As the oldest of five girls in a Nebraska family, she watched her younger sisters excel—academically, athletically, professionally—while she quietly sank under the weight of undiagnosed learning disabilities, misunderstood effort, and a growing sense of being “the leftover.”
Our recent conversation on Created in the Image of God was about much more than behavior therapy. It was about identity, comparison, the enemy’s voice, and how God uses long, painful detours to shape someone into exactly the person He needs them to be for others.
Here are four takeaways from Megan’s journey—and how they fit together.
1. “The Leftover”: When Your Story Doesn’t Match the Oldest‑Child Script
By every stereotype, the oldest child is supposed to be the one who has it together—the leader, the example, the trailblazer. Megan’s story ran in the opposite direction.
- She was the firstborn of five daughters.
- Her parents went back to school while she was in junior high; she grew up studying in college libraries and watching her parents hustle.
- Her sisters were gifted, athletic, and quickly successful. Megan had to work twice as hard for half the results.
In high school, she learned she had a learning disability—but it was handled poorly:
- People without proper training made assumptions about her intellect and future.
- She was lumped together with others and, in her words, “basically told my future would be different,” in a doom‑laden way.
- Educators she should have trusted mishandled the process, leaving her with a bad relationship to schooling itself.
The labels came:
- “Lazy.”
- “Difficult.”
- “Rude” (with a few more “colorful” versions of that word).
Inside, she gave herself a harsher label:
“I nicknamed myself ‘the leftover’—like God used all the good ingredients on my sisters and then just threw whatever was left into me.”
Family gatherings compounded it: everyone shared “highlights” from the year. Careers. Achievements. Sports. Scholarships. She had nothing to report.
She loved God enough to show up at church. She believed—intellectually—that God made everyone with purpose. But for years she assumed there was an asterisk on her life:
“I figured I was just meant to be a helper around the house. God gave the special callings to my sisters. I was the one He kind of left in the dumpster.”
That’s a brutal way to live: loving God, but quietly believing He shortchanged you.
2. Resentment, Comparison, and the Tenth Commandment
Unsurprisingly, resentment took root.
How could it not, when:
- Your younger siblings breeze into things you strain and fail at?
- You are known as “so‑and‑so’s sister” instead of Megan?
- People around you— educators, relatives, peers— compare you incessantly and you compare yourself even more?
Megan admitted to feeling deep anger and bitterness toward her sisters’ success. Not because they had done anything wrong, but because their stories threw her own lack of visible “purpose” into painful relief.
It reminded me of the tenth commandment:
“You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife… or anything that is your neighbor’s.”
We often reduce that to property and money. But coveting is broader: it’s the longing to have someone else’s story, to be anyone but the person God is actually writing you to be.
This dynamic shows up early in Scripture:
- Adam and Eve had everything they needed, including intimate relationship with God. Yet the serpent’s whisper—“Did God really say…?” and “He knows you’ll be like Him”—planted dissatisfaction with what they already had.
- God’s haunting question—“Who told you that you were naked?”—is less about clothing and more about shame: Where did you get the idea that there was something fundamentally wrong with how I made you?
- In the next generation, Cain and Abel embody the first bitter comparison between siblings, ending in violence.
- Jesus’ prodigal son parable flips it again: the outwardly “good” brother becomes embittered at the father’s mercy; the failed younger brother becomes the recipient of extravagant grace.
Megan’s story sits in that arc. She was the older sibling who felt like the failure, watching others live what culture calls “blessed” lives. The temptation to see herself as cursed, overlooked, defective was ever‑present.
For years, that comparison poisoned her inner life. It fed depression and even suicidal ideation:
“It got to where I thought, ‘It would just be better if I carried through with this thought and ended it.’ I didn’t, but that idea was always there, in the background.”
It’s precisely into that space that the enemy speaks.
3. Silencing the Enemy in the Wilderness: “Who the Hell Do You Think You Are?”
If you’ve ever heard the voice of despair in your own head, Megan’s description will sound familiar.
In one college math class—a required course she had to pass to move forward—she remembers staring at problems on the page, ready to work, disciplined, having shown up again and again.
But instead of formulas, she heard an almost audible attack:
“You’re such an idiot. You can’t do this. Why the hell are you even here?”
Over and over. Like a broken record. No one in the room was saying those things out loud. But the enemy might as well have been sitting next to her.
“I couldn’t even focus. It was noise in a quiet room.”
She passed the exam eventually, and people around her congratulated her—knowing how hard she’d worked. But the voice returned every time she went to do something difficult:
- “You can’t do this.”
- “You have no purpose.”
- “Who do you think you are?”
For a long time, she absorbed it. Church attendance alone didn’t silence it. Well‑meaning, but uncomprehending family members often interpreted her withdrawal as rudeness or laziness. Her mother, to her credit, later admitted she didn’t know how to help.
The turning point was not a single dramatic moment, but a growing disgust with the enemy’s hold:
“I finally said, ‘Enough. I’m done. The enemy has too much hold on me. I’m just done with him.’”
Her response was both spiritual and, interestingly, behavioral:
- She named the voice as the enemy, not as truth.
- Every time the accusation came, she replaced it on purpose:
- “No. I’m made in the image of God; I must be good. I just can’t figure out this math.”
- “Just because I’m not good at this task doesn’t mean I have no purpose.”
- She kept attending church, but more importantly, she went into Scripture and teaching herself, asking God: “Help me see who You are and who You say I am.”
She also made hard relational choices:
- She distanced herself, at times, from friendships and even family contexts that only reinforced the old labels.
- She stopped letting others’ misunderstandings define her.
Along the way, God used resources like John and Lisa Bevere’s The Wilderness to reframe her story. That book’s central idea—that not every trial is punishment; many are refinement—helped her see her learning disability and “hiccup after hiccup” not as cosmic mistakes, but as God’s forge.
It echoed the truth we’ve talked about often here:
- Diamonds and jewels are formed under intense heat and pressure.
- Pearls grow in hidden darkness, one irritating grain layered over with beauty.
- Hebrews says God “chastens every son whom He loves,” and that “no trial for the present seems pleasant, but afterward it yields” real fruit.
- Astonishingly, it says even Jesus “learned obedience through the things He suffered.”
Why would any of us be exempt?
Megan began to see that God had not “left her in the dumpster.” He had been building something in her: empathy, perseverance, the ability to recognize and reject the enemy’s lies—skills she would need for the work ahead.
4. Behavior and Hope: What She’s Doing With What God Gave and Taught Her
None of this would matter if it stayed locked in Megan’s private journal. The beauty is what she’s done with it.
Almost by accident, a friend connected her to a behavior job when she needed work. She became an RBT (Registered Behavior Technician), working under board‑certified behavior analysts:
- She carried out behavioral plans.
- Collected data.
- Worked one‑on‑one with kids and adults facing autism, developmental disabilities, and mental health challenges.
She moved to New York and worked more on the mental health side, dealing with issues like suicidal ideation. Over time, she moved into management roles, then into deeper relationship with families.
What she heard again and again, often behind closed doors, was a version of what she had once felt:
“Tell me there’s hope for my child. Tell me they’ll make it further than this.”
Too often, professionals had given only behavior plans, not hope. Parents and siblings—burned out from years of intense focus on one person’s needs—would confess:
“To be honest, I can’t stand this kid.”
Sometimes the child was a little one. Sometimes an adult. Either way, the home was strained: resentment, confusion, guilt.
Out of that, Megan launched two initiatives:
The Behavior Project (Podcast)
A conversational show where she:
- Explains behavioral strategies in real‑world language.
- Talks about kids and teens, including “typical” teenage turbulence.
- Connects psychology with biblical truth whenever possible, noting how often the two are aligning as research catches up with Scripture.
Her tone isn’t “expert lecturing parents,” but “fellow traveler sharing what she’s learning.” She makes it clear: she’s working these things out in her own home, too, with her son’s ADHD diagnosis and her own history.
The Behavior Collective (Online Platform)
A developing website (thebehaviorcollective.com) that aims to:
- Offer free resources—articles, posts, simple tools—for parents and caregivers who just need a starting point.
- Provide online courses for parents and teens, with practical strategies for specific challenges.
- Build, eventually, a membership community with more intensive content, while still keeping the door open for those who can’t afford much.
Central to her message is a theological conviction:
“You were put in this child’s life for a reason. God chose you as their parent. You may need refinement and support—but you were picked.”
She wants to replace:
- Hopelessness with hope.
- Resentment with understanding.
- Helplessness with practical tools.
In that sense, her whole life has come full circle:
- The girl who felt “leftover” now sits with parents who feel like failures and tells them, “No, God picked you.”
- The woman who endured shame and mislabeling now helps families avoid doing that to their own children.
- The believer who had to learn to silence the enemy’s voice now teaches kids and adults how to talk back to those same lies in their own minds.
That is behavior and hope, born out of wilderness.
A Question and a Next Step
If you see any part of your story in Megan’s:
- Feeling “behind” compared to siblings or peers,
- Hearing the enemy’s voice when you try to do something hard,
- Parenting or caring for someone whose needs feel overwhelming,
what might it look like to take one small step this week?
- To name, out loud, a lie you’ve been believing—and replace it with what God says?
- To ask God, “How might You be refining me through this, not just punishing me?”
- To seek out a resource—a podcast episode, a Behavior Collective article, a conversation with a trusted friend—that offers both strategy and hope?
You can explore Megan’s work here:
https://thebehaviorcollective.com
and her podcast, The Behavior Project, on major platforms.
Next Week on Created in the Image of God
Next Sunday’s episode brings a different kind of conversation about faith and everyday life. I’ll be joined by Lorraine Hess and Erica Strong, co‑hosts of the show Beloved.
We’ll talk about:
- How two very different women—one a Catholic musician, one from a different Christian tradition—found common ground in Christ.
- The power of ordinary stories—failures, triumphs, and everything in between—told through the lens of faith.
- How to recognize God’s presence in the middle of everyday mess, not just on mountaintops.
If you’re longing for real, honest, hope‑filled conversation about walking with God in daily life, you won’t want to miss it.
I hope you’ll join us.
