aWkWaRdNeSs

Dear awkwardness, 

You go by many names, disguise yourself in many ways, yet you constantly lurk in the corners of our minds and haunt us to no end. Embarrassment, self-consciousness, shame, guilt, self-doubt, fear, they are all just tools you use to convince us of something that is simply not true. At every large gathering you cause at least one girl to hide on the outskirts of the crowd. At tournaments, you make people wander away alone for long periods of time. You pester people with petty questions and make them sound significant, convincing people that they aren’t smart enough, pretty enough, cool enough, normal enough, strong enough or good enough. You’ve wasted our time and stuck us in the corner in shyness. You tell us that everyone else is laughing at us, or will if we slip up even a little. Our imaginations run wild at all the horrible situations you could make for us. 

So we create fake personalities and pretend to be “cool”, whatever that means. 

You try to stop “just friends” from being friends, tarnish relationships, and haunt breakups. In silence you scream words at us. Every person thinks you’re only plaguing them, you isolate us so well and befriend us until you’ve consumed our thoughts all the time. 

You tell us we don’t belong here when in reality you are the intruder. 

Somehow you make us tell ourselves we are only a street rat, we are the riffraff, unfit to stand in the presence of others. You make us out to be the bad guy, the raincloud on a sunny day, the one haunting everyone else but you are the real monster. 

Defeating you only takes a simple mindset shift, a realization that everyone feels awkward at times and we can easily push through it. You are broken when we have the humility to laugh at ourselves, the love to look beyond ourselves, and the confidence to own who we are. 

Awkwardness, you would rather me not spill all your secrets but we both know that a simple smile can drive you away. C.S. Lewis detailed instructions for your demise when he penned the words,
“Be weird, be random, be who you are because you never know who would love the person you hide”.

The self-doubt that surrounds us in your presence causes us to hide what makes us beautiful but we will still fight you at every turn. We are chosen. We are special. We are loved. Regardless of the lies you spit in our ear, our hearts remain priceless. We belong here because this is where God put us. Awkwardness has no place in a mind that is set on Him. As ambassadors for Christ, we will spread the message of hope and belonging until no one feels your presence any more.