We sit in the sun for hours at a time, working on the perfect sunburn that will slowly, and painfully, turn into a golden tan.
They cover every inch of their skin while in the blistering heat and get whitening lotion from the local grocery store so that the dark pigment of their skin fades.
The standards we set for “beautiful” change everywhere we go, and we always seem to want what we can’t have. Straight hair? You want curly. Brown eyes? You want blue.
It goes beyond outward appearances, too. We want to be funnier than we are, more compassionate, more dare-devilish, more this and more that.
We never seem to be fully satisfied with who we were actually created to be.
I’ve always struggled with body image issues. Looking in the mirror has never been an easy task for me. I see the nose I wish I could change, the tilted down eyes, the hair that never seems to do what I want it to.
Above all else, though, I always see the weight I want to lose.
Even during middle school, I saw these girls with the “perfect bodies” and envied them. We did the same workouts during gym class and ate similar lunches, so I never understood why I couldn’t look more like her, or her, or really anyone other than me.
It started as counting calories. I religiously scanned every label and put the product into a fancy phone app that told me all of its nutritional information. I recorded everything I ate and at the end of the day, I hoped I would get a notification on my phone that said that I didn’t eat enough calories that day, and if I didn’t get that notification, I’d promise myself to eat less the next day. And lo and behold, I would always receive the notification.
I don’t remember when, but one day this stopped being satisfactory. I wasn’t seeing the results I wanted, so I started running. I ran miles and miles nearly every day and would do so on the very little calories I had consumed.
And down went the spiral. No matter how few calories I ate or how many miles I ran, I was never content. I still didn’t look like those girls I envied. Slowly, my ribs started to show and my family began to notice. My sister pleaded with me to eat and my dad had me sit at the table until my plate was empty. I began feeling depressed and anxious; I didn’t want people to find out and judge me for what I already knew was wrong.
There came a point, though, where I knew that if I continued down the same path, there would be very little chance of turning back. So, as I sat on my bathroom floor with tears in my eyes, I decided this wasn’t a life I wanted to live anymore and asked Jesus to take my pain away.
And He did.
I can’t say that I don’t still struggle with body image, because more often than not, I do. I look at myself a little too long in the mirror and critique everything I see staring back at me. It’s hard to not revert back to my old methods when I want to lose weight, and there have been a few times even on the race where I’ve had to ask my teammates to keep me accountable. I know for a fact that this constant self badgering is not the abundant life Jesus has called any of us to.
Since then, I’ve heard countless people say they’ve struggled with the exact same issue at some point in their lives. They didn’t like what they saw in the mirror and they went to drastic measures to change it, which would only lead to hurt and disappointment.
It astounds me how few of us are actually content with what we see when we face our reflection. We’re so quick to see the beauty in others but for some reason we can’t seem to do the same for ourselves.
Here’s my question:
What would happen if we stopped seeing ourselves through our own eyes, and began to view ourselves through the eyes of our Creator?
We would see children who are fearfully and wonderfully made.
We would see brides who are altogether beautiful, with no flaw in them.
We would see precious, adored, worthy, and redeemed people who were made in the image of their Savior, who loves them so much that it hurts Him when we judge our reflections.
When we constantly criticize who we are, we’re indirectly telling our Father that what He said was good actually isn’t good enough.
What He’s made is good, though. He didn’t make a mistake when He gave me my nose or my tilted down eyes or my wacky hair. He formed me fearfully and wonderfully and He’s called me His daughter – a loved, adored and beautiful daughter who’s made in the image of her Father.
