The Big Issue

I have never been small.  When I was born, the scales tipped at a heavy 8lbs. 13oz.  Big newborn babies are greeted with joy, and growth is celebrated.  Before long, the message changes.  The culture of the world inundates us with images of what makes one beautiful and it convinces us that it is this beauty, not love, that covers a multitude of sins.

I can remember feeling insecure about being fat as early as elementary school.  For me, beauty was all about weight and I would go back and forth with feeling negative about myself and then combating the feelings by "proving" that I could be valued for things other than beauty - strength, for example, or intelligence.  I could do many things and as I grew older, I would pursue all of them to prove I was talented and yet I still always felt like a mediocre version of the friends around me who excelled at those things and were beautiful on top of that.  In all those Nancy Drew books I loved to read, I was just the pudgy friend Bess. 

It bothered me, because I knew who I was on the inside.  I had in fact, been a Christian longer than I had the insecurity, and I knew I had purpose, vision and gifts.  But those things only made me seem even more like an oddball and I longed for social acceptance.  My insecurity about my body helped serve as a strong foundation on which to pile wounds of rejection.  I would come to blame it for my singleness and awkwardness in groups among other things, especially when even other Christians would encourage mere aesthetic remedies to those "problems."

Looking back now at pictures of my youth, I can see without the filter of insecurity; I actually was normal sized.  I certainly wasn't small and thin, but that had more to do with this broad German frame than any extra padding.  Having been born five weeks early and deathly ill, I sometimes wonder if my large birth weight was part of God's saving grace in the fight for survival.  But the very thing that may have been a blessing, I abused and called a curse.  I struggled with unhealthy habits and became probably the first girl who, through skipping meals, actually gained weight.  I damaged my metabolism and have spent the last fifteen years working to restore it.

Yet here, now, at what the ladies from my mum's church would call my "fluffiest," I feel more beautiful than I ever did.  I may not be a good weight, but I am working on that, and my blood tests reveal that all my counts are actually better than normal.  That's not why I feel this way.  I feel beautiful because I know who I am in Him.   That girl hidden inside of me; she wasn't made to fit in with the world.  She was made to be set apart, as each of us are, for a purpose that glorifies Him.  

Of course I still get those panicky moments when I go to my closet before a special occasion, or that little cringe of disappointment when I see a photograph that shows my reality a little too well.  Yes, I still struggle with deep wounds related to all this.  I am human after all, tied to earth with this bag of bones, big bag that it is.  But God is a healer and through all this, He continuously speaks to me about my identity in Him.  He says I am beautiful.  I am fearfully and wonderfully made.  I am the apple of His eye.  I am a woman of value.  I am His daughter.   
He delights in me...  and none of it is because of my body size.  


This post was inspired today after reading a post at Beta Christian that was talking about the importance beauty plays in our society.  I was instantly flooded with loads of memories, but in them, I felt a breath of God's encouragement as they came.  To narrow down my feelings and find focus was difficult and I feel like there might be a few more posts lingering in me with which I can dive deeper into this topic.  Since I already gave the rawest of raw in my February post about relationships, I should have no fear in bringing this to the surface.  In the meantime, I pray you might be encouraged to take a look at who God says you are, as there is so much freedom there.