Lost confidence

Nauru, the island where children have given up on life. Where children as young as 10 are self-harming and committing suicide. These people have lost their confidence - how can this be allowed to continue in our world today?

Whilst we were away visiting folk in the UK a visiting preacher here talked about confidence.

Confidence... The good book says "Therefore do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward. For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God you may receive what is promised." I picture a young person full of ambition working their way to the top of their profession. But it also says that we should "put no confidence in the flesh" so maybe my picture is all wrong!

Growing older... in one sense I am still me, I don't feel any different. But my senses and memory are not so astute and I get tired more easily. And above all I am in jeopardy of loosing my confidence. Confidence in being a good husband, a good father (though mercifully my children can now look after themselves, maybe soon they'll be looking after me, God bless them), confidence in being a supposed Christian leader, a teacher, even in being an electronics design engineer and programmer. And sometimes I just feel like giving up. But I know I mustn't. And compared with these children on Nauru, or the Kenyan kids my daughter is teaching, or indeed 90% of the world's population, I have it made living here. How dare I have such negative thoughts? And yet I do: because there is some truth in the lack of my abilities which, I suppose, I must come to terms with.

I now (sometimes) use a hearing aid, I wear glasses for reading and, more recently, for driving, I manage short term memory loss by having only certain places where I leave important things: when I can't  remember where I last put my wallet I only have to look in those certain places. All very well until my routine is disturbed and I leave it some other place!

I have already decided to gradually retire my electronics design business - there is plenty of more mundane and less stressful work to fill my time here. But some of the other areas are not so easy to deal with!