personal standards

I was talking to a friend of mine this morning, she is a photographer and recently was able to capture (beautifully!) a surprise engagement. She showed me the raw photos, before she started her edits, and wow. They were fantastic!
She has an amazing eye for photography.

This is her talent.
This is the passion in her heart.
And yet.. she doubts herself.
She holds herself to a certain set of standards, and even then, even though people have hired her time and time again to photograph parts of their lives, she doubts herself and has to reinforce herself with positive self-talk because her humanity tells her she's not good enough.

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What is the deal with our self inflicted standards?

I myself owned a sewing business at one time, creating interesting eco-friendly products that were pertinent to everyday use. I would create some of the things that were in my mind and they would sell off the rack. I would receive emails and messages from people to create custom items for them and they loved them.

Now I know for me, positive feedback (words of affirmation) are my main love language. So I need to hear from other voices that aren't my own when I've done something good or worthwhile.

But why must we look for this outside of ourselves?
Because of our humanity.

Because we crave love, we crave togetherness. Whether or not we admit it, parts of us do need the opinions of other people.

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Even though we were created perfectly by our heavenly Father, we forget that our worth is in Him, not because of anything we've done, but because of the fact that He loves us perfectly, in our mess, in our weakness, in our dependability on other meaningless things.

It's so nice to know that the only standard He holds us to is the fact that He loves us unconditionally.

We need to be more gentle on ourselves.
Our self-talk can either be damaging or life-giving.
How about instead of "I didn't do good enough" because we're the ones who say what "good" is, how about "I am great at what I do, and I can only get better". Because God puts our passions in us, it is us who makes it seem like nothing.

Today, I choose to hold myself to His standard. I am perfectly created, I will stumble because I'm human, and He loves me no matter what.