For years, I believed I was a bad cook.
I had never learned my way around the kitchen. It wasn’t until moving to Africa that I realized I needed to rip off the bad cook label. Otherwise, my husband and I would survive on rice and beans. I needed to learn to cook. Realizing that was more freeing than the label I had stuck on myself.
I also once labeled a one-year-old little boy by giving him a cute blue dress with pink bows. Matendo looked great—and wore it for the next two and a half years. As the child got taller, the dress got shorter. One day, I realized a dress wasn’t the best gift for a little boy. I asked his father why he had dressed his son in a gown for more than two years. He said, “You put it on him.”
I told Matendo’s father I had made a mistake and put a label on his child. I also set a little boy free that day by exposing the truth. Matendo dropped the gown and never looked back.
We, too, can wear labels for years: bad cook, poor student. We need a friend who is willing to get real and call a lie what it is. We might need to be that person who apologizes for handing out unhealthy labels.
Sometimes, we don’t realize how inappropriate the labels are. We get stuck in a mindset for years with no one shedding light for us. Lying labels become so common in our experience that we no longer see them as lies.
Examining the labels placed on us to see which ones belong and which ones don’t is essential. We can love ourselves enough to see if we are believing truth or lies. We do this by remembering we have been created in God’s image, asking God to speak truth to our hearts, and sharing with a trusted friend.
Learn to live in the truth, and let the truth set you free.
(Photo courtesy of pixabay.)
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Michelle Heed and her husband of fifteen years are missionaries working with orphans and the vulnerable poor in Tanzania, Africa. She is originally from New York. She and her husband have one adopted daughter and two cats that believe they are people.