I NEED you to know how wonderful you are. My head and my heart are swirling and I'm worried I wont get the right words out to fully explain what I am trying to say.
I see the way you look at yourself, the way you critique everything you do, the way you second guess yourself, the way you try to always say the right thing. You worry, you worry a lot. You look in the mirror and see everything you don't like about yourself staring back at you.
But do you know what, I don't see those things about you. My heart explodes with love when I think about you. I think you are wonderful. You may mess up every once and a while and say the wrong things, but guess what? You're still perfectly wonderful.
I wish that you could look in the mirror and see what I see when I look at you. Just think, if I see all that wonderfulness, imagine how your creator sees you!!
...God judges persons differently than humans do. Men and women look at the face; God looks into the heart. 1 Samuel 16:7 MSG
You are judging yourself based on the standards of today's culture. You need to change your focus and look at yourself the way the Lord looks at you. You are a daughter of the King! He made you the way you are on purpose and you are stunningly beautiful to Him! Our culture has caused you to be constantly measuring yourselves against images of women in the media without even realizing it, or maybe you do realize it and don't see the damage it causes you. You follow your favorite actors/actresses, athletes, musicians on things like Facebook and Instagram under the guise of 'inspiration', but you are actually perpetuating the belief that your worth depends on your looks, your weight, your wealth, or your influence. Only negativity can come from this, you will never measure up to the artificial perfection displayed in these photos. The lives of the people you look up to are no less broken than you! You will constantly be striving to be like someone else, but guess what, that person you are striving to be is no more worthy that you!!
... Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you. Romans 12:1-2 MSG
But it's not only about you! Whether you know it or not, people are influenced by you, and these easily influenced people are watching you-your daughters, your sisters, your mothers, your friends. These females love you and look up to you, so if you think you aren't good enough, what does that do to them? How does that make them value themselves? Think for a moment, would you want these woman to put as much pressure on themselves as you do to yourself?
I'm writing this as if I'm not affected, but I am. I struggle with this as much as you do! That's how I'm so acutely aware of your pain and struggles. But thankfully there is hope for us all, and it's found in the love of our Father...
What marvelous love the Father has extended to us! Just look at it—we’re called children of God! That’s who we really are. But that’s also why the world doesn't recognize us or take us seriously, because it has no idea who he is or what he’s up to.
But friends, that’s exactly who we are: children of God. And that’s only the beginning. Who knows how we’ll end up! What we know is that when Christ is openly revealed, we’ll see him—and in seeing him, become like him. All of us who look forward to his Coming stay ready, with the glistening purity of Jesus’ life as a model for our own. 1 John 3:1-3 MSG
That scripture sums up more than I could ever dream of explaining myself.
In closing, I want to share one more verse that was a staple in a bible study I just completed:
She is clothed with strength and dignity, and she laughs without fear of the future. Proverbs 31:25 NLT
Ladies, clothe yourselves with the love and dignity that can only come from our Father, through only that will we find freedom!
~Angela
