Most of you will probably think I’m saying something that I’m not and misinterpret the entire message. But here goes. Don’t duck out early.

I can’t stop thinking about my talk at icuTalks last month. God will use it, God will redeem it and the message I gave on change was from Him. However, the delivery was all me. And that’s the problem. If you haven’t watched it, my pride doesn’t really even want you to, but my heart knows that you need to hear it for any of the rest of this post to have the slightest percentage of a chance at making sense.

As a speech, it was good. I relied on my notes too much for my own sake - which is more of a lack of confidence in my brain power than it is a lack of confidence in my capability. I said the words. I got some laughs. I saw an astonishing amount of notes being taken. All of which point to my earlier statement about the content being from God. I do believe that people needed to hear what I said and I do believe that He will use it to continue speaking to people in the midst of change, whether it’s of their own choosing or change happening to them.

So what’s the issue? That it was a speech. I relied totally on my own strength to pull it off. And I can completely tell the difference. I talked at people. I didn’t talk to them. I said the words I had written, I didn’t lead with emotion. I made the points without elaborating. I didn’t leave room for the spirit to interject and as someone who wants to speak as God’s mouthpiece, not just be a motivational speaker, that’s basically the biggest mistake I could have made. This makes zero sense to some of you but talking and teaching, giving a speech and giving a message, are not the same. I have the heart for one but did the other.

Then I went on the icuTalks podcast but instead of diving deeper into my content, I decided this was my chance to try and explain my unrest in the whole situation. To apologize to Kim and her team for how it went down and explain what I would’ve done differently. But instead of humbly explaining my regret during the episode, it came out even more wonky and unclear. I was in a weird headspace. Random interruptions happened, further throwing me off. What could have been my redemption space made me feel even worse about the whole thing. I left the studio feeling like I’d dug myself further into a hole by trying to explain why I was down there to begin with.

If you hear nothing else, please know this: this is not a cry for accolades. This is not a backwards way of fishing for compliments. If you are already formulating your response to me, I do hope and pray and believe that God will use both my talk that night and the podcast episode to speak to people. I do. And if it spoke to you, that glory ALL goes to God. But what this post is about, this unsettled wrestling in my soul, is a very real insecurity that I fell short. Not for people. But for God.

And that is the actual worst.

In my talk, I made the point that change is personal and no matter how good your story is, no matter how much circumstantial evidence you have to prove that you are a different person, it isn’t your job to convince other people that you’ve changed. That it doesn’t even matter if other people know you’ve changed because when it comes down to it, their opinions don’t matter. I said we need to stop trying to prove ourselves to people. And then I got up there and tried to prove myself to everyone.

icuTalks is an amazing ministry. Kim Honeycutt does so much behind the scenes to end the stigma of mental health and I believe so strongly in what the team is doing that I wanted to be good enough for them. I didn’t want to fail them. I didn’t want to disappoint them as the “headliner” for their first event of 2020. I wanted to impact people, make them glad they’d come, be God’s voice, speaking into their situations and be part of what would shake up the change they desired or needed. People come to icuTalks to share bravely and vulnerably their amazing stories of life change, of how Jesus has moved in their lives and truly transformed them into completely different people. Incredible stories of resiliency and courage and pushing through literal horrors to come through on the other side.

And then there’s me. What the hell did I even have to talk about? Sure, I’ve had to deal with junk in my life but I don’t have a transformation story. I’ve essentially known Jesus since my first breath. You can’t point to my story and see a turning point. I am not the picture of life change or transformation or redemption. I knew that, I let my insecurities about it get the best of me, and I packed as much factual content as I could about change into my 25 minutes. Because the fear in my mind said that since I didn’t have a story to tell, I damn well better leave them impressed with my knowledge.

This may be one of the most back and forth things I’ve ever written publicly. My journals are packed full of confusion just like this because my brain never stops and is sometimes a very loud place to be. Even as I sit here, with paint all over my fingers and clothes because these words came bursting out of me in the middle of painting my dining room, I don’t know if this feeling is an attack of the devil or a stirring of the Holy Spirit. I’m bouncing from one perspective to the other and find myself in the unsettled middle. Am I minimizing and only seeing what could’ve been better because satan knows that my words will cause change and he wants to keep me from sharing it further? Is he preying on my insecurities and making me doubt if I’ll ever be good enough to speak for God because he knows I fall for it so easily? Or is God showing me that He will use even my missteps to break chains and reach people? Is He using this to show me that I haven’t arrived and am still learning? Is he giving me this feeling of unrest to remind me that I will always be able to do more, say more and have a greater impact when I rely on Him instead of my own strength? Probably a little of both. There’s a reason they call it spiritual warfare instead of spiritual cohabitation. It’s a back and forth battle, not a stroll together along the beach.

It comes down to feeling like a hypocrite, performing a talk on change instead of preaching a message that wasn’t my own to begin with. I let God lead me in the preparation then acted as if it was a one-man show. I relied on my own strength and what I could control. I read the words that were there instead of risking what God might’ve said through me. I worried more about how my pants were tied and how my hair was laying and if I had lipstick on my teeth than I did about what God wanted to say to me in that moment. Because my insecurities told me that I wasn’t impressive and my fears needed certainty in something. It’s not that I was nervous to be speaking; I’m on stage with a microphone every weekend. But I let comparison in - without even realizing it - so my reaction was the same as if I had been nervous to speak: to control what was controllable and do all that I could do. Which meant all of my focus went on saying the words and I left no room for God to join the conversation. Which is exactly what “old Kristin” - the person I’m fighting so hard to prove that I’m not - would have done.

Ugh. It’s so real. personal. vulnerable. To be this disappointed in myself yet not keep it in where only I would know. I’ve since talked to Kim and was able to explain my unsettled feeling to her. I felt heard, understood and forgiven because even though my relationship with her is full of sarcasm and shenanigans, she is secretly a very gracious person. (just don’t tell anyone I let her secret out.) She reminded me that all I had to do was apologize to God and let that be it. Then I can tell the voices of regret and shame that they don’t have a place here anymore because God has already forgiven me and given me permission to move on. If that’s the case, why am I telling you? Why even let you in on my innermost turmoil? Because that’s what I want this space to be. That’s what I want my life to be. What’s the point of learning the hard lessons and facing the hard things if I can't use them to help other people? My life is about much more than my own piddly little self. And that is the heart behind all of this. the speaking. the writing. the sharing. That it really isn’t about me.

At the end of my talk, it wasn’t included in the recording, but I asked people to stand so I could pray for them. I asked them to open their hands, to raise them high or hold them open in front of them or to just open them at their sides. Can I do that for you now? Right where you are. Open your hands and let me pray for you. You may be opening them to receive. To receive Jesus or receive forgiveness, either from Him or from yourself. Maybe you need to receive a new chance at your relationship with him, at life, in other relationships, in how you see yourself. Or maybe you need to open your hands in release. In surrender. To release control, your ideal self - the one you will never achieve because you keep pushing the bar higher and higher out of reach. Maybe you need to release unforgiveness, bitterness, the anger that pops up when you don’t know why but can’t seem to get rid of it. Whatever it is that you’re holding on to, that’s keeping you from the change you desire but are afraid of.

Steal this prayer that I’ve had on repeat my entire life. “Lord, I let go of (insert your thing here). Just help me let go with this other hand.”