best imposter of myself

Imposter syndrome club, at some time or another, has counted us all as members.

"I'm not good enough to be here," we mutter to ourselves about [pick the situation]. "I don't belong. I'm such a fraud, an imposter."

This could be a friend group. A class, a degree program, or a school. A club. A relationship. A team. A job. An opportunity. You name it. Friends could tell us we belong; people wiser than us can affirm that we're up to the challenge ahead of us. People that know us, and love us, can bellow into our faces all day long these assertions.

But still, these positive reinforcements clang off our self-imposed armor of suck like jump shots off the backboard.

How do we step around this self-doubt?

I propose some ways to bypass this imposter syndrome (in other words, these are some ways that've helped me).

Bypass Way #1: Let's face facts. We suck ... at assessing ourselves when it comes to certain things.

This should not be news to you, or to me. Sort of how we can't tell when we have a piece of food stuck between our front teeth, but others can notice right away.

Sometimes, we need to admit that others can offer us a fairer assessment about ourselves than we can. Not just anyone else, but wise people who love us, want us to succeed, and who wish us well. We gotta recognize that their input is more accurate than our self-perception. In other words, we suck at fairly assessing ourselves. We gotta doubt our doubts.

Bypass Way #2: Let's re-frame imitating and pretending. 

What's so wrong with imitating, pretending to be something we're not quite?

Hear me out.

As little kids, we felt zero qualms about imitating, and playing pretend. We pretended we were doctors, musicians, fashion designers, scientists, construction workers, professional athletes, or soldiers. 

What all did you pretend to be? 

Our playgrounds, stages, and imaginations held court to so many instances of us pretending to be someone we weren't. 

You've done this. I have too.

Who hasn't stood in front of a mirror, holding a comb, and pretended to to be a famous singer?

But somewhere along the way, we got this idea that if we're watching and imitating others to a degree, we must be fake. We must be imposters. But we didn't always regard imitating and copying this way. 

I tell you this to remind you that imitating isn't always bad. It's often good and wise. 

A chef learns how to expertly cut vegetables by watching someone else do it first. A carpenter learns how to expertly use equipment by first apprenticing and watching someone else work. We all imitate. You're only really aware that you do this, and don't give much thought to if anyone else does. Imitating doesn't make you an imposter. There's wisdom in following an example.

Bypass Way #3: It's not a one-time fix. Imposter syndrome isn't something we overcome once, and that's that. A mentor taught me to think of battling imposter syndrome as akin to pulling weeds. Weeds never, ever go away for good. But weeds can be uprooted and thrown out to allow good plants to flourish. The more we fight the feeling of being an imposter, the easier the fight gets.

So pretty please, try these bypasses when you feel something like an imposter, a fraud ... when you feel like you don't belong.

Trust the words of loved ones as much (if not more) than you trust your own thoughts.

Remember everyone's long history of imitating, and how much we've grown by copying wise examples in our lives.

And keep after those weeds.

It gets easier.

the silence of God

The silence of God can unnerve, agitate. You ask God about something, and you wait for an answer.

It's the prayer screamed against a mirror that's fogged with our frustrated breath. It echoes, but no reply. The room is still. 

It's the fading ambulance siren as it drives away with a shattered dream. Now what? What now, Lord??

Why would God ever be silent when we call? 

There's this story about Jesus. The apostle Thomas (unfairly nicknamed 'doubting Thomas')  hears from the others that the risen Lord visited them, and he says, 'Unless I see in his hands the mark of the nails, and place my finger into the mark of the nails, and place my hand into his side, I will never believe' (John 20:25).

A bold statement. A not-unfair statement. He's calling Jesus out.

The next verse (John 20:26): "Eight days later, his disciples were inside again, and Thomas was with them ... [and] Jesus came and stood among them and said, 'Peace be with you.' Jesus proceeds to respond to, and reply to, Thomas' confusion.

I've read this passage more than once. The perplexing part of this verse (for me) always sits in the first three words:

Eight. Days. Later. 

For Thomas, eight days of silence from God.

Imagine playing a game of tag in a pool. You call out 'Marco!' -- only for someone to reply eight ... days ... later ... with 'Polo.'

Imagine leaving the most crucial voice mail, or sending the most important text message of your life, to someone important to you -- and hearing nothing back in the first hour. You wait one hour for the reply text. The call back. The news about the diagnosis. The job opportunity. The grade. The relationship. The future plan. The news.

 

Then it becomes eight hours of waiting. Then, you fall asleep waiting for a reply to ping your phone. 

 

You wake up the next morning and check -- no notifications.

One day of waiting becomes two. 

 Why have they not yet replied? Your imagination and nerves imagine every worst-case scenario. You wear yourself out with worry. You cry. You scream. You feel numb at times. You try to stay strong. You can't eat. Your sleep suffers. For seven days.

But then let's flip it. 

Say you've known someone for years. The waters of your friendship run deep. These years and the history have built in you both a certainty that you matter to one another.

So when there's a delay in responding, you don't sweat. "My friend won't let me down," you say. "If I haven't heard back, it has to be for a good reason. They'll respond to me when they can." And your friend does get back to you. The silence becomes evidence of a trust, a relationship deep enough to not require instant responses, instant soothing, automatic replies, realtime responses.

What's this built on? 

Trust.

Could it be that God trusts you with the silence? Could it be that's God's trying to show you how to trust him more deeply? There's a point -- in every friendship, every relationship, every collaboration -- where the trust gets stretched just a bit more, so that it can handle more.

It's when you've waited a few days to hear back from someone -- but you don't fret -- because you've waited longer for them before, and they've come through. When you loan a friend some money, and you've never loaned them money before ... and then they do pay you back in a reasonable time.

We trust, and give grace to, the silences we experience with our dearest loved ones and friends.

So what can we infer from the daunting, unnerving silence of God? I guess that question has multiple possible answers. Ergo, one possible answer is this: it's possible that God's trusting you with silence because God trusts you, wants that sort of connection with you, that you're able to handle the waiting.

Anyway, as you wait in your silence, give this some consideration.

talk talk

Some of us feel more at home in "deeper" conversations -- the talks where we bare our souls - where we excavate the depth of life's meaning, of love, of music lyrics, of unicorns, of faith, of personality profiles, of political theory, of metaphysical aspects of trees and how they sometimes speak to us. 

But it's the "small talk" many of us disdain. 

Small talk: the informal discourse about nothing seemingly important. It's the 'how's the weather' and the 'how's your week going?' or the 'it wouldn't feel so cold without this wind' sorta chatting.

Small talk can seem like the air in a bag of unopened potato chips. Small talk is the kiddie pool when we want the high dive. It's the appetizer when we're hungry for the main course. It's that little pocket on our jeans, you know ... the one behind the right front pocket. Does this even have a use anymore?

This is not how God thinks of small talk. This is good news for us, even if we don't like small talk. It's not that God sees "small talk" as more or less important than 'deeper talk'; it's that nothing about our lives so boring to our Lord as to is wear him out.

When we engage in small talk (even when we feel like we stink at it) we acknowledge this truth: God regards all aspects of our lives as worthy of his attention. Therefore, when we likewise show similar interest about the 'little stuff' in each other's lives, we reflect something of how God first loves us.

Think about it: the people you trust most were, at one time, strangers to you. You shared a class in high school, or you worked together, or you went to the same church, or played on the same team. Eventually, you started talking about something "seemingly" trivial. Maybe you discussed about a mutual love of tacos, or why you love the smell of paint (admit it, some of y'all do -- there's no way that's just me), or your favorite music when you were a kid, or the particular way you eat a roll of Smarties (yes, there are particular ways).

The innocuous chats lead to deeper ones. We can't swim the ocean without first wading in the shallower water at the shoreline. We almost always learn to trust others with the weightier parts of ourselves by first discussing the lighter parts. And it's not like our talks with trusted friends only swim in deep water once they reach that point: they meander from deep to shallower, from sad to ridiculously funny, from plain to joyful, from amusing to endearing.

It turns out that small talk works more like mortar between bricks. It's the cartilage situated around our body's joints. It's the marinade for the steak. It's the (environmentally-friendly) straw that stirs the drink. It's the echo that comes after hearing a joyful noise. And we get better at it (and it gets easier) as we keep at it.