Ahhhh self image… coming into the race I thought everything was going to be great and perfect and I’d never struggle with the way I looked because I was surrounded by Christian women all the time and everything would be perfect…lol. Yes I am surrounded by people who love the Lord and are encouraging and that’s great but I’m also surrounded by 30 other beautiful girls and that swings the door for comparison wide open! My body image and self esteem plummeted within the first month. And it’s something I’ve struggled with since then. So at worship the other night I decided I was tired of beating myself up all the time. So I went to that place where it’s just Jesus and I (it’s on a lake) and it was the realest experience I’ve ever had with him, it was such a friend moment we were splashing water everywhere and then I asked him to help me to want health for myself for the right reasons to want it because my body is a temple and needs to be treated as that and not because I want to be thin and tan and “perfect” I asked him to help me accept who I am how I am. His response to this really confused me at first, he said “do you think I’m gonna get a tan from this” and I said (with a small giggle) “what? like does it matter? Your freaking Jesus” and he said “exactly” (I was very confused) he said “you were made in my image, so if Those things shouldn’t matter to me why should they matter to you?”… yikes. Thanks man hard hit straight through my heart. But really, this is so true we’re so quick to judge ourselves and find how much better we think everyone else is when in reality we were all created by the same God and he sees us all equally as beautiful as anyone else he created because he is perfect and we were all made through his same image. Through this I was reminded of a verse I read while doing a bible study with my aunt the day before (thanks Tata)! It was John 1:3 and it says “God created everything through him, and nothing was created except through him.” I had already underlined this verse in bright yellow but it took me taking it to the Lord and laying out the struggle before him to really understand and comprehend it.
Now my prayer is that I will learn to not just accept who I am and how I look but to also see it the same way God does and learn to love myself the way he made me. Because he is a pretty cool artist!!
