This blog's long and it doesn't have any pictures. It's also the hardest and most personal one I've ever posted. Thanks for your grace!
I remember it first happening when I was three. Her name was Stephanie and she was in my preschool class; a slight little thing with fair skin, big blue eyes, and pale blonde hair. I was sure she was the perfect example of a future fairy tale princess, to be carried off by a handsome knight who was won over by her beauty. I was equally aware that my only role in such a story would be that of an ugly troll.
It was my first experience with comparison and I didn’t measure up.
The first three years of elementary school her name was Jandie. In third through fifth grades her name was Whitney, Claire, Stephanie, Mariah, Aurora, Kimber, Tara, Joanna, and Sara.
In junior high my social world exploded as did the number of girls I compared myself to. By the time I reached high school and college, I had lost count of the number of girls who exceeded me in looks and stature, and had completely lost sight of any self worth.
Little comments along the way, whether said innocently or not, stuck with me. I remember hearing in 6th grade that the two piece bathing suit I tried on would look better if I “toned up a little.” My skinny pre-pubescent body heard, “you’re too fat.” In high school I remember an adult comparing herself to me, comparing her womanly figure, the body that had borne children and that had toughed out years of life, to my mega-metabolism one. The message; skinny is what it’s all about. And what I understood was that I wasn’t the skinniest one, and that wasn’t good enough. In college, boys chivalrously told me that “my friend doesn’t think you’re attractive but I still do.” Why those words were necessary I'll never know.
Then, of course, there are my cheeks. “You’re so lucky, you never have to wear blush!” Yeah, yeah. Flaming fuchsia patches on pasty white skin is certainly not the look that girls around the world are desperately trying to attain, so I never fell for that line.
Fly through my years of comparison in college and in the work place, and bring it to the World Race.
For years I’ve allowed these lies to sink in, to become a part of me and how I think, to the point where they have become my identity. I define myself and my worth by how I feel that day or by the pant size I’m wearing. I determine my self-worth by whether or not I’m truly the ugliest person in the room, though I always am. I’m incapable of genuinely accepting a compliment.
Every one of my daydreams revolves around or at least involves that day when I’m magically slender and attractive. When I finally become the person I want to be because I’m pretty and fit, and therefore have the self-esteem to be extroverted, confident, interesting, fun.
These lies have encroached my very being and have even damaged my relationship with God. I began to believe that He must not love me if He desired to make me the way I am. If God truly doesn’t make mistakes, if everything He makes is good, than I must be His punching bag.
This lie led to the concept that I am unloved by God because I am ugly/fat/worthless, and HE made me this way.
I remember hearing that to insult myself was to insult God’s creation. I remember not caring. I figured if He could be cold-hearted enough to snicker at His damaged product, then He could handle the insults borne to me, His biggest joke of all.
I wish I could tell you that my experience on the World Race has changed all of this, that I’m now cured of the lies in my head and now truly find my only identity and source of worth in Christ. I wish I could tell you that I’ve learned to embrace who I am and how I was created, for I am a daughter of the King.
But 24 years of absolute immersion and erosion has made immediate relief impossible, especially since the lies are comfortable and an easier choice to believe.
Tonight I returned to a mall to purchase a bikini, my first in over nine years. I had been so excited the day I first put it on, finally feeling confident enough to believe it might actually be acceptable. But as I tried it on again the messages in my head proclaimed loudly, “You can’t really ever wear that in public! You’re disgusting! What an embarrassment you are… Put your clothes back on and quit being pathetic.”
I don’t suffer from hearing voices in my head but I do struggle a great deal with self-doubt and proclaiming said messages over myself. And tonight I succumbed to them. I put the suit back on the rack and accepted that I’m simply too ugly and fat to ever be caught in so little clothing.
Fortunately, God’s patience with me is great, His desire for my true knowledge of Him is greater than Satan’s determination for me to not learn truth, and I am slowly, ever so slowly getting there.
I can finally admit that God did not implant these lies in my head to keep me humble or fearful of Him. I can finally admit that He doesn’t dislike me and that He probably didn’t create me as a practical joke.
Most of the time.
Again, I wish that these truths had been learned long ago and that I am really beginning to turn my life around. But I just accepted this a few days ago and I still falter with believing these truths.
Deep-rooted lies are painful to dig out and often are not understood by those around, but they must go. This blog is not one of self-pity or hope for compliments, regardless of how genuine. It is not a means for me to receive comments about how God loves me and made me beautiful or whatnot. It’s simply my willingness to be vulnerable and to share how far I have to grow.
It’s also a way for me to reach out and to encourage you to do the same. I want you to look at your own heart, to truly seek out the places where you are believing or succumbing to lies that God is not a part of; to remember that He is bigger and more powerful than anything you’re facing.
Poor self-worth and an obsession with size may currently be my identity, sad as that may be, but it’s something that God is wrestling with me to gain. HE wants to be my all and my focus and HE wants to show me my worth in Christ.
It’s a hard fight and I’m obviously still learning how to not sink every time I’m struck, but there’s hope for me yet. And there’s still hope for you.
