On imposter syndrome, faith, and recognizing the woman you're becoming.
I've always believed that God has a purpose for my life. What I haven't always believed is that I was capable of fulfilling it. There's a difference between believing God can do extraordinary things through ordinary people and believing that you might actually be one of those people.
I know what Scripture says about being fearfully and wonderfully made. I've read the stories of people God called despite their shortcomings, their fears, and their seemingly inadequate qualifications. David was a shepherd boy who would become king. Moses questioned his ability to speak, and Gideon couldn't understand why God would choose someone from the weakest clan in Manasseh. Yet each of them had a purpose that extended far beyond what they could see in themselves.
I've encouraged others to trust the gifts God has placed within them, reminding them that they don't need to have everything figured out before taking the first step. Yet when it came to recognizing those same gifts in myself, I struggled. I could acknowledge the work I'd done, the lessons I'd learned, and the things I'd accomplished, but accepting that I deserved to occupy the spaces those accomplishments had opened for me was another matter entirely. There was always that lingering suspicion that perhaps I'd somehow convinced people I was more capable than I really was. And sooner or later, they would discover the truth.
Oop. Imposter syndrome has entered the chat.
You know, that persistent sense that despite your accomplishments, you're somehow pretending to be someone you're not.
That's the peculiar thing about imposter syndrome. It doesn't necessarily deny your accomplishments. It makes you question whether you deserve them. You can have the experience, the qualifications, and the evidence of your own abilities staring back at you, yet still feel like an outsider in a room you've earned your place in.
When faith is central to your life, those feelings can become even more complicated. You begin to question why you're struggling to embrace opportunities you've prayed for, or why you find it so difficult to believe in the gifts you trust God has given you. Is it fear? A lack of confidence? Or does your hesitation somehow suggest that you don't trust Him enough?
I believe it's more nuanced than that.
Sometimes what we call imposter syndrome isn't a lack of faith. Sometimes it's the discomfort of stepping into a version of ourselves we haven't yet learned to recognize.
Getting Acquainted With Myself
Lately, I've been getting acquainted with a version of myself I don't entirely recognize. She's always been ambitious, always been a dreamer, and she's had stories to tell for as long as she can remember. The difference is that she's finally giving those dreams the attention they deserve. Apparently, she also has every intention of building a career around telling those stories.
Never mind that she has seven children, a household to manage, and a baby who couldn't care less about her literary aspirations. The audacity of this woman to think she can become an author while practically running a daycare from her home. Who does she think she is?
Oh, wait. She's me.
And let me tell you, this woman and I have been having quite the time getting acquainted.
While I've always loved writing, there's something different about allowing myself to believe that I can actually be an author. Not simply someone who writes when she finds the time, but a woman who takes her craft seriously, who has ambitions for her work, and who dares to imagine a future built around the stories she wants to tell.
It's one thing to dream about becoming someone. It's another thing to recognize yourself when you begin to become her.
I've spent so much of my adult life identifying myself through the roles I occupy and the responsibilities I carry that making room for another part of my identity has felt surprisingly unfamiliar. The mother is still here, along with the wife, the woman of faith, and the woman whose responsibilities don't disappear simply because she's decided to pursue her dreams. But there's room for the author, too, and I'm no longer interested in treating her ambitions as though they're an inconvenience.
When Doubt Disguises Itself as Humility
When I was preparing to publish my devotional, Restored by Grace, and its companion journal, Healing Through Faith, I wrestled with feelings I hadn't anticipated.
Writing wasn't new to me. I've loved storytelling for as long as I can remember. Words have always been one of the ways I've made sense of my experiences, my emotions, and the world around me. But writing something for myself and putting those words into the world for other people to read were two very different things.
Suddenly, I was questioning everything. Was I a good enough writer? Would anyone connect with what I had to say? What gave me the authority to write about faith and healing when I was still navigating my own journey?
That last question stayed with me because I wasn't writing from a place of having figured everything out. I was writing from experience, from seasons of pain, unanswered questions, prayer, and the grace that had carried me through them. Yet somehow, I'd convinced myself that I needed to arrive at a certain place before I could speak about the journey, as though healing had to be complete before my experiences could be meaningful to someone else.
I've also come to realize how easily self-doubt can disguise itself as humility. I could acknowledge someone else's gifts without hesitation, but acknowledging my own felt uncomfortable. Compliments were met with explanations, accomplishments were minimized, and there was always a reason why something I'd achieved wasn't quite as significant as someone else seemed to think.
While I genuinely believe that everything I have comes by the grace of God, I've had to ask myself when giving God the glory became an excuse to dismiss the gifts He'd given me. Surely, recognizing my abilities doesn't mean I'm taking credit away from Him.
Perhaps humility was never supposed to require me to make myself small.
God Already Knew Who He Was Calling
I've often thought about Moses and his response when God called him to lead the Israelites out of Egypt. Rather than immediately accepting the assignment, Moses questioned his ability to speak, his credibility, and whether anyone would listen to him. In Exodus 4:10, he tells God that he is not eloquent.
I find something strangely comforting about that exchange because I can almost imagine myself having a similar conversation. Lord, are You sure? Have You considered the logistics? Because I have, and there are quite a few.
What stands out to me isn't simply that Moses doubted himself. It's that God was already aware of his limitations when He called him. Moses wasn't revealing something God had overlooked, yet he was so focused on what he believed he lacked that he struggled to see beyond it.
I wonder how often we do the same thing, presenting God with an inventory of everything we believe makes us unsuitable for the very things we feel called to pursue. Our circumstances may be different from Moses', but I recognize something familiar in his hesitation: the tendency to focus so intently on what we believe we lack that we overlook the gifts we've already been given and what we've accomplished with them. Even when there's evidence of our abilities, we can convince ourselves that we need to become more confident, more accomplished, more knowledgeable, or more deserving before we can begin.
Of course, preparation matters. There are skills to develop, lessons to learn, and responsibilities to take seriously. Faith doesn't eliminate the need for wisdom or hard work. But there's a difference between acknowledging where we need to grow and allowing our perceived shortcomings to overshadow the abilities we've already demonstrated.
God doesn't need me to become someone else before He can work through me. He already knows who I am, including the parts of myself I'm still discovering.
Faith Doesn't Always Feel Like Confidence
For a long time, I assumed that walking boldly in faith meant I wouldn't be afraid, that if I truly trusted God, confidence would somehow replace uncertainty and I would move forward without questioning myself.
But that hasn't been my experience. I've prayed and still felt nervous. I've made decisions while wondering whether I was making the right ones. I've taken steps toward things I believed God was calling me to do without knowing how everything would unfold. Sometimes I've moved forward, while other times I've allowed fear to delay me longer than I'd care to admit.
I've also learned that not every moment of self-doubt needs to be interpreted as a spiritual attack. Sometimes our insecurities are rooted in past experiences, criticism, comparison, or expectations we've placed on ourselves. Sometimes we're simply attempting something unfamiliar, and the uncertainty makes us uncomfortable.
Our faith and our emotional well-being aren't separate from one another. Prayer has been an important part of my journey, but so has learning to recognize the thoughts and behaviours that keep me stuck. I've had to become more intentional about the way I speak to myself, more willing to acknowledge my accomplishments, and more comfortable accepting that I can be both capable and inexperienced at the same time.
Because what if I do make a mistake? What if something I create isn't received the way I hoped? What if I put myself out there and discover that I still have a great deal to learn? Would any of that mean I wasn't supposed to try?
I don't believe so. Making mistakes doesn't invalidate my calling, and having more to learn doesn't diminish what I've already accomplished. I can trust God without having every answer, approach new opportunities with confidence while remaining humble enough to learn, and acknowledge my fears without giving them authority over my decisions. Faith doesn't require me to feel certain of my own abilities at every turn. It requires me to trust the One who has called me, even as I continue to grow into the woman He's preparing me to become.
Embracing the Woman I'm Becoming
Restored by Grace eventually made its way into the world, despite all the questions I had about my ability to write it. Now, as I prepare to release another book, I find myself reflecting on just how much my relationship with writing has changed.
The dreams have become bigger, but so has my willingness to take them seriously. I'm beginning to see writing not simply as something I enjoy, but as a craft I want to continue developing and a meaningful part of the life I'm building.
That doesn't mean the doubts have disappeared. There are still moments when I look at what I'm working toward and wonder how on earth I intend to accomplish it all. Then someone needs lunch, the baby needs changing, or one of my children urgently needs me to locate a toy that is apparently essential to their survival. And somehow, I'm the only person in a house full of people qualified to find it.
Such is the glamorous life of an aspiring author.
But these moments have taught me something about the way I've viewed my own ambitions. For years, I treated my responsibilities as evidence of why certain dreams were impractical, as though the different parts of my life were competing for permission to exist. I'm beginning to understand that my responsibilities don't invalidate my aspirations. Motherhood is one of the greatest callings God has placed on my life, but it was never meant to require the abandonment of every other gift He's given me.
And perhaps that's what makes this season of my life so meaningful. I'm not trying to escape the woman I've been. I'm making room for the woman I was always capable of becoming.
Philippians 1:6 reminds us that He who began a good work in us will carry it on to completion. For years, I read that Scripture as reassurance that God wasn't finished with me. Today, it means something even more profound: I don't have to do the finishing work. God will. And quite frankly, that gives me an enormous sigh of relief.
I've spent nearly forty years allowing my past to influence how I think, how I see myself, and what I believe I'm capable of pursuing. Experiences that should have been chapters in my story became limitations I carried into the next ones. Somewhere along the way, I allowed the woman I had been to determine what was possible for the woman I could become.
But I don't want to live that way anymore.
This next phase of my life isn't about waiting for permission, convincing myself that I'm worthy, or shrinking my ambitions to fit the expectations I've grown accustomed to. It's about embracing and accepting all that God has for me, and then some.
For the first time in a long time, I'm not approaching the future as something I need to fear or merely survive. I'm looking forward to it. I'm excited about the possibilities, the work ahead, the stories waiting to be told, and the woman who gets to experience it all.
And yes, I still have questions. I still have responsibilities, insecurities, and moments when the sheer audacity of my ambitions makes me laugh. But those things no longer get to determine the direction of my life.
Maybe that's what imposter syndrome has been stealing from us all along. Not just our confidence, but our ability to imagine ourselves fully occupying the spaces God has created for us. We become so preoccupied with whether we belong that we hesitate to step into the very places where we were meant to grow, contribute, and fulfil our purpose.
And when I think about the woman I'm becoming, I no longer want to ask, Who does she think she is? I want to look at her and say, There you are. I've been waiting for you.
If you've stayed with me this far, I'd like to leave you with one question to consider:
What if the woman you've spent so much time questioning is the very woman God has been preparing you to become?
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