How I Started Making Peace with the Mirror (and other inanimate objects!)

Tuesday, September 02, 2008 - Comments 0

Blogging for us today is our friend Michelle Watson, a professional counselor and instructor at an eating disorder graduate program in Oregon. Enjoy.

This past spring there was a segment on the Today Show that sought to debate the question, “If you had to choose, would you rather be 40 pounds overweight and smart OR skinny, but stupid?” What an intriguing and yet hard question to answer! If you were honest, would you admit to leaning toward being a little less smart if it meant you could hold on to your version of what skinny looks like? If I come clean, I admit to leaning that way more often than not actually. And if we continue being honest, wouldn’t we agree that our definition of skinny has slowly morphed into meaning more than just body size?

Somehow along the way it seems that we have come to define skinny as actually being synonymous with meaning that we are beautiful, acceptable, worthy, enough. This has me wondering if being skinny has somehow become the visual decoy to deter us from tuning in to what is truly going on inside us. Maybe if our focus stays just on the external, our weight and body shape, it stops us from going deeper and addressing the real issues and longings that fuel our unrest with who we are at our core, like feelings of unworthiness, shame, or guilt.

There is a story in Acts 3 that reminds me of our universal longing to be beautiful. Here we are introduced to a man who was crippled from birth who was being carried to his usual spot where he sat at the temple gate called Beautiful. By this time in his life he was used to being the one who was left out, passed by, defined by his deformity. All he could do was watch and wish and beg, with constant reminders that he was not one of the beautiful people even though the place he sat was called by that name.

As we know, God used Peter and John to speak into this man’s life and through their faith God instantly healed him. Not only did he begin to walk when they told him to get up, but he began jumping around and praising God as he celebrated the fact that he was a living miracle!
 
How many of us can relate to this man where we feel confined to a body that isn’t what we want it to be? We feel trapped in the belief that we are less than or not good enough or pretty enough, so we sit at various places where beautiful and popular people are (a.k.a. the gate called Beautiful), hoping that somehow we will vicariously become beautiful or popular just by being associated with them. But what ends up happening in the process is that we stop living our own lives and start wishing we could be someone else or have what she has or look like she looks. We find ourselves begging from someone else to give us what we think we need in order to be beautiful and acceptable when all that comes of it is a continual state of reinforcement that we’re not okay just as we are. The place called Beautiful and the people who frequent that place can’t make us beautiful. It’s not in their power to give us that title or gift.

The only One who can give us the gift of wholeness is Jesus Christ because only He has the power to bring life to that which is not. Only He can bring beauty from ashes. The real miracle is that once Jesus touches us with the healing truth of our identity in Him, we will jump and dance and by faith and with courage shout the words, “I’M BEAUTIFUL JUST THE WAY I AM!!!

I have to ask myself how often I speak out these 7 words in celebration of the healing God has done in my life? Not enough, that’s for sure. I tend to think I’ll be beautiful if I lose just 5 more pounds or get a little more toned. Yet just like the man in this story who sat under an inanimate object with the hope that he would get his needs met there, I too have looked to inanimate objects like the mirror and the size of my jeans to tell me whether I’m beautiful or not. Having had an eating disorder for almost ten years, with a 50 pound weight increase during that time, I know what it’s like to have inanimate objects come to life to despise and criticize me as if they were real. So now I proactively relate to the mirror by smiling back at myself when I look into it! I know that may sound a little crazy, but it changes the negative thoughts to a positive exchange…really!

I decided to try a little experiment that I’m calling “777” where in the next 7 days I’m going to say these 7 words, “I’m beautiful just the way I am!” 7 times a day. I’m just two days into my experiment and you know what? I’m already noticing that the truth of these words are taking hold in a new way inside of me! (repetition is a good thing, don’t you think?) In the spirit of “True,” I’d love to invite you to join me in this experiment. Let’s try it together for a week and then report back. By standing on God’s truth about our unique beauty, we can all start to make peace with the mirror as we accept ourselves just the way we are today!

If you want to share your own “777” experience send an email to: .

Michelle