive you crazy. So now I'm at the point where all my friends are saying, so what's going on with the book? Do you have a date? When is your book gonna be out? Because everybody is kind of waiting with dated breath as am I! And so I recently had to make some pretty substantial changes to the layout of my book and I was waiting for weeks to get the what could have been the final, final version of my book. Now flash forward three weeks from when I submitted my manuscript or submitted the last version to layout and I haven't heard anything. I'm cleaning up my email as I usually do in the morning and I see an email from my production executive. It has her name on it and the subject line says "Here it is!" with an exclamation point. And you'd think after all the months of being in the production phase of the book being so close to finally seeing what my book is gonna look like as an actual book that I would have been like, My gosh! you know, click on that attachment. I kept scrolling. I just kept going as if it was some invoice that I was gonna file later or an email that I just needed to put in a folder. And then the next day I was at a barbecue and another friend of mine asked me the question, "How's everything going with your book?" to which I said, "I don't know. I haven't heard anything from them. You know, that reminds me I really should reach out to them to see how everything is coming with layout. And when I might have my final version." Like what in the world was happening with my brain? I had like this bizarre case of amnesia where I completely forgot that the day before I had seen the email and the attachment in my inbox. It was sitting there. How does that even happen and what was going on? So I didn't even process it. Obviously, at that point, I'm still forgetting that it's even there. And the next morning I was having my time with the Lord and a lot of times I will open up my journal and I'll say, "Lord, is there anything that you want to say to me today?" Immediately, the Holy Spirit said "Your book is in your inbox and you haven't even looked at it. You haven't even opened the attachment." and I was in complete and total shock. I mean, this is not normal behavior for me to completely forget something that important. Something I've been waiting for, something I have worked for months for. So what's happening in my brain? And as if that wasn't weird enough that the Holy Spirit had to remind me that the book was in my inbox, I all of a sudden started sobbing, like ugly cry, crying. And so I said, "Holy Spirit, you really have to show me what is going on here. Why did I just ignore that? Block it out? And now that you've reminded me about it, why am I crying?" And that's when the Lord in his amazingly tender and perfectly aligning way brought me back in a flashback to the day that I was leaving the hospital with my firstborn baby, Ashley. And I was watching the nurse give her a bath and the nurse is just deftly handling this wobbly baby. And I looked at her and realized I've never done that before and I'm going home without this professional there to help me. And I thought to myself "Are you all seriously gonna let me leave this hospital with this baby? I really, I thought I was ready but now that I'm here in this moment, I realize I'm not ready for this. Can't I just stay here in this hospital for like another week so I can practice? So you can show me how to do things?" I just didn't feel ready. I didn't feel like I was enough. It's all fun and games when you're pregnant and you're reading the books and you're watching the videos and going on tours of the hospital and taking LAMAsLamaze classes. That's all well and good until all of a sudden now the baby is here and it was my responsibility to keep her alive and I just didn't feel like I was enough. And the Holy Spirit showed me that that's exactly how I was feeling about the book. It's all fun and games while I'm writing the book and trying to pump out the material and form out the chapters and write the activations. It's all fun and games while I'm going back and forth with editing and book design and layout. But now that the book could actually be here and it could be my responsibility to keep it alive, so to speak, I was terrified that I wasn't enough - that I wasn't going to launch the book correctly, that I wasn't going to market the book correctly, that I wasn't going to do the things that keep a book alive. I just didn't think I was enough. And then the Holy Spirit showed me, I had a second fear. This one was even a little bit more toxic than the first one. My secondary fear was that I had made an ugly baby. So how many of you have ever run into a couple who are 'ooing and awing' over their baby and you look down and you think 'Man, that's an ugly baby,' but you've never said anything. Of course, you're not gonna say that to the parents. But seriously, we've all probably told that little white lie of, Yeah. Yeah. That baby is so cute. Well, here's where the all of those little white lies backfired on me as I'm thinking about my book and it feels like a baby. It feels like a baby to me because, for instance, when I was going through the editing process, I was really kind of worried that if the editor came back and said, I don't like this part or you should cut this part or this was confusing or I'm not sure that I think that chapter even fits in the book that I was gonna feel like my baby was being attacked. But none of that happened. Thank God. But I was bracing myself for feeling like my baby was under attack. So then flash forward to this day that I'm sobbing and the Holy Spirit shows me that I was afraid that I was gonna have an ugly baby. I was so I was afraid that people who had read my book just didn't have the guts to tell me that I had had an ugly baby, I tell you, it's just crazy. I don't know where that thought came in. But when you're a creative person - when you have done something like, write a book or write a play or a song and it's about to go live like the world is going to see what you made - It's super intimidating and the enemy can just come in and flood your mind with all these thoughts of how it's not enough; people are gonna hate it; You shouldn't have even done it in the first place. It's a waste of it, of your time. I mean, just the barrage of thoughts. Once I finally allowed the Holy Spirit into these cobweb corners of my soul, I realized the ugly lies that were hiding there. And that's what I absolutely love the most about being a born again, spirit filled child of God that I don't have to deal with these lies alone. The Holy Spirit goes into these dark corners with me and brings the light of truth. And once you turn the light on all the spiders go scurrying. I'm telling you like they all get out. Once you bring the light of truth to these lies, they lose their footing, the fear loses its footing, the anxiety, the intimidation, the feelings of not being enough, loses its footing - in the face of the truth, the truth of who we are, how loved we are. And that's what the Holy spirit ministered to me that day. He undid the lies that I was not even consciously aware of, but were growing under the surface like a like a, a virus in my hard drive. And he brought it to the surface and helped me deal with it. So amazing. So, what I wanna ask you is, do you ever wrestle with the fear of not being enough? Do you ever get afraid to walk into your 'next' - your next responsibility, your next job, your next ministry, your next whatever - because the next can be intimidating, right? It's the unknown. I already described when I brought Ashley home and that was a pretty big next. My next was crossing, the threshold of becoming a parent, not talking about being a parent, not dreaming about being a parent, but now actually being a parent responsible for someone else's life. It was probably the biggest next I ever crossed into. But there were others after that. There were new jobs, new ministries, new places to live, new relationships and all of those 'next's can be intimidating. All right, let's talk about three tools that we can use to banish fear and boost our faith to move into that next in our lives. The first one is bring scripture to whatever fear it is that we're facing down. So for instance, for me, I went to two of my favorite scriptures to banish fear, to banish intimidation, to banish the feeling that I'm not enough. The first one is from Ephesians 1:6, "You are accepted in the beloved." And the second one is found in Deuteronomy 31 :6: One of my favorite stories when Joshua is commissioned by God to lead the people of Israel into the promised land. After the death of Moses, he's gotta be facing huge intimidation trying to fill Moses shoes and just the fear of, am I enough to not only bring these people over but to defeat all of the people that are there that are gonna fight us tooth and nail and to keep unity to govern these people, all the things. And the Lord knew the intimidation and the questions in Joshua's heart. And he tells him, be strong and courageous, don't be afraid or terrified because of them _ them being not just the enemies you can see, but the enemies up here - for the Lord, your God goes with you. He will never leave you or forsake you." Those two scriptures always bolster my faith and confidence. Then I think about them, when I meditate on them, when I write them again in my journal, when I pray them out as a declaration over my life, then the second thing that we do, the second tool is to get a clear word from the Lord. So for me in my journal that day, when the Holy Spirit started pulling back the covers on the the fears I was facing, he also started showing me what my future was gonna look like. He showed me the book. He showed me me handing the book back to Jesus. Again. I literally got a vision of myself on my knees with a book in my hand and I can actually picture it now because I know what the cover is gonna look like. And I pictured this book in my hands and I pictured myself giving it to Jesus and saying, This is yours. Whatever happens with this book, it's up to you. I've done my part and I will continue to do my part. But there's a whole part to this whole process I can't control and my fear makes me want to control it. And I'm gonna go crazy and I'm going to feel intimidated and like I'm not enough because I'm not enough. Whatever you want to, to happen with this book, whoever's lives you want touched that's on you. Jesus, I give this burden back to you." And I just saw him take that book back and he's the one, he's the one who's gonna cause it to do whatever it needs to do to go where it needs to go. So get a clear word from the Lord, whether it's through vision, whether it's through the scripture, but get that word from the Lord to hold on to. And lastly create a clean atmosphere around yourself. Like an air purifier, cleans the air in our homes, we can purposely clean our atmosphere up and it's so important that we do that. You know, I don't think we're aware oftentimes of the things that we watch, the things that we listen to how that changes the atmosphere around us. Some people always have to have TV, or the news on. But you know that that stuff is full of fear. You know, that stuff is full of a bad report. You know, that stuff is full of stories of things you can't control. We don't need to be feeding our minds and hearts with that. But even more than that, cleaning the atmosphere around us is proactively putting the good in. So for me, a lot of times I will have instrumental worship music playing on every floor of my house so that no matter what is happening, every room I walk into in my home, I just feel a peaceful atmosphere in my home and sometimes while I'm getting ready or doing something like that. I'll have a youtube video on or a podcast on that is going to feed my faith in a certain area. I make sure that my eye gate and my ear gate constantly has those things that are good and pure and have a good report and lovely. Those are the things that I'm gonna put in front of my face. And then sometimes I will purposefully bring the atmosphere of heaven with me. For instance, when I used to work a corporate job, in my car on my way to work, I made a practice of saying, "The Kingdom of God in all its fullness walks in the doors of bla de bla company with me. All the fullness of God dwells on the inside of me. So miracle signs and wonders are breaking out all around me and my coworkers are drawn to Jesus and to the kingdom of God because Jesus lives in me and walks in those doors with me." So I would change an atmosphere. I made sure that I was an atmosphere changer. So those are three tools that we can use to be able to enter into our next in confidence and with the understanding of who we are rather than in that fear that we're not enough that we're an impostor that we don't have what it takes. So what are those three tools? We're going to bring scripture to the fear that we're facing. We are going to get a clear word from the Lord and we're going to clean the atmosphere around us. Well, all right, peeps. This was the Higher Pursuit podcast. I thank you so much for joining me. Well, all right, peeps. that wraps up this episode of the Higher Pursuit podcast. Thank you so much for joining me. Make sure to like and subscribe to this podcast so you can be notified of all the new content. And you can also find me on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Until next time, run your race well! God bless.
