As a result of the wounds we receive growing up, we come to believe that some part of us, maybe every part of us, is marred. Shame enters in and makes its crippling home deep within our hearts. Shame is what makes us look away, so we avoid eye contact with strangers and friends. Shame is that feeling that haunts us, the sense that if someone really knew us, they would shake their heads in disgust and run away. Shame makes us feel, no, believe, that we do not measure up--not to the world's standards, the church's standards, or our own.
Others seem to master their lives, but shame grips our hearts and pins them down, ever ready to point out our failures and judge our worth. We are lacking. We know we are not all that we long to be, all that God longs for us to be, but instead of coming up for grace-filled air and asking God what he thinks of us, shame keeps us pinned down and gasping, believing that we deserve to suffocate. If we were not deemed worthy of love as children, it is incredibly difficult to believe we are worth loving as adults. Shame says we are unworthy, broken, and beyond repair.
Shame causes us to hide. We are afraid of being truly seen, and so we hide out truest selves and offer only what we believe is wanted. If we are dominating kind of women, we offer out "expertise." If we are desolate kind of woman, we offer our "service." We are silent and do not say what we see or know when it is different from what others are saying, because we think we must be wrong. We refuse to bring the weight of our lives, who God has made us to be, to bear on others out of a fear of being rejected.
Shame makes us feel very uncomfortable worth our beauty. Women are beautiful, every single one of us. It is one of the glorious ways that we bear the image of God. But few of us believe we are beautiful, and fewer still are comfortable with it. We either think we don't have any beauty or if we do, that it's dangerous and bad. So we hide our beauty behind extra weight and layers of unnecessary makeup. Or we neutralize our beauty by putting up protective, defensive walls that warn others to keep their distance.
"Captivating" by John and Stasi Eldredge
I got this excerpt from the book, Captivating, by John and Stasi Eldredge. It really struck me because I could totally relate. I mean, every women's story is different but there is an underlying connection with who we are as women. We want to feel loved, accepted, beautiful, and just truly captivating. There's much to be said, but I think Seabird (a Christian music group) said it well in their song Don't You Know You're Beautiful.
After the Thanksgiving weekend, my diet has been horrible...horrible, horrible, terrible. I've been eating chicken, fish, shrimp, pork, and other bad unhealthy stuff. The weird thing is that I'm pretty conscious about it too. I've also began to notice how I'm gaining weight again and I feel really bad. I still want to incorporate the healthy "Eat to Live" diet into my lifestyle, I just think it's gonna be a slow process because I LOVE food. The plus side of doing the diet was figuring out ways to have vegetarian/vegan meals at home and at restaurants. There are a variety of foods I got to try since doing this diet and it's pretty amazing. Even though I have been slacking off, I really want to get back into the diet and start changing my choices. I do want to get off these medications and I do want to start feeling good about myself. I figure, part of my new year's resolution is to commit to this diet and only eat the "bad" foods on a r...
Last week was the last week of the 6 week challenge. Last week was also the week of Thanksgiving, so you can imagine the conflict I had encountered. Ok, well not really. I had two slices of turkey breast and three pices of BBQ pork...and it was so good. I was trying to savor every bite, lol, before I go back to the strict diet. It's weird that I would be calling the past 6 weeks a "trial" session because even after that, I'm still going to incorporate the diet into my lifestyle. I really do believe that I have made so much more improvement since starting this diet. Most of my joints have been feeling better. The joints that still bother me are my hips and a little on my ankle. I don't know if it has to do with not strictly abiding to the strict diet (I avoid meats, though) or the cold weather. ---------------------- Today has been a really good day, too! -Sushi Social = SUCCESS!! -Before my next class, I got to hang out with some peeps :] -Last Day of one o...
We're already more than halfway through the year and much has happened since my last post. A happy occasion: the day we became man & wife! At the start of the year (January 2nd to be exact), I married Nio! I introduced him a few posts earlier as my boyfriend. We were engaged on May 5, 2013, but I didn't get the chance to write about that special event because we've been so busy with the wedding plans & preparations. It is all a distant memory now because we are reaching 8 months into our married life this coming September. For the both of us, we are constantly finding ourselves in awe of God's goodness and His perfect plans. We're learning a lot through this marriage--about ourselves and about each other. I'll be honest, it was tough at the beginning because we're not used to living with each other and having to deal with the different temperments (Nio, the extrovert, and I, the introvert). There were moments of frustrations, disappoint...
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