Whose Voice Is Loudest?

Lessons from a bad body image day

Yesterday I went to church feeling ugly. This is not unusual; there are few days when I leave the house feeling amazing about how I look. But yesterday I had chosen a blouse that I liked and spent time steaming it, only to discover too late that I didn’t like how the blouse fit me. The memory I had of myself from the last time I wore the top did not fit the current me in the mirror. My weight has fluctuated quite a bit over the past 6-8 months. In the fall I dropped over 20 pounds without trying thanks to the Grief and Depression Diet, but the weight started coming back in the spring. For some time, I was too depressed to care what the scale did in either direction (and in general I don’t even weigh myself at home, due to my history of disordered eating behaviors), but now here was a concrete reminder of the fact that my body had once again changed.

I’m embarrassed to admit how many times I tugged at or adjusted my shirt during church. I’m embarrassed to admit how my thoughts drifted from worship to chastising myself. I kept wishing I had tried on the shirt before going to the trouble of removing the wrinkles so I could have picked something I knew hid my unlikeable parts better.

My thoughts turned to a familiar playbook: I imagined how I must look to everyone else and then assumed they were criticizing me in their heads. And because I assumed this, I also assumed that eventually someone would say something hurtful to me, so I tried to hate myself enough that I wouldn’t be surprised when others hated me too. These are not rational thoughts. No one at church has ever been cruel or unkind to me, in word or action. I have no reason to expect that people who love me will treat me with such hatred. But I treated myself that way, as if preparing myself to say, “Oh, believe me, I know” when someone did tell me I looked ugly. Then we would both be in on it. Foolproof, right?

The truth is, it doesn’t matter what shirt I wear; odds are I’m not going to feel good about how I look in it. I’m far too aware of how wide my midsection is or how flabby my arms are or how many extra chins I have to fully accept my appearance as good, to fully accept my body as good. And honestly, as far as performance goes, my body barely earns a passing grade. I have an autoimmune disorder that rarely lets me forget that my digestive system doesn’t work like others’ do; I have aching hips that were operated on when I was the ripe old age of 34; and I have joint pain that developed alongside my autoimmune disease. Is it any wonder I don’t like my body?

But the other truth is: my body is good. God made me with purpose and intention; he shaped and formed me, and as the work of his hands, my body is good. Not only that, but he gave me this body “to will and to act according to his good pleasure¹,” not to complain and criticize and abuse. He wants me to use my right-now body to live for him now instead of waiting for some future day and some future, perfect body. Why is it so hard for me to believe and accept this?

The problem is, I’m listening to the wrong voices. I’m letting toxic messages from diet culture and a society that values outer beauty above all else tell me that because I don’t have a “thigh gap” or fit in size 2 jeans, I’m not worthy of love. I allow myself to absorb the messages from social media that tout a perfect figure as the key to happiness. I let myself be convinced that something must be wrong with me because I don’t look like the women on magazine covers or in ads on social media. These voices are loud, and they are everywhere.

But just because these voices are everywhere doesn’t make them true. God’s voice may not be audible, but his voice must be loudest in my mind. His truth must be paramount in my heart. When I believe that my body is good—that I am fearfully and wonderfully made², and that I, a lump of clay, have no right to hate what the Potter has made³—then I can live with assurance of my beloved status as a child of God. When I believe that God’s love for me doesn’t hinge on the number inside my jeans or on the scale, and when I rest in the truth that I can’t be too big or too small to be unloved by God, then I can stop striving to earn God’s favor and start living like I know I already have it. I can begin to let the knowledge of God’s love set me free from the prison of self-hatred I have built in my own mind. No matter my weight, God’s arms are always big enough to hold me. His love is always deep and wide enough to envelop all of me. The power of his Spirit was enough to transform me from someone held captive by sin to someone who serves Christ, and surely that same power will also help me take captive every thought⁴ so that it listens to God, not the world.

Photo by Quino Al on Unsplash

God doesn’t mind that I take up space. He only wants me to glorify him in it.

Every morning, I’m going to be faced with the same reflection in the mirror and face the same broken, imperfect body I have today (except that it will keep getting older and more broken!). I’m going to have to make a choice: will I choose the voice of self-hatred, or will I choose the voice of God? I pray the choice will always be easy, but when it isn’t, I will trust God’s power to strengthen me to choose him anyway.

1. Philippians 2:13

2. Psalm 139:14

3. Isaiah 45:9

4. 2 Corinthians 10:5