God was/is working on me in so many ways that I really can’t pin-point all of them, but I would like to share with you one thing that really stood out to me during my last weeks in China.
A few years ago I used to wake up and tell myself that I was fat, ugly, not someone that people wanted to know, not worth being friends with, and I would go into detail of all of those things. In believing these things about myself I was embracing what the enemy wanted me to focus on and I was speaking lies over my life and myself. Through time God showed me that He sought me out, He chose me, He made me beautiful, He made me in His image, and that I am perfect complete and lacking in nothing through Him. So every time that the lies start to slip back into my mind I say out laud “I am beautiful, God made me perfect, He made me special, and best of all He chose me, He pursued me”.
In Harbin I felt like every girl I talked too was constantly picking apart themselves and saying the same things that I was years ago in one way or another. God allowed me to share what He had taught me with a few of them and all of them couldn’t believe that I thought of myself in the same manor that they think of themselves. One of the ladies was telling me all of the standards that she needed to reach to look beautiful, like weigh 100 lb, have perfect teeth, have a certain shape of eyes…. after she had listed off a few I told her that never in my life have I ever met any of these standards, and yet she was always saying how beautiful I am. Why do we hold such a huge double standard? God made each of us uniquely beautiful.
In many ways this reminds me of a Dove campaign where women were would describe themselves to a sketch artist. Then they would have people that just met them describe the same woman to the sketch artist. The image that was drawn by the description the lady gave of herself didn’t look anything like her and the one that was from others’ perspective was not only more accurate but it allowed her to see how beautiful she really is in everyone else’s eyes.
Although I cannot change how people view themselves, talking to these women made me realize how important it is for me to be transparent in my life and how God has changed me in this way. Also to tell people positive truths that I see in them, not just how they look, but how much I appreciate something they do, a way that they responded to a difficult situation, or any number of things. After all it takes around 10 positive comments to counteract one negative comment.
Genesis 1:26
Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”
