You Believe Little Lies
Picture this. It’s Christmas break, but pre-Christmas. My tree is still magical and not the thing I am about to begin looking at with dread knowing I will have to take it down soon. I am enjoying a little time away from social media in order to be purposeful with my family and friends in this short season. I am currently reading, “Battlefield of the Mind.” by Joyce Meyer. I am sitting in front of my fireplace with a warm, cozy drink next to me. I’m just sitting there calmly reading. Cozy in my jammy pants, sweatshirt, and wool socks.
I was reading a part in the book where Joyce writes about the Israelites wandering in the desert. For forty years they wandered their way around the land that God promised to them a long, long time ago. They were not IN the land. They were “around” the land. They wandered around out there because they were scared. They didn’t trust God and what God had told them years before about that land being theirs.
And for some reason, I prayed. And I started talking to God about some things. I had just turned 40 not even two months earlier and I have had a “desert” of my own that I have wandered around almost my entire life. I’m sure you have your own, but here is mine.
Since I was little I have looked at my body as wrong. In my eyes, I was too big. I grew really fast as a kid, to the point that my family was a little concerned and there was testing done on me to see if there was something wrong. So, in my little 5 year old brain, I already believed that there was something wrong with my body.
And I continued to grow. I was taller than my mom when I was in Elementary school. I remember very well weighing over 100 pounds after being put on a scale at school in 2nd grade, and feeling so embarrassed. As a 4th grader, I was put on a scale by someone and was told that I weighed 140 lbs, and if I stayed at that weight for the rest of my life I would be perfect. Perfect. When I look back at pictures of myself at that age I don’t see an unhealthy child at all, but yet this incorrect idea of myself was just a constant source of shame.
That shame grew and grew and I gained weight. And I grew taller. But mostly I gained weight. I would eat what I viewed as “normal” with my friends at school, my small mama, and my little sister who is no bigger than her, and in secret I would binge because I was so hungry. I was so ashamed of how big I was and how hungry I was.
I eventually lost weight and got to what was considered normal. In fact, I gained and re-lost weight quite a few times, but even at my lowest, in my mind, I was still too big. There was one point, after I had my last baby and I lost all of my baby weight plus some, I got super close to 140 pounds, that “perfect” weight. That was the number that had been stuck in my head since I was 10. I was super close, but I looked at pictures of me and didn’t like what I saw. You see, I looked at my thighs and they were still too big.
And then, I looked again at the same picture and I noticed something else. I saw that my head was mis-proportionate to my body. I looked at that picture and even with all the lies that had gotten to me, I knew that I needed to gain weight, even though I was about to reach that magic number. My head, which I know beyond a shadow of a doubt is un-shrinkable, didn’t fit my body. My body didn’t look healthy. I felt like I was looking at a bobble head. And there I was, hating my thighs, but knowing that my body wasn’t healthy. Thankfully, I was still healthy enough in my mind to know that.
And so I started eating again. And the shame came back not long after. The starving/binging began again. But nobody really knew it. Ha!! I didn’t know how unhealthy I was. Sadly, our society is set up to think this is normal. We have to “control” our bodies. Being hungry is normal. We have an ideal that we all need to look like. Looking back I realize that I have been on almost every single diet known to man. I have gone on diets so strict that my hair fell out. Once, I even passed out in our local library. Because I was hungry. Who does that??
I did.
And when I prayed about it that day in front of our fireplace, as I was thinking about my 40 years and the Israelite’s 40 years, I asked God when I was going to master this. I knew that I didn’t want to be on a diet at 80 years old, but I felt hopeless. And then I felt like God spoke to my heart these words, “You believe little lies.”
I believe little lies.
And so I prayed that God would show me those lies. And he has. And he continues to. Here are a few things he’s shown me so far.
Since my little girl was a baby, I have seen her little body and I can see how mine was at the same ages. She is shaped just like me and has been since she was born. I see her as absolutely perfect. I have no doubt that she is created in the image of God, perfectly crafted by the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Her ears, her nose, her fingers. Her arms, her legs, her waist. And you know what, she has never, ever been lower than the 96th percentile on the height and weight charts that they do at the dr’s office. Never. She also grew super fast, just like I did. She is 13 and just this summer passed me in height. And oh my word, that girl is perfection. Absolute perfection.
But I could never look at myself in that way. I could see my girly’s body as crafted by God, but mine was wrong. And no matter how hard I tried I could not fix it. It was never “just right”. And that thought….that thought that someday, maybe in the future, if I could just figure out the right diet, the correct way to eat “intentionally”, that would be the day that I would finally be “walking in the truth” and I could finally be free. I could finally take my space that God had created for me to be in.
And that is the lie. That is the lie that was stopping me from walking confidently alongside God into everything that He calls me to. If I could only be just the right size, then I could point people more effectively to him. I could love people more. I could stop taking myself out of spaces that God designed for me and I could be fully myself right there.
What a lie! I am so tired of believing this crap that the evil one spouts at us, men and women alike. This lie stopped me for much too long. I have spent way too much time hating the body that God gave me. I have spent too much time mad that I was hungry when I had eaten the “recommended” calories or points for the day. I have spent too much money on pills, drink mixes, diet foods, and shakes. SO. MUCH. MONEY. I have spent too many mornings disappointed in myself because of a number on a scale. Looking back, I am so sad about how much of my life I spent thinking about food and weight and what other people were thinking about my body.
I even had a picture of myself in my head. When I thought of myself that picture that came to my mind is myself at about 13 years old. I had HUGE hair. Huge. And on a body that I already viewed as too big add that hair, and I had a view of myself that was so, so wrong. And then this last year, God brought a different picture of myself to my remembrance. The memory is still so vivid in my mind. I was just past 3 years old. My baby sister had just been born and I was going with my great aunt and some cousins to a local pool. I was so excited. I had this little bikini on, and in this picture I had a sassy little pose, hand on my hip and legs just itching to go. I remember feeling so confident and excited.
And then this past June I got the opportunity to model in a bridal runway show that a friend of mine was hosting to promote her business. Oh my word, I felt so amazing. I got to go get fitted for the dresses, I had my hair and my makeup done and I could not stop beaming. I walked down that runway with so much confidence and the biggest smile. I left that day feeling like my true self. For the first time in a long time, I knew the girl I was created to be and she is beautiful. She walks boldly and confidently. She smiles at everyone she sees. And she laughs. She laughs so, so much and she has so much fun just being exactly who she is created to be.
And so now, on my normal days when I am not modeling a wedding dress, but I am in my jeans and my sandals or my boots and don’t have a bit of makeup on, I know who I am. I still have days where I look at my body and see imperfections, but God made this body of mine and it has had some serious ups and downs in the last 41 years. I have started listening to this body that my God, who I trust so much, made for me to live in on this earth. I have learned that a good walk feels amazing. I remembered the fun of TaeBo and bought some old DVD’s. I have learned that my body will tell me when I am hungry and when I am full. I have learned that my body wants fruits and vegetables in the same way that it wants a cookie. I have learned that it is okay not to like certain foods and that I don’t have to fool myself into believing something tastes good when it really doesn’t. Maybe it’s okay to not like arugula lettuce and not enjoy the texture of chia seeds. And I don’t have to choke down a nasty protein shake to build more muscle. And don’t even try to tell me a potato is bad for me! I will defend potatoes for the rest of my life!
I am convinced that my body has a way of telling me what it needs if I just listen to it and trust that God made it good. You see, God made my body to know how to do all this stuff that I tried for so long to control, and manipulate, and make it into something that it was never meant to be. And now I am trying to love it and see my body as created and crafted by my king. And it is good.