She Had to Die, So I Could Live

Psalm 139:14

I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvelous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well.

1 Samuel 16:7

But the Lord said to Samuel, Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The lord does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.

I Am Who God Says I Am

My butt’s too big, mine is too flat. I have small breast, mine are way too big. My teeth are crooked, my teeth has too many spaces. I’m too fat. I’m too thin. I wish I were taller. I wish I were shorter. My hair is too thin. My hair is too thick. I’m too dark, I’m too light. My feet are too big, hers are too flat. I wish I had a flatter stomach, she wishes she had smaller thighs. These are just a small example of the many things we constantly hear women saying about themselves. Why is it that we spend so much of our time focusing on our outward appearance? In the above scripture it tells us that God is more concerned with what’s in our hearts. So, why is that so difficult for us to embrace?

The above comments are things we tell ourselves, to convince ourselves we could be happy with who were are, if only. But when you look at God’s word and He speaks about who we are, nowhere does it mention any of these things to describe our beauty or who He sees us as being. God’s word says, he created mankind in his own image. It further states that God saw all that he created and it was very good. However, that is not the message we receive in modern day societies, particularly as it pertains to women. You see, society has told us that a woman’s beauty is defined by external features. And everywhere we turn we are presented with more and more options for improving what God has given us. There are breast implants, lip injections, butt lifts, permanent eye brows, permanent eye liner, fat removed from one place and entered into another. Yes, we have solutions to what society perceives as our “flawed” bodies. What’s even worse is that we also have “super models” to illustrate to us what we should aspire to look like. The Webster Dictionary defines model as “an example for imitation or emulation”. Each year millions of dollars are spent by females trying to emulate what has been displayed to us as the epitome of what our bodies should look like as well as what we should put on them. Not only have we bought into the world’s concept of beauty, we as women put one another down when we don’t measure up. All of this is contradiction to who God says we are.

When I was around 4 years old I had my two front teeth knocked out by the babysitter. She was mopping the floor and I was trying to squeeze between her and the kitchen cabinet to get to the refrigerator. In an effort to keep me from messing up her newly mopped floor, she took her backside and pushed me and the impact of my mouth hitting the corner of the counter top knocked my teeth out. So from the age of 4 until a child’s teeth would normally fall out and grow back, I didn’t have any front teeth. I heard just about every 2 front teeth joke and song ever sung or spoken. On top of that, because my tongue became accustomed to resting in the space, my once perfectly straight teeth grew back in bucked. Then around 8 or 9 while playing softball with an uncle, he threw the ball when I wasn’t looking and hit me in the mouth which killed the nerves and caused the front teeth to discolor. I’m telling you all of this to help you see why I never smiled as a child. I grew up with such a complex about my teeth, that my lack of smiling led people to believe that I was just an unhappy child. But that wasn’t the case, I was simply too embarrassed by my looks. So, I spent my entire childhood as well as a good portion of my adulthood with a very low self-image. After all, everyone wants a million dollar smile right? What’s really sad is that after spending thousands of dollars on braces and caps, the internal picture of myself didn’t change. In my mind, I was still ugly.

You hear this happening a lot with people who were once overweight and still think they’re fat once they’ve lost the pounds. There are people shown on television who are addicted to getting plastic surgery. Every time one thing is fixed they go back to the doctor for something else. Their internal self still see themselves as they once were.

I have to admit, there are still times when I struggle with my looks. I’m just being honest. No matter how much others tell me my looks are fine and no matter how many scriptures I’ve read to illustrate God’s opinion of me, I still struggle. I know there are other women like myself who struggle as well. And, because of that I go out of my way to give women compliments. Just in case they weren’t feeling good about themselves on that day. There are days when it’s an internal struggle to see myself as God see’s me. But I try not to allow those days to become my way of life and I try to help others do the same.