My blogs go live on Tuesdays…because that’s when I have time to sit down and actually write. Anyway, the other day I had an idea to walk you through my transformation. And since Instagram has the hashtag #transformationtuesday, I thought I would actually share my transformation this Tuesday.
So, we’re about to get really personal right now. I generally don’t talk about my transformation a lot. Because there’s a lot to it. The Lord has really worked a lot out in my heart. Reminding me of my true beauty. But it took a long time for Him to work those things out. This blog will have a lot of pictures, because, hopefully, you’ll be able to see the transformation happen as I write about it. Some of the pictures are hard for me to share. But I know I need to.
Here I am, a cute little 7-year-old, showing off my jack-o-lantern. I had no idea what it really meant to be overweight. I mean, life was all about playing with the kids in my neighborhood and annoying my big sister.
I kept growing. And learning. This picture wasn’t taken too long after the Lord saved me. But still, even then, my life was about having fun with my family. I wasn’t worried about what other people said about me.
It was around this time that I started hearing some of the “mean” kids at school point out that I was bigger than them. I ignored it, but that was the beginning of some of my insecurities.
So, around 5th grade my insecurities really started playing into how I lived my life. I started to get much quieter. I didn’t put myself out there. Because when I became the center of attention, I thought that the only thing people would really pay attention to was my weight. This became who I was in middle school. I thought of myself as the girl who was fat. And that’s how I thought everyone else saw me as well.
That last picture–the one with me and my dad–I was so insecure that night. I felt so big. I felt so ugly. But would I have let others know that? Not a chance. So I smiled and I did try to have fun that night. But to this day, I can still remember looking through the pictures from that night and wincing at the sight of myself.
I hated the way I looked.
Enter high school.
This is where the Lord started laying the foundation of what I would learn a year or so after I graduated.
So. In high school, I had a solid group of friends. And I mean solid. We did everything together. And it was this group of friends that the Lord began the work of showing me that who He created me to be does not depend on what I look like or how much I weigh. He started showing me my beauty–my real beauty.
High school is when I decided that I wanted to start loosing weight. I wanted to get fit so that I would be more capable of glorifying the Lord. Honestly, in 9th grade my heart was burdened for the world. So one of the main reasons I wanted to loose weight was so that I would be better suited to go serve the Lord anywhere in the world.
I intentionally didn’t include pictures from 2010.
And it’s not because I didn’t make any progress in my weight loss journey. It’s because I didn’t make any progress spiritually.
2010 was a dark, dark year for me. I was consumed with what I looked like, and not in a good way. I was obsessed with loosing weight, because I thought that I would get what I wanted…a boyfriend. I spent too much time counting calories. I spent too much time worrying about the number that would show up the next time I stepped on the scale. And if I didn’t loose enough weight in a week, then I would beat myself up emotionally and mentally.
2011 brought much grace. The Lord showered His love and grace down on me.
He brought me back to the things He started teaching me back in high school. You know, that what I look like doesn’t matter as much as the character that is displayed in my life. And it was this year that I started devoting myself to being a woman characterized by God rather than a woman characterized by this world.
Now, I’m not saying that I just stopped trying to glorify the Lord by how I cared for my body. I definitely still worked hard to make right choices and exercise.
The difference is that I wasn’t obsessed with it anymore.
I wasn’t looking at myself with anger because of how much I weighed. I could see myself as the beautiful woman God made me to be.
I still struggle from time to time with how I look. But the Lord is continuing to show me how to trust Him in this. But for the most part, I know that I am beautiful. I know that the King is enthralled with my beauty.
This weight loss journey is a journey of grace. Because there is absolutely no way that I would have been successful on my own. No way. God has shown me much grace to help me as far as He has.
By the way, with the Lord’s help, I have lost over 80lbs over the years.
Happy Transformation Tuesday!
