Beauty and Shame

A sermon on shame and a bet to lose weight collide and expose.

I live a life of shame. If I were to write everything that I have felt shame over, it would be more like a book than a blog.

But prior to the sermon, I had been thinking. A lot of videos and blogs have been going around about women talking about their bodies, their body image, and how they've been shamed by the media and the world into thinking something was wrong with them.

And I sit there and watch those videos, and see these beautiful women saying they have always thought themselves not good enough, and think "what a travesty! Can't they see they are gorgeous? I would love to look like them!" 

Wait....

I apply it so well to others. I can discount those lies and see the shame, not in them, but in how the world has shamed them. They shouldn't be told that! They shouldn't be expected to believe that. And I go on, accepting the lies about me as truth.

I have almost always been overweight. Even as a little girl, when I don't know why, but it started, I became ashamed of my body. I looked around and compared and found myself lacking. Or rather, abundant, when I should have been a little more lacking.

So, when I was 17, I decided, no, not me! I'm going to be skinny! And I watched movies and compared, and cried that I couldn't be like that actress. I repulsed myself. I worked out and didn't eat much and felt so deprived, but guess what? I got skinny. Guess what else? I still thought I was fat. 

My body image had been so distorted by so many things that I couldn't see that I had arrived where I had so desperately wanted to be! Blinded by my own shame, I continued to work and got discouraged when the weight wouldn't come off (there wasn't much else to lose!).

So, I quit.

Not all at once, but slowly and surely it crept back on. But it sat there, constantly telling me that not only was I fat, but now I'm a failure because I had gone back. I allowed it to take my worth. 

I was so ashamed. I didn't want to go see anyone I hadn't seen in a while because they would see. My shame would be exposed.

I need to take a minute here and say that no one ever said anything negative to me to make me believe these things. Everyone was nothing but encouraging. I heaped shame on myself.

So, as I watched these videos and even then, compared my body to theirs, I look down at my own body and a tiny thought appeared...."so....what?"

So what if I have rolls? So what if the number on the scale is more than that other girl's? So what if I'm so tall it's weird and so what if I'm pasty white? So what if the clothes size I buy is bigger than society tells me I should buy? So what?

Does it change who I am? Maybe in a few ways. But does it change the fact that I am me, and that God and so many people love me? Not love me anyway, but just genuinely love me? 

This is hard one for me: does it change the fact that maybe, just maybe, I'm beautiful? Just like this? 

I'm beginning to think that I've bought into the lie. The one the enemy said in the garden to Eve - "you're not good enough yet. You just need to do x, eat this, and then you'll be perfect." 

I'm done believing this. Because even though I'm not going to stand here and say that I'm perfect or that there aren't things I want to change, I will stand here and say that I am good enough. Not by my own merit, but by His. He has done the work, the spiritual and the physical. 

I want to lose weight, but because I want to be healthy, not because I've bought into a lie. And I'm done yelling at myself and being repulsed by myself for a number on a scale. It doesn't define me. It doesn't even factor into the equation of my worth.

That equation was solved on a cross. 

He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. I perceived that there is nothing better for them than to be joyful and to do good as long as they live; also that everyone should eat and drink and take pleasure in all his toil—this is God’s gift to man. I perceived that whatever God does endures forever; nothing can be added to it, nor anything taken from it. God has done it, so that people fear before him. That which is, already has been; that which is to be, already has been; and God seeks what has been driven away. Ecclesiastes 3:11-15