It's funny isn't it? How one moment we can go from everyone telling us how cute our baby bump is, to finding ourselves looking into a hospital mirror at a stomach that now looks like a 3 month old wrinkly deflated balloon.
I myself immediately go to thoughts of fear. What if it doesn't go back? What if I can't lose the baby weight? What if, what if.....why? Why do I care so much and to whom am I actually caring for?
My mind immediately reverts back to those junior high and high school feelings of wanting to be the most popular, pretty girl who always has a boyfriend. The one who always gets asked to dances. The one that everyone wants to be like. The real fear here is if I do not fit (fill in the blank)_______________ criteria, then no one will want me.
Oh the desire of the female heart- to be loved, to be wanted, to feel secure. It's been 12 years since I graduated high school, and 6 or 7 since I struggled with an eating disorder, and yet the most insecure areas of my heart still struggle with this. I want to be loved. Wanted. Desired.
I want to feel lovely and beautiful.
How quickly satan can take such a beautiful thing like pregnancy, and birth and turn it into a thing to be feared. How standing in line at a grocery store almost always guarantees a chance for someone to be judging the latest celebrities rapid post partum weight loss or lack thereof. How once again the lies quickly tantalize and tease us into a comparison trap. A comparison that we aren't good enough. That our bodies are now flawed by lose skin and stretch marks instead of more beautiful because of the life that was birthed from them.
God's word is my anchor, and though my heart still struggles to believe it. I must continue to put his word in front of me. To truly accept and know His word is truth, and to name those thoughts of unworthiness, undesirable, unwanted, and unloved as exactly what they are....lies.
His word tells me....
I am beautiful. There is no flaw in me.
Song of Songs 4:7 (paraphrase)
He is enthralled by my beauty and to honor him for he is my lord
Psalm 45:11 (paraphrase)
I was created in His image (and last I knew God was perfect!) He created me perfectly, and I am exactly who I am supposed to be.
Genesis 1:27 (paraphrase)
He knit me together before I was even born. I am fearfully and wonderfully made and His works are wonderful. Every single day of my life has been planned by Him before I ever even came into existence.
Psalm 139:13-16 (paraphrase)
This body birthed two lives. Two little souls who have grown me in more ways in 3 years than I ever did in the previous 27. Isn't that really what this life is all about anyway? Living everyday for Him? For my deepest desire in this life isn't to have a perfect body, the nicest home, or most successful job. No, my deepest desire is that one day, when this life is over, that I would meet my Jesus and hear him say "Well done good and faithful servant, well done."
Blessings,
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