What Are You Still Tied To?
August 22, 2026
For many years, I have loved this image of an elephant tied to a small wooden stake. The first time I saw it, I couldn't get over the absurdity of it.
Here is this enormous animal, powerful enough to move things I couldn't begin to move, standing there with a rope around its leg attached to a piece of wood in the ground, and it stays.
The story commonly told with this image is that the elephant learned when it was young that it couldn't pull free; eventually, it stopped trying. It grew bigger and stronger, but the belief remained the same. I don't know why that image got to me the way it did, but I've carried it with me for years. Maybe because eventually I realized how often we do the same thing.
We grow, our lives change, we learn things, we survive things, and we become stronger. God works on us, teaches us, corrects us, heals parts of us, and brings us through seasons we weren't sure we'd survive. And yet sometimes we're still standing beside the same little stake. Not because we couldn't walk away, but because somewhere along the way, we learned to believe we couldn't.
Some Ropes Don't Look Like Ropes
I don't think most of the things that have held me back in life looked very dramatic. Usually they sounded like sentences.
You're not smart enough.
Someone else is more qualified.
You're too emotional.
You're too much.
You probably can't do that.
What will people think?
Sometimes another person planted the thought, and sometimes nobody had to. I became perfectly capable of telling myself those things. That's one of the strangest things about the beliefs we carry. Eventually we stop remembering where they came from and simply start treating them as facts.
I spent years believing I wasn't smart enough for certain things because school didn't always come easily to me. I questioned gifts God had given me because someone else seemed more talented. I made myself smaller in rooms because I was afraid my personality was too much. I talked myself out of opportunities before anyone else ever had the chance to tell me no. And the longer I believed those things, the less I questioned them.
The rope didn't have to be strong anymore. I believed it was.
Who Told You That?
There's a question in Genesis that I've started thinking about differently. After Adam and Eve sinned, they realized they were naked and hid from God. When Adam told God he was afraid because he was naked, God asked him:
“Who told you that you were naked?”Genesis 3:11
Obviously, there is much more happening in that passage than the way we talk to ourselves. But that question catches me every time. Who told you that?
Who told me I wasn't smart enough?
Who told me I was too much?
Who told me someone else's gift diminished mine?
Who told me rejection meant I wasn't capable?
Who told me being different meant I was deficient?
And perhaps an even more important question:
Was it God?
Because I've allowed plenty of voices to tell me who I am over the years.
Other people's opinions, comparison, rejection, fear, even my own insecurity.
And when you listen to something long enough, it can become difficult to distinguish between what is actually true and what you've simply believed for a very long time.
“Who told you that?”
God Doesn't Ask Us to Believe Every Thought We Have
Romans 12:2 tells us to be transformed by the renewing of our minds.
I used to read that mostly as instruction about becoming a better Christian. Don't think like the world, think like God. I still believe that's part of it, but I've also started realizing how much of following God requires allowing Him to challenge things I've accepted as truth about myself.
Renewing my mind means I don't have to believe something simply because I've believed it for twenty years. I can bring it back to God.
Is this true?
Is this what You say about me?
Am I staying here because You're telling me to stay—or because I'm afraid to find out what happens if I move?
That last one is uncomfortable, because sometimes the thing keeping us somewhere isn't another person. It's us.
I Had Become Really Good at Staying
When you've spent much of your life reading people, you learn how to adjust. You learn what makes someone comfortable. What gets approval, what causes conflict, what version of yourself works best in a particular room. I became very good at those things. And without realizing it, I also became very good at limiting myself.
Don't say that.
Don't try that.
Don't be too loud.
Don't take the risk.
Don't let them misunderstand you.
Don't fail publicly.
Stay where you know you're accepted.
There is a certain safety in staying tied to something familiar; at least you know what happens there. Walking away from it means stepping into something you can't control, and I like control more than I'd like to admit. But at some point, I had to start asking whether some of the limitations I was living under were actually limitations at all or whether they were just old beliefs I'd never stopped to question.
The Stake Might Not Be Holding You Anymore
Maybe that's where you are too. Maybe there is something you've believed about yourself for so long that you've never considered questioning it.
You aren't capable.
You're too old.
You're too young.
You're not educated enough.
You missed your opportunity.
You're too emotional.
You're not disciplined enough.
Someone else could do it better.
Your past disqualifies you.
People like you don't do things like that.
Maybe someone said it to you years ago, maybe life made you believe it, maybe you decided it after a rejection, a failure, a relationship, a season when you really weren't ready, and maybe it even was true once. That's the part I think about when I picture that elephant.
There are things I couldn't have handled twenty years ago that I can handle now.
There are things I wasn't ready for then.
There are things God still needed to teach me.
There were doors that probably needed to remain closed.
But I am not the same woman I was twenty years ago; neither are you. Growth changes things, God changes things, time changes things, wisdom changes things. So perhaps the question isn't only, What held me here?
It's: Does it still?
You Don't Have to Become Someone Else
This is where I want to be careful, because I don't believe the lesson is that we can do absolutely anything if we just believe in ourselves hard enough. That's not what I'm saying. I don't want my confidence to come from convincing myself that I'm unstoppable. I want it rooted in knowing the God who created me. There will be things I'm not called to do. Doors God doesn't open, dreams that change, weaknesses I need to acknowledge, places where I need wisdom, correction, maturity, or simply the humility to admit that something isn't for me.
But I don't want fear making those decisions and calling itself wisdom. I don't want someone else's opinion becoming God's voice in my head. And I don't want an old version of myself deciding what the woman I've become is allowed to do. That's different.
I spent a lot of years becoming fluent in everyone else—what they thought, what they needed, what they expected, how they might react. I'm learning to ask a different question now. God, what do You say?
Because if He says stay, I want to stay. If He says wait, I want to wait. If He says this isn't for me, I want to trust Him. But if the only thing keeping me tied to that little wooden stake is a belief God never gave me in the first place? I don't want to spend another twenty years standing there.
Reflection
Take a minute and think about the things you automatically believe about yourself.
Not the things you would say at church, not the encouraging things you would tell a friend. The things you tell yourself when nobody else can hear.
What sentence shows up when you're considering something new? What do you immediately assume you're not capable of? Where have you made yourself smaller because it felt safer?
Then ask yourself:
Where did I learn this?
Was it something someone actually said, or a conclusion I came to on my own?
Was it true then?
Is it true now?
Does this belief agree with what God says?
Is wisdom keeping me here, or is fear?
What would change if I stopped treating this belief like a fact?
You don't have to force yourself to suddenly believe the opposite; just start by questioning the rope.
What are you still tied to?
A Conversation with God
When I've believed something about myself for so long that I've stopped questioning whether it's true...
God,
show me the things I've accepted about myself that never came from You.
Show me where fear has sounded like wisdom, where rejection became identity, and where someone else's opinion became louder than Your voice.
Help me recognize the beliefs I've carried simply because they've been with me for a long time. I don't want to manufacture confidence or convince myself I can do everything. I want to see myself honestly and through Your eyes.
If there is something I need to learn, teach me. If there is something I need to change, show me. If there is somewhere I need to wait, give me patience. But if I'm standing still because I'm afraid of something that no longer has the power I've given it, help me see that too.
Renew my mind. Teach me to recognize Your voice above all the others I've collected over the years. And give me the courage to move when You tell me it's time.
Amen.
Keep Walking With Me
I've spent a lot of my life learning other people—their emotions, expectations, reactions, and opinions. I'm only now realizing how many of those voices followed me home and eventually became my own.
That's part of what I'm writing about in Fluent in Everyone Else. Not becoming fearless, not deciding nobody else's opinion matters, but learning to recognize which voices have earned the right to shape me—and which ones never belonged there in the first place.
I'm still figuring some of this out. If you are too, keep walking with me.
Hi, I'm Carla.
For forty years, I learned, everyone else. Now I'm learning who God created me to be—and helping others do the same. Through honest stories, biblical truth, and practical encouragement, I hope that you'll discover the freedom to love deeply without losing yourself.
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