When I was over two hundred and fifty pounds, I used to say, "I am skinny on the inside...." and it was true. I always felt as if my "real self" was trapped inside of my obese body. I felt as though I walked through my life, peering out of this shell that didn't match the real me. I cared as much, if not more, how I looked as all of the skinny, beautiful women. I never left the house without make up on or without my hair done. I took care of myself. When I went out to dinner with my husband, I wanted to be glamorous and beautiful. I hoped that people would notice me when I walked into a crowded room. I believed and would tell myself, "If I could just get this weight off, I could be the woman I have always wanted to be..."
Imagine how surprised I was, after losing over a hundred pounds, when I realized that I still felt the same way! Only now, I was that fat girl, looking out the window of a smaller, more acceptable body. I still wanted all of the same things, to be beautiful and glamorous, to be noticed and accepted. Sure, people notice me now, I am no longer invisible (you plus size girls know what I mean). I have actually been shocked at the difference in how I get treated in public, the way people acknowledge my presence. However, the important thing is that the way I felt about myself hadn't changed. I still felt this need to be more, less, better, just different than what I was, somehow. I went from feeling like, "If I could just get this weight off..." to "If I could just change {insert any one thing on any given day}, I could be the woman I want to be...."
One day, I was looking at my self in the mirror and Jason walked by. He asked me, "Why are you looking at yourself like that?" "Like what?" "Like you are still unhappy with yourself. You are so beautiful. You always have been, you always will be...and that has nothing to do with your body." That statement from my husband, started a change in my heart. God used those words to start a real transformation in me, the real me, not by shell.
I came to realize that I was never a skinny girl in a fat body and I am not now, a fat girl in a skinny body. I am just me. God began a new work in me, changing the inside as drastically as my outside has changed over the past year.
All of these years, I had it all wrong. I believed that being pretty could change my life. So, I, as many women do, picked at my skin, criticized my features and used all of that as an excuse not to change the part of me that mattered, really mattered. Sure, I was a "good" person, I thought. However, when the weight was gone (and I couldn't use that as an excuse anymore), I had to face the fact that what I saw was ugly and that had nothing to do with what I could see. I was angry. I was unforgiving, judgmental and self-righteous. I didn't love people like I should or hate sin like Christ does. That is what was making me ugly. Being fat was just a distraction, something the enemy was using to divert my attention and keep me in bondage. As long as I was focusing on what was wrong with the way I looked, I wasn't examining my heart, motives or personality.
You hear people say, "Beauty is only skin deep...." Friends, that is the problem itself. We, as a culture, focus so much on "skin deep" beauty that we entirely miss the point. Real beauty goes to the bone, though the soul and falls out of you without restraint.
Maybe you aren't fat. Maybe your breast are smaller than you would like, or your nose is crooked. Perhaps you have a belly or think you are too skinny. Maybe your hair is stringy or thinner than would like it to be. Let me encourage you to let go of all of that, just long enough to allow God to change you on the inside.
Allow Him to heal you, help you trust again, change you at your core. Allow godliness to grow inside of you and kindness and love to go before you every where you go. That is what beauty is. When you are beautiful on the inside you will see your outside differently, perhaps more accurately to the wonderful creation God made when He designed YOU.
Today, I am still not the woman I wish to be. I have more growing and changing to do. However, today, my prayer is, "God if You will keep changing my heart, I will become the woman You want me to be..." Today I feel more beautiful than I ever have before and it has nothing to do with the way I look. That is a happiness and contentment that can only come from God and I am grateful.
"Oh yes, you shaped me first inside, then out;
you formed me in my mother’s womb.
I thank you, High God—you’re breathtaking!
Body and soul, I am marvelously made!
I worship in adoration—what a creation!
You know me inside and out,
you know every bone in my body;
You know exactly how I was made, bit by bit,
how I was sculpted from nothing into something.
Like an open book, you watched me grow from conception to birth;
all the stages of my life were spread out before you,
The days of my life all prepared
before I’d even lived one day."
Psalm 139:13-16, The Message
