Cue the song, You Don’t Know You’re Beautiful by One Direction
You’re insecure
Don’t know what for
You’re turning heads when you walk through the door
Don’t need make-up, to cover up
Being the way that you are is enough
Bet you didn’t know you’d be encouraged by a boy band today!
Truth be told, I’ve struggled with self-image since late middle-school/early high-school. That classic age range where you start wanting to be like everybody else and fall into the trap of comparison. By then, you’re a master of compare and contrast thanks to all the Venn Diagrams you’ve filled out.
Shorter, taller, bigger, smaller…
Those words soon turn into prettier, smarter, skinnier, better. More athletic. More interesting. More popular. More this. More that. Not enough of this. Not enough of that.
Somehow I frequently felt like too much or not enough depending on the company around me. I had no idea those feelings were completely self-projected due to my own insecurities. A battle I unknowingly created from my own perception of pre-conceived expectations others had of me.
I didn’t feel smart enough for my classes, fast enough for my coach, at times, good enough for my friends, and felt like there was always something I could be doing ‘better’ for my parents. I was living the “fake it till you make it” mantra in school where I got the good grades by the skin on my teeth, but had to put what felt like 3 times the amount of effort into studying than my peers to actually understand what I was learning. On top of that, I was too involved in school activities for my own good, truly putting the ‘extra’ in extra-curricular. I was putting my worth in two places it didn’t belong: achievement and approval of others. I hated who I was becoming when chasing success. I was angry, tired, irritable, and could feel the ugliness in my heart so strong that I had lost a sense of purpose. I had hit rock bottom and was diagnosed with depression and anxiety.
I’m not sure what kind of triumphant ending I expected of high school. Everything I had ever worked for got me a resume full of words and a scholarship to Oklahoma State. The scholarship was helpful, but certainly didn’t match up to the blood, sweat, and tears put into those 4 years of my life. Honestly, in hindsight I don’t think any outcome would have felt ‘worth it’ because motivations were wrong and I was idolizing achievement over contentment. I made it my goal to put God first in college.
College meant a blank slate. Fresh start. That was good and all, but only having my name and expected graduation date at the top of my new resume made me nervous. I was entirely burned out with no motivation to “achieve” anymore because it didn’t seem worth all I had put into it. And truthfully, it wasn’t. I gained a ticket into college, but lost my joy on the way there.
I was nervous my resume was blank, but I promised myself I was never going to live for success ever again. I was DONE with that. One Sunday at church, my pastor made a statement that resonated with me big time. He said, “ A resume is really only refrigerator art to God. He’s way less interested in achievement and accomplishment and more interested in your heart.”
It was really confusing for me at the time because all the people I really clicked with and admired were the go-getters. My go-to friends were either in President’s Leadership Council with me or in my sorority. The girls in my sorority were some of my best friends and pushed me closer to the Lord in countless ways. But there was so much emphasis on our house being a ‘top house’ in all categories. Shows, intramural sports, homecoming, academics, etc. For 27 consecutive semesters, our chapter was top in grades out of all fraternities and sororities in the nation. Not to mention, they were some of the prettiest girls I had ever met in my life. High school had set me up to be in this crowd in college. I genuinely loved the people around me, but hated what the achievement mentality had done to me. So now what?
I was 1,000 miles from home, couldn’t decide what to major in, wanted desperately to be a part of the community I was in, but was horribly afraid of what it would take to stay a part of it. I coped by sleeping. Sleep was an escape and happened to be something I was really good at. I still went to class, chapter, church, required sorority events, and hung out with friends, but filled any “me” time with sleep. I slept enough to make up for all the lost sleep in high school. I slept so much that I would sleep straight through meals. Over time, I was noticeably smaller and started to like that. The community I spent the most time surrounded by was intimidatingly beautiful and the average girl was probably around 120 pounds. I liked that I was as skinny as they were. Plus, sleeping through meals meant I could spend my meal plan money on the older girls in the house or on my brother and his friends. I actually fell in love with the feeling of being hungry.
All of that is obviously not okay. And it’s silly to look back and see how blind I was to it. In my eyes, I was chasing after the Lord whole-heartedly, stripping away my false-self and the need to achieve, and forming good quality friendships. But there was a whole lot more going on underneath the surface. The root of the issue? Identity.
It was actually my best friend, Diana, who was going to school 1,000 miles away at the other OSU, who called me out on it. Best friends have a funny way of reading between the lines. I’m thankful that she at times, knows me better than I know myself. She told me I was showing anorexic tendencies and needed to seek help. I promised her I would.
I went to the doctor and laid it all out to the Lord. I told Him how disappointed I was having put in all that effort in high school for what seemed like nothing. I told Him how confused I felt on the topic of success and that I didn’t know how to pursue it in a healthy way. I thanked Him for my community, but said I didn’t want to be a part of it if it meant being a slave to achievement. Because of my sorority and President’s Leadership Council, I felt like I knew everyone on campus. I felt ‘popular’ for the first time in my life, but it wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. I told the Lord I didn’t want that. I wanted Him and I wanted to hold onto the friends that were leading me closer to Him. I wanted my identity to be secure in Christ. To know who I was and whose I was. I also made a big request to God that day. I asked Him to turn all this pain around and use it for good. I knew that this battle with depression, anxiety, self-image, and self-worth was not OF God, but could be used BY God, for His glory.
The process after the prayer did not come overnight. The Lord always provides, but our obedience is crucial for him to breathe life into that provision. Obeying meant taking thoughts captive when I was tempted to compare. It meant being diligent about eating meals and setting an alarm if I chose to nap. It also meant being really intentional in the friendships that taught me more about His character and being honest with them about the process so they could hold me accountable.
Over time, as I grew rooted in my identity in Christ, I was flooded with the desire to help other girls recognize and grow in their self-worth. If we were all firm in our identities, how much more beautiful the world would be. Social media wouldn’t be this platform of comparison, but a place of joy where we could root for our friends and genuinely celebrate with them in life’s victories. We wouldn’t be so caught up in wanting more and be fully satisfied by what we have. We wouldn’t feel so much pressure surrounding our income and may actually end up having a career we enjoy doing! We’d work out and eat healthy for overall well-being and to glorify God with our bodies instead of doing it to be more desirable or for the attention of others. We would stop glorifying dating relationships and would see that we don’t NEED a love story with anyone other than God to be happy. The heart motivation to have a boyfriend or girlfriend would be to love and serve somebody else rather than to be loved and served by somebody else. We’d be so captivated with purpose that we wouldn’t be distracted by comparison. It would be less about ourselves, and more about others. And God would be more glorified.
Fast forward to junior year of college- I was a gamma chi, which is a recruitment counselor, for the freshmen women going through sorority recruitment. I was pumped! I loved my gamma chi’s when I went through and I love loving on younger girls. I was going to help the 60 girls in my group find their very best friends just like I found mine in my chapter! Turns out, it was a much more challenging season than I was expecting. Because of my grades and involvement in high school, recruitment was a breeze when I went through. I ended up pledging the house I loved from day one. I was completely naive to how brutal the process was and how destructive it could be to girls’ self-worth. I’d be offended for my girls when they wouldn’t be invited back to their favorite house. The houses were making their decisions based on the girls’ resumes and one conversation they had with them. Could they not see how great they were for their hearts?! I felt like a protective mother bear. No matter how much I told them that this process had absolutely no place in their self-worth, it still had influence on their minds and hearts. I was done sharing the fruity lines of “admire someone else’s beauty without questioning your own,” and just started telling them what God says about them. He calls them beloved. He calls them worthy. They’re chosen. They don’t have to fight for a seat at the table. They’re daughters of the one true king. He pursues them and fights for them. They only need to be still. It was so hard to watch these truths fall on deaf ears. I would praise God when it would stand out to even one or two of them. On the last day of recruitment I wondered if by wearing the gamma chi t-shirt, I was representing Christ. I loved my chapter and all the women in it. I knew God better and was a better version of myself because of it. But this whole Greek System ‘process’ was undeniably conforming to the ways of the world. For a long time after, I considered dropping out of my house. One of the girls in my small group reminded me that God guides His people into broken places specifically to shine His light. She encouraged me to stay planted where I was with the relationships I had invested in and shine His goodness.
Later that school year, my sorority had a Programming Seminar on the topic of self-image in place of chapter. Two nights before programming, I felt God lay it on my heart that He wanted me to speak on the panel. I reached out to the programming coordinator and she said, “We actually just had someone drop and need one more speaker!” Funny how the Lord works. That night I shared my story with them. Pretty much the whole story I just shared with you. It felt empowering to share the ways the Lord rocked the boat of my identity and how all I needed to do was go to Jesus, in which He said “peace be still.” I’m thankful for the encouragement to stay planted where I was and for four full years with those women. Another happy ending is that one of the girls in my gamma chi group is now one of my good friends.
Being rooted in our identity in Christ is something we constantly need awareness of because the world is full of deception and distraction. It’s something that changes over time. I’ve been reminded over the course of the race how powerful a testimony is so I wanted to share my story of identity with you. It’s definitely not a lesson the Lord has tied a bow around quite yet. He’s continued to teach me more and more about identity on the race. I still battle with feeling like I’m too much or not enough depending on my surroundings. Sometimes I wish there was more I could bring to the table. My weight has fluctuated a TON the last ten months and even well intended comments get to my head. I’ve lost a lot of weight in Asia and people constantly pointing that out to me is hard. “You’ve lost more weight.” “You look GREAT!” “Are you eating?” “Do you think you have another parasite?”
It makes me worry I won’t be able to stay at this weight when I go home. Or that I looked ‘bad’ before I lost weight. Or makes me worry about all the stretch marks I’m getting because of the weight fluctuation. Or I worry I’m going to hyper-fixate on being small again.
But I know who I am and whose I am, and will stand firmly in that. I’m thankful for a year with way less screen time, fewer mirrors, and far less time for comparison. It really has changed my life!
