I’ll never be good enough! I will never be good enough to have those girls as my friends. I will never be good enough for this or that. Why? Because I am not skinny, I don’t wear always wear makeup, I am not fit enough, and the list goes on and on. Whenever I enter a room I am worried that people see me as fake. That nothing about me has any value or worth. I feel like my talents, likes, dislikes and more are seen as fake or not really me.
These are lies that have made me feel like I am not worth friends, that I am ugly and that I am required to prove and/or justify myself ALL of the time.
After my month in Ecuador, God revealed these lies to me. I have always known that body image has been a struggle for me but it wasn’t until this year that I realized the fear of not being seen as real or authentic had such a hold on my life.
I asked myself why body image has always been a struggle. Why did I believe that I was ugly? Well when people doubt your fitness level because you do not fit the mold of a fit person or they say that “there are things you could do to make yourself prettier” you easily start to hate everything about yourself. I personally choose not to wear makeup a lot because I love my natural skin. At the same time I also love makeup because sometimes it is fun to wear but I never want for it to become an obligation. I choose my natural curls over doing my hair the way a hair stylist would fix it at an appointment. These things aren’t bad or wrong but when I started doing those things every single day just to appeal to what everyone said pretty looked like and buying the right tools and makeup it was an apparent problem. I also started to be picky about foods and exercise because I hated my body. In high school I skipped meals and when I got caught I decided I would have two protein shakes a day to make sure I was “eating” but not gaining weight and then in college I would work out twice a day. Later in college my relationship with food and working out changed. I started binge eating and then skipping meals to hide that I was binge eating. I started to struggle with depression and I lost the desire to workout which made me turn to food even more to cover up my brokenness. Why bother eating right and working out when you feel too “fat” anyways?
The second lie is one of not having any value and also being seen as fake. I realized that this lie was rooted in something I had been told at ten years old which was that I was “two-faced.” At ten years I old I don’t think I really understood what that meant but somewhere along the way I believed that is what everyone thought about me. I felt and sometimes still feel like no one sees me as real or authentic. People see someone who is just pretending at everything she does. That is so far from the truth, but I never knew I was believing this lie until Ecuador. I got sick with a brutal chest cold and I felt I had to justify every decision I made concerning my health that week. When I asked myself why I needed to justify myself God started showing me how it was affecting me now and even in the past.
At mini-debrief, after Ecuador, Holy Spirit spoke truth into these lies. We actually had a session on Holy Spirit and hearing the Holy Spirit. At this point no one knew what I was struggling with but I received a note from a squad mate that said “You have Value. You are real.” And it said more but I will keep that for myself! After I shared how I had been feeling that I felt I had no value and how that affected my issues with body image and not being seen as authentic a sweet team leader came to me with the following verse:
“Fear not therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows.”
Later that day another squad mate came to me and felt the Lord wanted her to tell me how beautiful my face was.
I share all of this to say that when you really ask God why we are struggling with lies and believing them, he will reveal our inner most hurts to us. He will also speak truth to you whether through your quiet time or other people. I left mini-debrief understanding more about myself and also knowing that I was walking in freedom from the lies. I can be confident in who I am because I know that God sees beauty and value.
