In All Honesty, No
I had lunch with my mom this weekend, and it came out that I have a negative self image. I personally have known this for a long time, but I guess that was the first time I expressed it to my mom in so many words. So she gave me this book to read by Josh McDowell called His Image...My Image. The end of each chapter has application points to work through, and being the underachiever that I am, I just give them a cursory glance and half answer the questions in my head. Chapter 3's question talks about Psalm 139:13-16:
For you created my inmost being, You knit me together in my mother's womb, I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made, Your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.It then asks if you believe this of yourself, if you can "honestly thank God for making you the way he did". And then I realized it: my answer, in all honesty, is no. I can thank Him that I wasn't born with some kind of debilitating disease, that I'm not confined to a wheel chair, that I'm relatively normal; but I can't thank him for making me just as I am. There is deep seated pain, bitterness and frustration at God for making me the way I am. Why couldn't I have been born with normal bone structure? Did I have to be this big? Why did I get fat? How come I'm not as smart as my brothers? Why did I get the high blood pressure genes from Mom's family, were the bones from Dad's family not enough? Why should I thank God for all the things about myself that I despise?
I have been lying to myself for a long time. I've been asked before if I was angry at God for everything that's physically wrong with me. I've always said "no" and talked about Amy Carmichael and how I knew God made me this way for a reason. And I do know it. I just don't believe it. My brain says "no", my heart and every fused bone in my body says "yes".
I want so dearly to make a fist, and snap my fingers the way everyone else does, and go to the store and buy shoes with a heal, and not have to worry about the width not being right, and eat salty food and not have to worry about my left ventricle. I thought I didn't have a problem with it, but I guess I do. I can't thank Him...at least not yet.
3 comments:
I love you, Laura. Exactly the way you are.
I don't really know what else to say. That's a tough thing to wrestle with and I honestly don't feel like I could help much by saying anything over the internet like this.
(on that note, let me say something that I just thought of :-p) I do want to say that your worth and your "fearfully and wonderfully made"ness go much deeper than your appearance or the functionality of your body. I can only guess at the reasons God had when he gave you the fused bones that you have, but I can say with a fair amount of certainty that He is going to use that (and has been using that) in your life to further create and develop many aspects of who you are. He has fit you together with a unique set of personality traits, physical traits, and other aspects of yourself that make you a gorgeous creation that can never be replicated and is the ultimate best for who you are and where He has placed you in this world.
Easier for me to say than to fully believe about myself sometimes, but I pray that God helps you let the truths about yourself sink in and take hold.
--Amy
I feel you. On the outside I'm bubbly, happy, and some might say even popular...but on the inside I hate the way I look. I hate what I think people are thinking about me when they see me. I hate feeling slightly embarrassed to eat in front of people. I wear shirts that are normally a size too big to cover it up. I even think I have a problem eating the way I do, sometimes unconciously I just eat. I can't thank God for giving me what he has, cuz he's given me stuff that only He can handle...and it doesn't feel like he's handling it. I love clothes! I can't wear 3/4 of the clothes that I really like because they don't make them big enough for me and if they did they'd look terrible on me anyway. I saw you walking one day, and I thought to myself...wow, Laura lost weight. And then...thinking how nice you looked. You're a pretty girl, so don't be down on yourself. You're looking good. I can thank God for this though, if he hadn't given me this shell...this massive, unattractive shell...perhaps I wouldn't have been able to guard my fragile heart as well.
big sistew, you are awesome, i know you don't always feel that way, and being stuck behind Paul doesn't really do anything for anyone's self-esteem.
but uh, i love you, just like you are. Don't forget that.
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