Raise your hand if you ate your weight in holiday food and it has been hard to make adjustments in the new year. No? What about mom’s home cooking or better yet fast food as you ran from place to place, e-learning children and eating whatever you could find while working from home? Regardless, I woke up this morning in a full blown sugar coma, my adrenal system completely wrecked from caffeine overload after traveling all weekend leading multiple worship sets and my skin looking a few years older from the relentless applications of makeup. From the scale to the mirror, it was a rough start to the Monday. If you’re like me than you know you are your own worst critic. Our ability to knock ourselves down before we even get up in the morning is so sad yet a reality many of us struggle with as women. We hear our own voice speaking harsh and critical words over our bodies and appearance believing lies and embracing them as truth. We give in to these words and allow them to dictate our mood, decisions and choices throughout the day. From movies to magazines, social media and the coworker in the office beside us we are constantly aware of our flaws, short comings and inadequacies. We compare, contrast and conspire ways to become better versions of ourselves. The world has given us many ways to achieve our new looks and for many of these I am personally thankful. Staighteners, perms, makeup, botox, tanning lotions, tanning beds, diet pills, lipo, hair color, etc. I have used many of these and delight in some of these modern day miracles. I have had my hair almost every color, natural and unnatural. I wear feathers, extensions, glitter…I LOVE being a girl! But…there comes a point where when all of that is stripped away I need to be able to look in the mirror and be okay with what I see as God created me. Let me share with you what I have seen when I look in the mirror. I have mousy brown hair, nothing exotic or cool about it. It’s half straight and half wavy as a result of way too many 80’s spiral perms in elementary school. I have brown eyes, but not deep chocolate or cool yellowish green. I think Annabelle told me they looked like poop one day. Sweet. Without tweezers I resemble a sesame street puppet and would have a remarkable unibrow. I have an olive complexion which can look almost yellow in the winter and my nails refuse to grow after years of biting them relentlessly. My hair won’t grow past my bra line which is why extensions are part of my yearly budget. My bite is off thanks to an incompetent pediatric dentist and my shoulders are off balance thanks to 15 years of working out too much. I have way too many moles and scars from those I had them take off. My thighs touch when I walk, I have bra fat, cellulite and I’m pretty sure it’s bad in places I can’t see with my natural eye. I am probably 20 pounds heavier than I need to be and even though I majored in Exercise Physiology, when I step into the gym it’s like I have no idea where to begin after 2 kids and no sleep.I keep searching for freedom from this daily grind of insecurities and hoping that one day I will wake up and just be okay with what I am seeing staring back at me. After 20 years of making comparisons and judging myself I will finally just look up and see what the Lord sees and what I believe most everyone else sees when I walk into a room. This is a bondage we don’t talk about too often with one another, the prison of self-doubt, self-hatred and desire to be more than we are when a God who is more than enough has created us just as He wants us to be. From anorexia and bulimia to self-mutilation and destruction we see the physical manifestations of what these insecurities can do to the most strong, beautiful women around us. When I look at my own daughters I realize these are issues they will face as they get older and begin to understand the social pressures to be pretty, thin, popular and desirable. Bullying and social media will make their journey into discovering who God created them to be even more difficult and it will be my job to speak life and truth into their hearts. But I can’t do that if I hate who I see in the mirror.So today I choose to give this to the Lord for what seems to be the millionth time. Perhaps we will have to make this choice everyday to throw out the scales and burn every fashion magazine in our home. It may mean we need to delete a few friends from our Facebook accounts who cause us to covet what they have or how they look. It’s a decision that may help us heal and prevent us from carrying our own insecurities or fears into the lives of our children who are watching every bite we eat and hearing every negative word coming out of our mouths. We need to stop using words and phrases that speak negativity over our bodies, especially in front of our children. To stop standing in front of the mirror pinching our sides, tugging at our thighs, screaming into our skinny jeans while precious little eyes watch from the doorway. To stop making statements like, “I am so fat.” “My thighs are huge.” “I used to be so skinny before I had kids.” “I can’t believe I’ve let myself go.” “I wish I had abs like ______.” “I’d go to the gym but these kids are wearing me out.” On and on and on and on…. Even if we are struggling with obesity and sinning through our inability to make healthy food choices, we need to begin coming into agreement with the Holy Spirit to break those chains rather than create an environment where our children will inherit our generational sin of gluttony through food. Our children need to see us making healthy food choices, taking time for exercise, celebrating good eating habits as a family and handling disappointments with grace, not depriving and starving ourselves through life. We should be able to eat a piece of their birthday cake, have some pizza at a party, share an ice cream cone on a hot summer day and splurge without punishing ourselves. They need to see Biblical examples of self control, patience and grace. What we see in the human mirror is a distorted view of how our Creator sees us as our Heavenly Father. When the Lord sees us He sees diamonds in the rough, beautiful images of Himself that reflect all the qualities He meant to place into one person. He sees loving wives, caring moms, one of a kind daughters, motivated entrepreneurs for the Kingdom, devoted believers, servants to the lost, prayer warriors and intercessors, talents and abilities. I am convicted that it’s only when we see ourselves as we were created to be, only when we see ourselves as our Heavenly Father sees us that we can be used to our greatest capacity. It’s time to stop looking in earthly mirrors and begin looking into the eyes of our Lord. And what’s a mirror anyway? It’s just a piece of glass. You are beautiful, you are loved and you are wanted. Our children need to see us walking in that confidence and authority in Christ Jesus. Psalm 139:13-16Oh yes, you shaped me first inside, then out; you formed me in my mother’s womb. I thank you, High God—you’re breathtaking! Body and soul, I am marvelously made! I worship in adoration—what a creation! You know me inside and out, you know every bone in my body; You know exactly how I was made, bit by bit, how I was sculpted from nothing into something. Like an open book, you watched me grow from conception to birth; all the stages of my life were spread out before you, The days of my life all prepared before I’d even lived one day.
2 Corinthians 4:16 16-18 So we’re not giving up. How could we! Even though on the outside it often looks like things are falling apart on us, on the inside, where God is making new life, not a day goes by without his unfolding grace. These hard times are small potatoes compared to the coming good times, the lavish celebration prepared for us. There’s far more here than meets the eye. The things we see now are here today, gone tomorrow. But the things we can’t see now will last forever.
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