Size 2 models in all forms of advertising being shoved at us every where at all times. A constant picture of what the world deems as womanly perfection is being used to drive marketing for everything you can think of.
Body shape, weight, and type is constantly being blared on all forms of media. Exercise and you can be this. Eat right and you can look like that. Take this pill and you will be everything you dream of.
What a CROCK!!!
I have been thin 85% of my life. I am 5'10 and weighed 124 when I got married. At age 29, when I got pregnant with our first son, I still weighed only 130 and wore a Junior size 4. Not because I did anything, but because that is how God designed me.
Now, I am age 50, and I am battling Polycystic Kidney disease. In the past three years I have gained more clothing sizes than I have in my entire life. This disease process has not only caused my kidneys to become the size of a football (resulting in a distinctly pregnant look), but because of the process itself and the imbalance of nutrients in my body, I am gaining everywhere and as if that wasn't enough fun, let's lose our hair while we are at it.
I have been trying every clothing style imaginable to cover, disguise, improve upon my looks. Each time I walk into a store, shop might as well be the dirtiest four letter word out there. Hairstyles keep changing to disguise the increasingly thinning of my hair.
I started my marriage to my husband 28 years ago just a few miles down the beach from where we are now. Skinny little thing that barely cast a shadow on the sand, could rock a bikini with the best of them, and had over come, with God's help, what I then thought, was the worst days of my life.
This morning as I walked along the shore I was thinking and I caught my shadow ahead on the sand and was immediately displeased. God immediately came in to instruct me and teach me a lesson that I wish I had listened to and learned long ago.
Guess what I discovered??? I am VAIN. Yep, I said it. Put it out there for everyone to know. I have, over time, bought into the line of trash being fed to women that we must be more, do more, and look like more.
My body shape, size, type doesn't matter one fig!! The one single thing that matters, and it matters more than anything in my life, is that each morning that I draw breath that I love my God, I show the love that He gives to me to every single person around me, and that as much as it is within me, that I keep my body a temple for the indwelling of His Holy Spirit.
Pretty simple to say but so much harder to live. So today as I go back out on the beach amongst the young and not so young, and I look around, I will choose to NOT be ashamed of how I look but rather to be proud that I am the child of the King; to know that I am wonderfully made; and to know without a doubt, that I am created in His image.
Be blessed my friends and go out and rock YOU today!!!
me
