Are You Ugly?
You are ugly, oh and fat. Don’t forget. No, you can’t forget. You know you are ugly, you know you are fat. You have known these things for as long as you can remember. You didn’t need anyone to teach you these “truths” because they are etched on your soul. Anyone, who tells you otherwise is doing so because they must, or to be nice, or because they feel sorry for you. You hate the mirror, yet you can’t stay away. Studying every line, every blemish, every single imperfection. The cellulite, the stretch marks, the ugly.
You feel empowered by posts about stretch marks being badges of honor, but only for a moment. You praise the woman who has shown herself with no make-up, and you comment with a “You are beautiful”, but you are a hypocrite, because you don’t really believe there is beauty without spanks, or makeup, or hair gel… at least not for you. You tell your daughters they are beautiful inside and out, but they look just like you, so can you truly believe that a branch from the ugly tree can be beautiful and blemish free?
You have been to the place where you thought beauty lived, working out for hours a day, training for perfection. Yet you remained empty, but for the first time in your life you believed you were beautiful. But Why? Because that’s what the men told you, the men who wanted to use you, the men who had ulterior motives. You weren’t beautiful to them, you were meat, and object, and you loved every minute of it.
You are finally in a place where you want to be honest with yourself. You know that you are fearfully and wonderfully made. You know you have made an idol of your body. You know you will never find joy in these idols. So will you break away? Will you abandon the lies you have believed for so long about yourself? Will you train your daughters to believe that beauty is so much more than makeup, paleo diets, and running shoes? Will you teach her to walk in your shoes, the shoes of a woman who knows that her worth isn’t tied up in the lies she hears and sees every day? Will she find her worth in Him? Through your example? Will she learn that she was made in the image of her creator, and that His love alone can make her truly ugly heart something worthy of the word beautiful? Will you show her how to be thankful for every part of herself, even her flaws?
What will you do to change how you see yourself? What part of you do you truly need Him to “make over”? What will you teach your daughters?
I love you, or at least I’m starting to. Lord help me, to love your creation and see your creation the way you do.
~ A letter to myself.