“I will give thanks to You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Wonderful are Your works, And my soul knows it very well.” (Psalm 139:14 NASB)
We live in a time where so many struggle with not feeling like they are beautiful, and because of this they destroy their bodies in a pursuit of beauty. But they don’t understand that this “beauty” they seek, is something they’ll never find. There are younger and younger and younger girls everyday being diagnosed with eating disorders because they are pursuing the control and the beauty that the world tells them they need to be.
This is something I myself struggle with…. Every day I have to fight back tears every time I look in the mirror, and force myself to eat when I know I need to. Messages of hate run through my head, making me feel unworthy and not beautiful. Things that the people closest to me said to me as I grew up, that they may not even realize hurt me, have caused me to search for a beauty that is impossible to find.
Because I don’t wear makeup, because I don’t show cleavage, because I don’t wear miniskirts I am not seen as beautiful. But what those people don’t understand is that the beauty that say I don’t have I don’t even want.
I don’t want the world’s definition of beauty…. It is easier to say that then to truly believe it; because at the end of the day, there is a small part of me deep down inside that does want that beauty.
People have told me my entire life that I will never be beautiful and that I’ll never be good enough. It is something that still affects me every day, and it has impacted my relationship with food and how I view myself. I daily have to battle to eat at least something and some days it is a lot harder than others. There are days that I will look at a plate of food and just cry because there are times that I feel like I don’t deserve food.
People don’t realize the impact of what they say to other people. People says hurtful and mean things and most of the time they don’t even realize how what they say might affect another person.
Most of the time I try to appear as confident but on the inside I am not confident by any means. I struggle to see that the Creator of the universe also created me and loves me and has a purpose for me. I am reminded that of what a mentor once said to me, “God loves you so much that He sent His one and only Son to die a painful death for you, and the beauty in that is that if you were the only person here on the planet that He would have gone through it all just for you.”
1 Corinthians 6:19-20 says “Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you have been bought with a price: therefore, glorify God in your body.” This verse is a blunt reminder for me, to the point that when I read it I tear up. The Holy Spirit lives in me, He loves me, and He sees me as good enough.
“Are not two sparrows sold for a cent? And yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. So do not fear; you are more valuable than many sparrows.” (Matthew 10:29-31 NASB)
I live in a generation of girls that don’t see themselves as good enough, and I am one of those girls. I see myself as less than, not good enough, and unworthy. That is a world view.... In God's eyes I am beautiful, I am holy, I am forgiven, I am perfect and sinless in His eyes.
The God who created the entire universe created you and created me! Have you let that sink in? When God created man He breathed His breath into man, and we are the only thing in all of creation that He breathed His breath into. We are the apple of God's eye
