A teaching post for women who have spent too long apologizing for how God made them
“For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made.”
— Psalm 139:13–14 (NIV)
There is a word the psalmist chooses in Psalm 139 that I don’t want you to rush past.
Knit.
Not assembled. Not manufactured. Not put together on a conveyor belt or constructed from a template. Knit — strand by strand, stitch by stitch, with intention and care and a finished picture already in the mind of the One holding the needles.
Knitting is slow. It requires attention. Each loop matters. Each thread is chosen. The person who knits something doesn’t do it mindlessly — they choose the pattern, the color, the texture. They can see what it will become long before the item takes shape in their hands.
That is how God made you.
Not randomly. Not in a rush. Not with whatever materials were lying around. He knit you — with every personality quirk, every tendency, every capacity, every life experience — into exactly the person He intended you to be.
And yet most of us spend enormous energy wishing we were knit differently.
The Parts We’ve Tried to Unravel
Let me be honest about what I’ve seen in women’s ministries, in coaching conversations, in the faces of women sitting in church pews week after week.
There is a particular kind of exhaustion that comes from fighting against how you were made.
The woman who is deeply introverted, who runs on quiet and reflection, trying to perform the gregarious, expressive faith she sees modeled around her — and wondering why it feels so forced. The woman whose leadership instincts are strong, who sees what needs to happen and moves toward it naturally — but who has been told that godly women lead quietly and from behind, so she shrinks what God made her to be and calls it submission. The woman who carries wounds in her history — seasons she didn’t choose, experiences that left marks — and who has tried to edit those chapters out of her story instead of letting God redeem them.
We have all tried, at one time or another, to unravel the parts of ourselves we deemed unworthy. Too much. Too little. Too loud. Too quiet. Too driven. Too sensitive.
What if those things weren’t mistakes?
What if the very traits you’ve apologized for most are the ones God is planning to use most?
Fearfully and Wonderfully — Not Occasionally and Accidentally
The psalmist doesn’t say you are adequately made. Or basically made. He says fearfully and wonderfully.
These are not polite words. They are the same kinds of words used throughout the Psalms to describe the creative work of God — overwhelming, awe-inspiring, exceeding what human hands could accomplish. The creation of you, the psalm says, falls into that category.
Not in spite of the particularities. Because of them.
God did not look at the blueprint for your life and think, This isn’t ideal, but it’ll have to do. He looked at it and said, This is exactly right. The way you think. The way you connect. The things that move you to tears or move you to action. The instincts you were born with. The formation that came from your family, your history, your hardest seasons. Every single thread of it was inside His design.
Now here is where this truth has to land somewhere practical, because a beautiful psalm doesn’t automatically change years of internalized self-rejection. You can know the verse and still wince when you see yourself in the mirror. You can quote Psalm 139 and still apologize in the same breath for taking up space.
The gap between knowing this truth and living this truth is bridged by one thing: choosing, repeatedly, to trust the Knitter more than your own critique of the knitting.
Your Personality Is Not a Problem to Solve
One of the most freeing conversations I’ve watched women have is when they discover that the traits they’ve tried hardest to suppress are often their greatest gifts operating without context.
The woman who has been told she’s “too intense” is often someone with extraordinary capacity for depth, focus, and vision — gifts the right environment and the right calling will absolutely need. The woman who has been called “too sensitive” is often someone with a level of empathy and discernment that makes her uniquely equipped to shepherd others through the things no one else wants to name. The woman who has been labeled “too assertive” is often someone with the kind of leadership instincts that God uses to shift the direction of rooms, organizations, families, and communities.
Your personality is not a problem to solve. It is a design to steward.
That is a different task entirely. Stewardship asks: How do I work with what God placed in me rather than against it? How do I develop the gifts, guard the shadow sides, and let Him direct it all toward purpose? Problem-solving asks: How do I become someone different? And you will exhaust yourself trying.
God didn’t make you wrong. He made you for a reason.
Your Story Is Part of the Design
Here is the part that is sometimes harder to accept: not just your personality, but your history, is part of what God knit.
The difficult seasons. The unexpected turns. The chapters you would have written out of your own story. The years that felt like preparation for nothing.
Romans 8:28 doesn’t say God causes everything that happens to you. But it does say He works in all of it — for the good of those who love Him and are called according to His purpose. All things. Not just the comfortable things. Not just the seasons that looked intentional. All of it.
I think of a young woman at Bible college, minding her own business, who was stopped by a professor she barely knew and asked to teach English to Cambodian refugees. She felt completely unqualified. She said yes. She showed up. She didn’t know until years later that the skill of communicating across a language barrier — of finding words that connect, of speaking clearly to people who are still learning the language — would show up again and again in the teaching and writing she’d do for decades.
God doesn’t waste your experiences. He threads them.
The things that have formed you — the grief that taught you compassion, the leadership that taught you discernment, the season in the wilderness that taught you dependence — these are not detours from your calling. They are part of it. He was knitting even in the seasons that felt like unraveling.
What to Do When You Don’t Like the Design
Let me speak to the woman who reads all of this and still struggles to receive it. Because Psalm 139 can sound beautiful in theory and still land with a thud when you’ve spent years looking at yourself and finding things you genuinely don’t like.
Here is what I want to say to her — to you, if that’s where you are:
You don’t have to love every part of yourself to trust the One who made you. Trusting the Knitter is not the same as thinking the knitting is perfect. We live in a fallen world; we all carry wounds and tendencies and shadow sides that need His grace and ongoing formation. Psalm 139 doesn’t say you’re done growing. It says you were intentionally designed by Someone who knows you completely and calls you wonderfully made.
The goal is not self-congratulation. It’s self-acceptance rooted in His acceptance. There is a difference between arrogance and security. Arrogance says, I am excellent. Security says, I am known, and being known, I am loved. That security — not pride, but settled confidence in the One who made you — is what allows you to stop fighting yourself and start becoming who you were always meant to be.
Bring your questions to Him. If you genuinely don’t understand why He made you a certain way, tell Him. He can handle your honesty. The Psalms are full of it. Why, Lord? is not an act of faithlessness — it’s an act of relationship. Ask Him what He intended. Ask Him what He wants to do with what He placed in you. Then listen. He often answers over time, through experience and Scripture and the voices of people who can see in you what you can’t yet see in yourself.
You Are Not a Mistake
I want to close with the most important thing I know how to say on this topic:
You are not a mistake. Not any part of you.
Not the personality that doesn’t fit the expected mold. Not the history that was hard. Not the gifts that feel too big or too small. Not the quirks and the tendencies and the ways you’re wired differently from the women around you.
You were knit. On purpose. By Someone who can see the finished piece from the very first stitch.
The question is not whether you were designed well. You were. The question is whether you will trust the Designer enough to stop trying to unravel what He made — and start asking what He wants to do with it.
He doesn’t waste His work. And you are His.
For Reflection
- What is one aspect of how God designed you — personality, gifting, background — that you’ve spent the most energy wishing was different?
- Looking at your own history, can you identify one season or experience that felt purposeless at the time but that God has since used or redeemed?
- What would it look like, practically, to move from apologizing for how you’re made to stewarding it?
This post is drawn from the At His Feet, In His Service series. If you’re ready to go deeper into understanding your design and how God intends to use it, the companion study guide walks you through discovering your personality, spiritual gifts, and calling — all rooted in His presence. Learn more at https://awakewomensministry.com.