In 2014, I plan on shaking things up a bit. I am going to try something new and if I fall flat on my face, at least I can say I did something totally out of my comfort zone.

I am going to be confident!

I’ve been reading this book about how God calls us all to be confident women. The underlying theme really could apply to men as well but as some women know we can be a little hard on ourselves.  Okay… extremely hard on ourselves. We have that nagging little voice in the back of our head saying things like “You want to do what? You aren’t qualified for that! You definitely are not smart enough for that! You are just you and nothing more. Go ahead, try that out and you are gonna totally bomb!” Well maybe some of you reading this are already super confident and don’t have this problem but I am not one of those people.

When writing this blog about our life here in Bangkok I promised I would be totally honest with you so here goes. I am very confident in my abilities, in a very few things. Those things I know I can do, the things I have done a million times. For example, I am extremely confident in my ability to sit down and if undisturbed I could probably eat the entire bag of Oreos… especially when pregnant. I am confident in my ability to be a planner. I am a to-do list maker almost to the point where it’s a little mental.  I am confident in my ability to be totally silly and make my husband and kid laugh when needed (thank you dad for the goof ball gene). I am also extremely confident in my ability to be positive for other people or situations. I guess this is because it’s super easy to be positive for someone else because really I have nothing to lose because it isn’t my life.

I have that little voice inside of me, the negative talker, the one that is holding me back. This voice I know is the way that Satan brings me down. He is that little voice saying all of those things and telling me I am never good enough. It’s about time I tell him to shut up and if you are like me I suggest you do the same. In reading this book about being confident, the author reminds us how God has created all of us, He loves us no matter what and we need to be confident. We do not need to be cocky and think “I am the best thing that walked this earth”.  It is the confidence that we were made by God to accomplish his perfect plan on this earth. Bottom line: We need to be confident and trust God’s plan for our lives.

Being the “stay at home mom” while living in Bangkok has given me many opportunities to try new things. I read more, write more, because of my writing I have had job opportunities come my way, I have had the opportunity to volunteer as an assistant editor of a magazine and I have discovered I’m not half bad at taking pictures. I never would have imagined that I would be writing anything for fun, let alone something people might actually enjoy reading.

At the moment, I feel that God is calling me to pursue this writing path more and more. I have been trying to ignore it by staying busy doing the little bit of work and working with Killi on his therapy but I can’t ignore it anymore. The past weeks I have been hit upside the face with several different opportunities that have made me think twice about ignoring the call. Although, I have had these offers and positive feedback, the negative voice comes creeping up saying “What do you know about writing!? Your writing is just a blog! You can’t write something good enough to be published!” With these negative thoughts I have been second guessing myself but thank the good Lord for how he works. Whenever these thoughts would creep up, instead of being bummed or ignoring the idea of trying something new, I would pick up this book. Whichever chapter I was reading that day, I felt like it was really speaking to me and addressing exactly how I was feeling at that moment.

God wants us to try! He wants us to use our “God given” abilities to go out and help others. In my case,  if it means through writing for a magazine or even this blog, where I can share my struggles with you then I will do it! God would rather us try and fail then to never try at all. The failures and the doors slammed in our faces are the steps we have to take to get us to where we are ultimately supposed to be, to accomplish His ultimate plan for our lives!

I am going to be confident in God’s plan for my life. I am not going to doubt His ability to see me through every hardship that I face. I believe that I have a purpose. I believe that purpose is to be a voice that will spread Gods word to those who need to hear it. I am going to write until I have nothing left to say…

God loves YOU! He has a plan for YOU! Go out, be confident!