God says: You are fearfully and wonderfully made.
I had to be convinced
I grew up having eczema. When I was younger it was really uncomfortable my skin would be really dry cracked and often painful. My eczema covered most of my body and it was barely a patch of skin that wasn't affected. My eczema was actually pretty bad up until high school and when I say high school I mean maybe senior year? I also was perpetually overweight for as long as I can remember. I always felt fat and ugly. Now, no one really told me that I was fat and ugly, as I write this I have a hard time recalling the time and someone out right called me fat and ugly. Fat or ugly maybe, but not all at once. And honestly I don’t think it happened often. But everyone I’m related to, all the women specifically are beautiful. I do believe that every woman in my immediate proximity who had influence over me I found incredibly beautiful and I never thought I lived up to the standard. My father always told me that I was beautiful my mom too, but I distinctly remember feeling less than for most of my adolescence and teens. It honestly wasn’t until after I was halfway through college that I truly began to believe that I too was fearfully and wonderfully made.
Today's post is intentionally a post to encourage someone who feels like they are alone in how they feel about themselves. If you currently or have ever felt that you were the fat ugly friend, know that you are not alone. It took me years to look in the mirror and be pleased with what I saw. Not just content, not resigned. Pleased. I can look at myself in the mirror, a full length mirror and see that I am attractive from head to toe. It has been an, often heartbreaking journey, but one I’m happy to share because I’m sure it will help someone else.
My stomach still isn’t flat. I’ve actually gained weight in the past year (I’m looking to lose it for health reasons, but that’s a different post for a different day), I am currently contending with an eczema breakout (darn these summer months! Lol), and I cant remember the last time I had my eyebrows properly waxed.
And today(most days) when I looked in the mirror I smiled.
How did I get here? How can I confidently declare myself beautiful?
God says I’m fearfully and wonderfully made.
God thinks I’m beautiful and who am I to disagree with the creator of the universe?
God cared so much of us that he gave us a compliment! He created sunrises, sunsets, the sun, the moon, the stars, the aurora borealis, Niagra Falls, the Grand Canyon, and you.
God does all things well including when He created you.
When He created me, He made sure I’d know that He loved me and that I knew He thought me beautiful.
How could you not love a God who cares for us enough, to make sure that we thought well of ourselves!
But just like when we think that the people we love are kind to us because they love us, it can be hard to take the compliment for what it is. So I asked God to show me how I look to Him and He did!
I began to make a list of the things I liked about myself and at least one of them had to be a physical feature.
The more I asked God, the more He showed me. God worked with me until I was convinced.
He can do it for you too! If you are reading this and you are struggling with your image, I challenge you to take it to God in prayer. I’ll be posting scriptures about beauty this week on instagram, but you should also look up scriptures for yourself on what God says about beauty.
Watch what He tells you.
God thinks you're beautiful and I agree.
