I have been taking part in Home Sanctuary’s Small Things daily challenges for the last three or four months. Owner Rachel Anne Ridge comes up with really great small things to make your life better by creating sanctuary in your own home. Those of us who take up the challenges are Company Girls. I decided to start doing the Friday Company Girls post after procrastinating for three or four months. So here is my first post.

This last week was a little rough because I didn’t sleep well. A pattern that finally broke last night, thank goodness. Part of that was my fault: I was staying up too late. I didn’t get a lot of writing done this week, but I did get a lot of thinking done. Thinking about where I want to go, where I want this blog to go, and who in general do I want to be? A lot of this reflection is due to another wonderful blogger and her challenge this week: Jen Louden. Jen declared this Freedom from Self-Improvement Week. Self-improvement thrives on us thinking we are not good enough. That we  have to beat and guilt and discipline ourselves into doing the right thing. We threw that out this week, and started with the assumption that we are innately good. That there is nothing to fix. On Tuesday, Jen asked these two questions that I’ve been mulling over for this week:

Can I trust myself to be who I am?

Can I trust myself to want what I want?

I don’t. I don’t trust myself. I’ve been thinking a lot about that this week. How not trusting myself hampers me, kneecaps me, disables me. Especially with my writing. I always second guess myself. I always assume I’m not right and it’s going to go wrong. And this has to stop. I need to trust who I am, and I need to trust myself to do what I want to do: write and speak on the women of the Bible. That is what I want to do. I love these women, and I want their stories to be told, and to be straightened out. Several of these women have gotten bad wraps, been marginalized, and just been lied about through the centuries. Someone needs to set the record straight. Someone needs to say to those who can’t handle strong women, women leaders, and career women in the Bible, that yes they are there, and it’s time to stop maligning them on the one hand and stop ignoring them on the other. Their stories need to be heard, and I want to tell their stories. I can trust myself. I can trust myself to do this: to do what I want to do. Not what anyone else thinks I should be doing (mainly the critical judges in my head).

So that is where I have been this week. That is why this blog has offered such meager fare: I don’t trust myself. But I’m working on it. Other people trust me (like my incredible husband), and now it’s time for me to start trusting myself.

I got real cherry to top this week off: I found out I won one of the giveaways Jen did this week: I have a free pass to her virtual retreat in January! Whoo-hoo! Thanks Jen!