You, dear writer, are beloved by God. You are the apple of His eye. You are His design. He chose you. You are His child. He adopted you. He delights in you, His creation. You are His workmanship. You are His masterpiece. His affection for you never comes to an end. His love for you extends through time and space across eternity. You are a citizen of heaven, having been established and anointed by Him. God started a good work in you, and He will complete it. As you abide in Christ, you bear His image and bring forth good fruit.
When we know our belovedness, it sparks the fuel of our love for the One who loves us. It also inspires us to offer who we are to the world around us. Think of how lovely it is to hear the voice of someone who loves us. We feel at home, safe, and treasured. It puts a jig in our steps and a joy in our hearts.
You, dear writer, are invited to partner with the One who loves you most to bring His creative wonders to the page and to the world. He could do all of this without our help, of course. Yet He wants us with Him. From out of His delight in loving us, He wants to do join Him in the wonder of creativity.
Yet here’s what happens. We find our thoughts going sideways. We enter the land of doubt, the territory so sneakily orchestrated by the enemy of our soul. In that place of diminishment, we don’t think we have what it takes to create anything of worth. Our mindset, our heart-set, even the way our body feels, influences our creative endeavors.
Imposter Syndrome is a familiar skirmish we encounter. Someone says, “Oh, you’re a writer. What do you write?” I instantly find myself hemming and hawing, not stepping into the identity of being a writer. My thoughts run like this:
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- I’m not really a writer.
- I’m a fake.
- I’m a phony.
Deep down, I hope the conversation will fade away so that no one will examine the reality and discover the truth: I’m a façade.
Does this feel familiar? Perfectionism and comparison fuel this state of mind. So what are we to do?
The enemy of our soul specializes in making us believe things that are not the truth. We fall for his antics and sabotage ourselves and our writing life. Instead, what would happen if we started from a different angle?
Starting From a Different Angle as a Writer
We are called to live from a place of having a sound mind. In 2 Timothy 1:7 we read, “For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.” Take the time to untangle the knotted thoughts.
In a book coach class I took through Author Accelerator, one assignment directed us to write a letter to self-doubt, to our imposter syndrome self. Pouring out my thoughts by hand on paper clued me in to what resided under the surface. I probed the ways I spoke to myself as a writer and realized that imposter syndrome shows up in most aspects of life. Yet that’s not the truest thing about me. I want to live from my belovedness, the place where God delights in me and I trust that is real and true.
To dig through your own experience of Imposter Syndrome, grab you journal as you scratch the root of Imposter Syndrome in your letter to self-doubt. Jot down your thoughts. Delve deep as you consider these things:
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- Examine your core beliefs.
- Assess what’s true.
- Confront what’s false.
- Name how loved you are.
- Drop comparisons to others.
- Stay in deep communication with God.
From start to finish, go to God to hear His words for your heart. Ponder your belovedness, then let it be the fountain you drink from as you engage in your writing life.
Troubling Him
Sally Lloyd-Jones, author of Thoughts to Make Your Heart Sing as well as Jesus Storybook Bible gently encourages us to take all we are concerned about to God. She notes we might hesitate to bring every little thing to God as we think we are bothering Him. Instead, in her brilliant language for children, and the child in us, she says, “But do you know the way to trouble him? By not coming at all.”
Belovedness is our true identity. By hunting for the way God sees us, we come into accurate alignment with who we truly are as people, as writers, as those who move through this world as Christ’s followers. From that identity space, we can then write with joy as we are writers who are dearly loved
FREE Resource
As a way to help discover your identity, both as a beloved writer and as a child of God, I created this Writer Imposter Syndrome. I invite you to download it, use it, share it and share with me how God is working in you.
