What We Speak Over Ourselves

What We Speak Over Ourselves

There is a voice most women carry that is quieter than speech and more constant than thought. It narrates our lives. It comments on our choices. It tells us what we are worth, what we have failed at, what we will probably fail at again.

For many of us, that voice is not kind.

I have been thinking about the relationship between what we speak — aloud, internally, habitually — and what we come to believe. Not in a superficial, self-help sense. But in the deeper sense that scripture seems to take seriously: that words are not merely descriptions. They form. They shape. They direct.

Death and life are in the power of the tongue. (Proverbs 18:21) This is not a verse about gossip, though it applies there too. It is a verse about the fundamental weight of language — the capacity of what we say to give life or take it away.

What are we speaking over ourselves?

I don't mean the things we say in crisis. I mean the ordinary narration. I always do this. I'm not good at that. I'll never manage to be different. These are not neutral observations. They are, when repeated often enough, verdicts.

Scripture offers a different narration. You are chosen. You are held. You are loved with a love that does not waver with your performance. You are being renewed. These are not flattery — they are the account of who you are in Christ, written not by your inner voice but by the One who made you.

The practice is not to silence every critical thought. It is to notice which narration we are living inside, and to ask whether we can make room for the one that is actually true.

You are not what your harshest inner voice says you are. Speak carefully over yourself today.