A constant battle

Media imagery of what the female body should look like is in our faces constantly. As females we seek to be loved and given attention and the world tells us that we have to look a certain way in order to receive that. I didn't really start fighting the issue of body image until recently. I've always been relatively petite and well I've never had to watch what I eat to maintain a healthy body weight. College ruined that for me, not in the way you would think but my perspectives have changed. I don't desire the body of other girls. I'm not (usually) comparing myself to them I'm predominantly comparing myself to what I once looked like.

This is from my Senior year in high school and while my best friend Alyssa can try to comfort me all she wants by telling me I am so skinny here that I look sickly I still miss being that girl. I miss not caring what my body looked like because well it was fine just that way it was. And it is beautiful and fine just that way it is now but I allow myself to believe the lie that if I'm not skinny enough I am not beautiful. I know full well that this is a lie that Satan uses to throw me into a depression and to ultimately cause me to become an ineffective worker.

I don't have words of wisdom for other girls who deal with this....my problem isn't solved. I have to daily give up my weight and appearance to God and I fail at that often. I find myself in the morning having the strong desire to check my weight to make sure it's acceptable enough for me. Throughout the day I question the amount of food I have eaten and while I still eat unhealthy things like sweets, if I have any of that a substantial meal is hard for me to want to eat.

It's a constant battle and Satan is a strong enemy that I can not defeat in my own power but luckily I have God on my side. He constantly shows me grace and love.

So I started a facebook group this week(a week when I'm unbelievably sick) about accepting yourself for exactly who you are, about not being so concerned about doing your makeup before you leave the house, about letting your hair flow it's natural way etc. This is my reminder to myself that I am beautiful to God no matter what I look like on the outside. This is me. Makeup-less and curly haired(and somewhat sick). I am loved and accepted exactly the way I am by the one who cared enough to create me.

Finally Obedient

So at the end of last year God was prodding me to share my faith with a close friend Rebecca. Becca and I were not very close at the beginning of the year but towards the end of our last semester of Junior year we were besties(twins we called it). That made things even worse because now that I finally had a friend from school I was even more fearful of rejection if she knew about my love for God. Needless to say I never talked to her about anything spiritual and we parted ways for the summer. We kept in touch using skype as our means for communication over the summer.
Becca knew I went to church, she knew I didn't drink(often, I have done this in my not so long ago past) and well I liked to believe she could see Christ in my life. Fact was I wasn't really living for God at the time. But this semester God has been growing me and well I'm finally working on my own relationship with him and that spilled over into Becca's life. I finally got the opportunity to share the gospel with her and for the first time in probably a year I started praying.
My friends kept telling me to be intentional with her. To continually direct her thoughts towards Jesus and what he did on the cross for her. I led her through the Romans road and I admit I was somewhat discouraged she didn't make a decision then and there.
Fall getaway came and for some reason it didn't cross my mind to invite her. I considered this retreat to be for those who already accepted the gift of salvation to grow their faith. Luckily Alyssa took on the role of getting her to come. I just kept seeing God prompting her to follow him. I knew that he was the only one who could fix her brokenness because I saw him fixing me.

Well this story has a very happy ending. The other day I was talking to her and she was telling me how she was purging her facebook so to speak. Deleting things she wasn't proud of ridding herself of friends who were wrong influences in her life and I thought to myself...."something has changed in her". God changed her. I'm so excited to know that the wonderful Rebecca Wheeler accepted Christ as her Lord and savior recently.
You can be praying for her because her family is not as accepting of this change in her and that is a big struggle. So lets pray that God works in them! because he is sovereign and he draws us to him.

A diary of sorts

I'm not one to start a blog. I'm not one who is superiorly eloquent or a fan of my thoughts being written down because then my words are made permanent and it's hard to come back from that. But this isn't for anyone but my Lord and Savior. I hope that he can use this as a testimony to others, and as another medium to work in my life.

To start this off I really just need to start at the beginning of this year. God has had his hand in my life since a very young age. I accepted the gospel at the age of 5 which is very young and all I knew at the time was that I was a sinner and I needed to be saved from an eternity in hell. I saw my life changing at first, I wanted to share the gospel I knew that I was supposed to live in a way that was different. Eventually I let my own wants take a stronghold in my life. I stopped being a fruitful Christian and be came stagnant. I've been stagnant for I'd say 15 years. I've only ever gone through the motions. I grew up in the church and was there at least 5 times a week but I never grew. Things have changed this year tremendously thanks to Campus Crusade for Christ. I was not at all thrilled about joining this group of ho hum Christians because I felt like I would be fake in this group. My faith in what God could do in my life this year was so small. I underestimate his power far to much. But my best friend and the person who has encouraged my spiritual growth the most in the recent past prompted me to go. Needless to say I loved it, but for all the wrong reasons. I loved that I finally had a crowd that I could relate to that didn't drink and party on the weekends, that loved God, but I didn't care about growing spiritually in my own life. I enjoyed watching them love the Lord but I was content with my life the way it was.

God changed my heart on a retreat called "fall getaway". Even through the retreat I was running from God. I didn't want to look at my own life I just wanted to use it as a way to witness to others when in reality I was the one who's life God wanted to work in. God revealed so many faults in my life that I never knew existed and he asked me to deal with. (I'm going to be very open here) God showed me 2 main things I had been keeping from him.

The first thing I had to deal with was my relationship with my boyfriend at the time.I always thought that my relationship with him was God given and perhaps it was but we royally screwed it up. He is a wonderful person, a Christian, a decent man, and someone I really love, but even with all that our relationship was bad and I refused to believe it. Other people saw it and told me but I refused to listen then God finally wouldn't let me push things under the rug any more. Looking back now our relationship was so much worse that I had ever imagined. We were unpure in so many ways. I remember early on doing Bible studies together(I think out of obligation or the feeling that we should) but that didn't last long. Our focus was solely on each other and we used the excuse that "God brought us together so we're fine" to make us feel better. I think I thought that the fact that we were both saved would mean our relationship would never need work, well I was wrong. God asked me to give that up at fall getaway and I did. A wave of relief hit me when I finally obeyed God and I felt so close to him. For once in my life I was choosing God over what I wanted. That didn't last long but that'll come into play a little later.

The second thing God asked me to give to him was my schoolwork. I think this was even harder for me to give up...probably because I have to work at this every day. I can't just say I'm done with school and quit. I know with all my heart that God led me to this school and to this major but after that I took control. I was the one who earned the 4.0 gpa I was the one who forced herself to work hard to study like mad to drive herself completely crazy over being perfect. I'm here to tell you I am in no way perfect. I never gave God the credit for anything that happened in my school work. He gave me the ability to learn, to perform at this level, he gave me this brain and I never allowed him to receive any glory for it. I am upset so easily if exams don't go my way, I allow myself to blame teachers and to truly become angry. But God's can use a low gpa to get me wherever he wants me to go. I'm finally working on that but it's hard. I still get upset when I do poorly I have to work on it daily.

While all of this is great stuff that God has been doing in my life lately it has really hurt. It hurts seeing how imperfect I am. When I get rid of a sin in my life that gaping hole needs to be filled and I find myself filling it with similar sins. I'm not one who has a lot of friends that are female. I honestly don't trust girls, I'm too easily hurt by them but I'm being taught that I need strong female Christians in my life to watch and mirror. But even then I catch myself watching their lives and wanting to be like them rather than wanting to be like Christ. They should be an example, but not the standard. Only Jesus was perfect and I need to strive to be like him.

Philippians 3:14 "I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus."

My prayer for today:

Father,

Forgive me for my disobedience to you. Lord I want you at the center of my life I want you to take my all even when I refuse to give things over to you. Break me when you need to, and cause me to be fully dependent on you. Help me to strive to mirror the perfect life your son led on this earth. God fill the holes in my life with your love. Give me the desire to follow you because so often I don't feel like seeking you. Help my life to be an example to others. Let me love you first over everything in this world. Strengthen my faith and help me to seek you.

Amen.