Confidence

I have been thinking a lot, since finding out that we are going to be blessed with a little girl, about how and what I want to teach her. I feel like our society today is very hard on girls and women. We tell them, "You have to be this way," or, "You have to look like this." But I don't want our daughter to listen to those voices, negative and narrow and critical. I want her to listen to the only voice that matters.

I think that confidence is a hard lesson to learn. Of all the lessons we have to learn as women, I somehow feel this is the most precious. Confidence carries us far, much farther even than beauty or brains or talent. It doesn't allow the opinions of others to make us feel less valuable than we are. 

I feel like confidence almost has to be planted inside you the very moment you enter the world, or else it has to be learned over years and years of trial and error, making mistakes and realizing that it's OK. I hope that my daughter possesses confidence, intrinsically, from the time she is born. But, just in case she doesn't, that's what I want to be for her always. The voice that says, "You can do anything. You are beautifully and wonderfully made in the image of God. Don't listen to the naysayers or the mean girls or the disillusioned. You are loved more than you could possibly imagine."

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