Do you remember cassette tapes? One of the nice things about those back in the day was that you could record your own hits on them. Many would keep it by the radio and then press record when they played a song that they like so in a sense, you could make your own recordings. 

In the same way that so many of us did that years ago, it works the same when it comes to our consciousness and minds. We got told some things when we were younger that get recorded onto a tape in our heads and sadly, we keep replaying it over and over and over again. 

It never occurs to us that we can erase the tape and put something new on it. We just keep playing the old tape over and over again. 

Maybe when you were younger, somebody told you that you weren't that smart. Maybe somebody told you that you were unproductive or a slow learner. Maybe somebody called you a quitter.

But here's the deal, we have to look at those comments in light of God coming into the picture. When God gets a hold of us and we really start to trust what He says, His grace starts to infiltrate our lives. As we start to believe in Him more and more deeply, you begin to realize that is not who you are. 

You are not what people say about you. You are who God says you are. Ephesians 2:4-7 says this about you:

"But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus." - Ephesians 2:4-7

The parents who can't be pleased, I'm afraid they are as mistaken as anybody can be. God is the one who wrote your story. He puts you in this part and you are there as a work of His art. You are His!