Published: October 29, 2009 05:40 pm      

Self confidence through faith

My mother showed up at our house two hours early the weekend of the time change last fall. Instead of “Falling Back” she had “Sprung Forward.”

She was supposed to arrive after we had all attended the early service at our respective churches. She went to her church for the 8:30 a.m. service and was surprised to find no one there (at what was really 6:30 a.m.). Then she went home and read her Bible and waited to come to our house at 10:30 a.m., which was actually 8:30 a.m.

It had finally occurred to her as she was driving to our house that she had set her clocks forward an hour instead of back an hour. She walked through our door laughing, embarrassed ... and slightly worried.

Sometimes older people, especially those who have nursed relatives through dementia, get a little worried when they do something that indicates they might be “losing it,” as my mom puts it. But I told her, truthfully, that I lay in bed the night before, repeating in my head the “Fall Back, Spring Forward” mantra to assure myself that I had changed the clocks correctly.

When I saw her the Monday following the time change she said with a broad smile of relief, “A cell phone company did the same thing and changed their clocks forward instead of back, messing up their customers.”

It is always nice to know that if we do something silly or stupid or embarrassing, we are not alone. We find comfort in knowing that someone else did the same silly, stupid or embarrassing thing.

And if a cell phone company’s high speed wireless network can make that kind of mistake, so can a human. “We did have a glitch this morning,” said a company spokesperson. “It’s all repaired.”

And, so was my mother’s confidence. She has always been a role model of someone who was comfortable in her own skin, able to make mistakes without letting it compromise her confidence in herself. She can laugh at herself and her mistakes and encourage others to laugh along with her.

But I know as she ages she watches for signs that those mistakes are symptoms of a more serious health concern. She might worry that her brain cells aren’t firing as well as they used to, fretting that it is a sign of Alzheimer’s rather than simply “Old Timers” disease.

It was good to see her confidence in herself repaired, restored. We had just discussed self confidence in regards to another person and situation. She shared with me some insightful thoughts on the topic from a syndicated advice column written by Carolyn Hax.

Hax wisely suggested that the more secure people are, the less of a concern humiliation becomes. They are not “heavily dependent upon their position relative to others” and therefore better able to weather the storm. A secure person’s power is internal, rather than external.

I agree with that completely but would also add that even greater security comes if a person’s power is eternal, rather than external. If we believe that we’re just passing through this lifetime and that there is more on the other side, then any insult or injury we suffer here is temporary compared to an eternity of peace. Our faith may provide an internal and eternal power rather than an external power dependent on the judgment of others.

I appreciated the prayer of a woman speaking about this issue recently. “It doesn’t matter what other people think or say about us,” she prayed one Sunday morning at my church. “Our value comes from you, God, not from them.”

I wrote that down on a Post-It note and put it on my daughter’s bathroom mirror. It is something young girls need to sincerely internalize to make it through the bumpy road of adolescence and young adulthood. In fact, it is a lesson learned and relearned through various stages in our lives.

I don’t mean to imply that faith provides a constant supply of self confidence — we should always be able to question ourselves and sometimes that will leave us uncertain or insecure — but if we focus on what God thinks of us and our behavior, that should be a better base than worrying about what everyone else thinks.

Jaletta Albright Desmond is a self-syndicated columnist who writes about faith, family and the fascinatingly mundane aspects of daily life. She lives in North Carolina with her husband and two daughters. Contact her at jdesmond@bdtonline.com.