So much of my life has been filled with me not being completely okay in my own skin. So much of me I have kept covered up to certain people because I was afraid to show all of me out of fear that I would be rejected or abandoned once people got to know and see the real me. It’s crazy how things that you struggled with at home truly follow you on the World Race. There is no escaping it, and even more so when you are unable to run away from them like you could at home.
I have been faced being here with all of the demons from my past. Things like I spoke about in my last blog with community living really have a way of bringing my fear of abandonment and rejection out into the light. There is a constant fear in my heart that the relationships that I build are void because I feel that eventually they will see the flaws in me that are to burdensome to deal with. My heart has been broken several times by people in my life who I thought that I could trust, and because of that, over time I developed a severe confidence issue. Growing up however, one of the ways that I began to be affirmed was through the way that people saw me, one of which being my physical appearance.
Before the race, I put so much of my worth in how people perceive me, through how people saw me physically. This was an even deeper root of not feeling good enough just being who I was. But, being here, God has been stripping me of my past comforts of affirmation. He has been putting on my heart in so many different ways that I am enough just the way that I am, and a couple weeks ago he tested me even further.
Makeup has been a physical representation at times of me not being completely comfortable in my own skin. This may make you laugh, but doing my eyebrows especially was that one thing that I did to make me feel like I was good enough physically. When I didn’t have them filled in, I felt so ugly. Literally I could never leave the house without me having done them. But then the World Race happened. I heard God say to me that if I want him to heal my heart from feeling like I have to hide any part of me at all from him and others, that he wanted me to sacrifice wearing makeup. He wants to romanticise me, and to show me that he sees me as beautiful.. all of me. Every last bit of me in my natural state is enough. He just has been pouring into me that he loves me and that all that he created me to be is beautiful and unique. He took that away from me so that I could grow in the knowledge that I am truly beautiful and that there doesn’t need to be anything to enhance who I was made to be.
It’s really crazy what happens when you start to listen to the truth, and let go of the lie that you aren’t good enough. This whole time, I thought I would be seeing these huge miracles, and I still do believe that will happen as well through the people of the world that we encounter. But, I have been learning more and more that the true miracle that God is showing me first, is in me. He is filling me more and more every day and healing wounds of brokenness in me. He is taking the little girl who was forgotten, and broken hearted from her childhood and raising her up to be a fearless woman who knows her worth. He is mending my spirit and filling me with his so that I can be the beacon of light that he made me to be. The World Race for me has been a whole lot of me serving others, yes. But it has also been, thankfully, a whole lot more of him healing my brokenness and loving all of me.
