Wednesday, 28 April 2010 17:20 | and posted in Sex & Relationships
I had a moment. I was fixing my hair and I smiled because I liked what I saw in the mirror. A beautiful women, happy and at ease with herself stared back at me. I am celebrating this moment because in it I realised how much God has been restoring me.
For large sections of my 30 years of life I have hated the way I look. I believed I was ugly and unattractive and when I looked in the mirror I was unhappy with what I saw. I destroyed or deleted any photo of myself I remotely didn’t like – I didn’t leave many!
It’s funny because as a young child the whole area of self-image was not something that bothered me. I can remember a time in Primary school when what you wore or how you looked didn’t matter, and then suddenly how they did. Overnight, the simplicity of childhood was replaced as puberty hit by a complex world I really couldn’t figure out. In this world what you wore and how you looked mattered. If you wore the right clothes and make-up and had the right hair cut then life would be good to you. Friendships that had been warm and safe now changed and grew a cold competitive edge that just increased throughout High School.
During this time I began to hate myself and the way I looked. I began comparing myself to others and I soon decided I was ugly. In order to avoid drawing attention to myself I started to wear dark and unfeminine clothes. I even became very outspoken about how any type of feminine clothing didn’t suit me and I consequently went for years without wearing feminine clothes like skirts or a dresses.
However, it was all a show – I was lying because inside of me was a girl longing to be girly.
My self-image and self-worth were so low that anytime anyone told me I was pretty, I didn’t believe them. Even after becoming a Christian at the age of 19 I still really struggled in this area. You see there are times when we can justify feeling bad about ourselves by making it seem holy. I told myself it was shallow to think and bother about how we look.
But then at 24 I had this amazing God encounter where I experienced God’s awesome love in new and deeper ways than ever before. A new season of revelation and restoration began through which God has changed my life. A key part of my journey was my discovery of the book of Song of Songs in the Bible. I found myself captivated by the beautiful intimacy God has created us to have with him that is so powerfully expressed within Song of Songs. The words came alive as I read them - God was speaking to me!
”How beautiful you are, my darling! Oh, how beautiful! Your eyes are doves.” Song of Songs 1:15
"Arise, my darling; my beautiful one, and come with me.” Song of Songs 2:13
“My dove in the clefts of the rock, in the hiding places on the mountainside, show me your face, let me hear your voice; for your voice is sweet, and your face is lovely.” Song of Songs 2:14
The Spirit constantly drew me to these verses and other people started directing me to them too when they were praying for me. The more I allowed God’s love and revelation to soak into my heart the more I began to see myself through his eyes. My struggle with self-image remained because the lies in my head about who I was were still there, but I began to see them for what they really were – lies!
Listen, O daughter, consider and give ear: Forget your people and your father's house. The king is enthralled by your beauty; honour him, for he is your lord. Psalm 45:10-11 (NIV)
This has become one of the key verses I return to repeatedly. As God continues to reveal to me the many lies I have believed about myself I repent of each one and choose to believe and declare God’s truth in my life. He is enthralled by my beauty! I realised that anytime I listened to those lies and took them seriously I was not honouring my heavenly father. You see we are created by God and made in his image, it says so in Genesis. If we don’t like ourselves we are really saying to God that He is not very good at creating!! This is not very honouring! It’s time to believe the truth!
Six years later and I see the evidence of God’ beautiful restoration in so many areas of my life. It’s fun and healing to see the physical differences: not being scared of mirrors, having colour in my wardrobe and not destroying every picture that is taken of me! But most importantly God’s words of life and love have awakened my heart.
Through this awakening there has been an unlocking of who I am – a woman. I continue to walk in this journey of discovery. The lies can’t hold me back as I choose to honour my God and listen to his voice instead. And I now feel the freedom in my life to embrace all that is feminine, all that is beautiful and all that God created me to be.