Day One- Beautiful You

I mentioned in my goals for 2011 that I would like to do a few exercises a week from the book Beautiful You: A Daily Guide to Radical Self-Acceptance.  I had stumbled across this book on Dana's blog before Christmas and received it from my family for Christmas.  It's a neat book if I do say so myself and the author, Rosie Molinary, created this video about her inspiration behind the book.

 

So today's exercise asks what are your hopes both personally and for the world with regard to body image and beauty perception and how can you begin to live your hopes today?

For Myself-

• See and love myself as God does; be kind, gracious, loving and merciful to myself just as the Lord is to me... a good metaphor for me is to treat myself as I would this precious, innocent, little Meagan...

 

The LORD your God is with you, he is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing" (Zephaniah 3:17).  

How precious to me are your thoughts, God! How vast is the sum of them! Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand. (Psalm 139:17-18)

• Treat my body as God's temple
• Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies. (1Cor. 6: 19-20)

• Be a good steward of my body so that He may use me
• self-care through nourishment, hydrating, exercising, vitamins...
• For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. (Eph. 2:10)
• Let go of weight, clothing size and the identity I find in them.
• I am chosen of God, holy and dearly loved. (Colossians 3:12)
• Accept myself at a healthy weight for me and maintain this long-term.
• For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.  I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made. (Psalm 139:13-14)

• Believe in my heart that my beauty has nothing to do with outer appearance, but God radiating through me.
• Don't depend on things like fancy hairdos or gold jewelry or expensive clothes to make you look beautiful. Be beautiful in your heart by being gentle and quiet. This kind of beauty will last, and God considers it very special. (1Peter 3:3-4)

• Remember that the people in my life who truly love and care about me will love and accept me no matter what I look like, but more importantly I am loved and accept by my God.

For the World-

• I want the same for the world as I do for myself.  I think that people would be so different, more peaceful and joyful, if they could just love and accept themselves right where they are at and quit trying to be someone else.  
• I wish that there wasn't so much focus on size, image, agelessness, food, diet, exercise, I could go on and on and more positive focus on who we are as people not as bodies.  We are not our bodies (I say this for you just as much as I say it for me), they simply house our true selves.  I believe by acknowledging this we are better able to take care of ourselves based on God's desires for our entire being rather than on the world's.  (this is not easy, trust me, I know)

Action Plan-

• Renew my thought life through the Word
• Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.  -Rom. 12:2

• Choose to think happy thoughts
• Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.  And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.  Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you.  -Philippians 4:6-10

• Be a good steward of my body, mind, soul and spirit.
• Do what's right even when it doesn't feel good... feelings are NOT facts!!! 

• Allow Christ's grace, mercy and unconditional love in my life overflow into the lives of others so that they may truly experience Him and come to a place of accepting and loving themselves. 
• Be active in helping others see their true inner beauty. 
• Leave 'You are beautiful' notes as part of Operation Beautiful

  

Beautiful By: Mercy Me

Identity

Choosing Sin...
Since being home from Mercy I have failed to fight against the enemy.  Mercy was an incredible experience that I am truly so grateful for, but leaving I was not yet comfortable or confident in my new-found identity in Christ.  I quickly started to believe and take to heart the lies of the enemy had been feeding me and... the biggest one, 'you are not free because you still struggle, freedom isn't possible for you.'  Believing the lies led to me compromising my freedom through actively choosing to restrict.  I can honestly say that I have continued to choose the eating disorder over the Lord.  I am not proud of this by any means, but I have continually chosen to do what was comfortable for me, my 'normal', gone the easy way rather than what was right in the eyes of the Lord. The guilt and shame I feel through my continual wrong choices has only fed into the enemy's attacks more.  Let me just tell you, sin is a scary, dark, lonely place and once your deep in that pit, its very difficult to dig out.

I want more for my life than this all-consuming, life-stealing behavior and yet over and over I have convinced myself 'it's not that bad,' or I continually put off the action of positive, life-giving change till tomorrow.  But I fear that if I don't change I will live a very selfish, lonely, sad life or die.   Neither sound appealing to me by any means!

Double-minded..
I have dabbled back and forth with making changes over the past semester, but nothing ever lasting more than a few days.  Once it started getting hard I gave up thinking it was easier to stay with ed than fight against the attacks from the enemy.... what a LIE!  I still wanted control (although it's really all an illusion, ed really had control over me), I was too fearful to completely let go and trust God- I thought I knew better than God.  I was never fully surrendering to God.  I love what Katie says in her recent post about surrendering and I can totally relate.

Who am I.... ?
Part of my problem is I do not know who I am without Anorexia and I am scared to completely let go and trust God to show me, to lead and guide me into a true discovery of myself.

How sad is that? My identity is anorexia. It is who I am, what I do, what I am good at. It's all I know and have known for 13 years, it's what I expect of my life and what people expect of me (or so I tell myself). The best way to understand the anorexia in my life is by equating it to being in an abusive relationship with someone.  It's not a lifestyle that I am proud of by any means.  Its ugly as all get out and I wouldn't believe all that I've done to engage in, to be in a relationship, with ed (eating disorder).

It's so ironic because I despise who I am with ed, and yet I don't cut off the relationship because I don't know who I am without it.... what do I truly love, enjoy, desire??  With ed I am a lonely, a liar, selfish, obsessed with nonsense, waste money on food, selfish, lethargic, spiritually dead, prideful, anxious, guilty, shameful, un-peaceful, selfish and soooo much more.  I do not want to be any of these things and when I choose to replace my relationship with ed to the relationship I know I have with Christ I can be and do differently!  I have finally, truly come to a place where I am truly committed to take care of myself.  I can't say that there was one thing that triggered the desire to change, God has been working on me for a while.  All I know is that I hate the way I feel physically, emotionally and spiritually when consumed by an ed and I want more in my life, so much more than ed.

Choosing Life...
Being home with my family for the holidays has really caused me to re-evaluate my life and my choices.  The first few days I was home I felt tense, shameful, guilty, sneaky and detached and I hated it.  My family means the world to me and I hate to see them affect by my choices, but more importantly, in thinking about the grotesqueness of what my life has looked like for the past several months, I knew deep down I was making a choice every time I practiced my ed to to choose over life, to sin against my God and that just didn't sit right with me.  And in seeing families enjoying one another through the holidays, I also knew that to have that, a husband, kids and a career one day, it would not be possible without doing different.  To do what is right even when it doesn't feel good.  I am finally at a place where I am willing and ready....

So since I have been on break from school and work (this coming semester is my LAST!!!), I have used this time and the support of my parents to help me get a good foundation of taking better care of myself before I go back to Denton.  I've been taking it one step at a time, surrendering multiple times a day, praying... doing what I need to do to claim the victory that is already mine through Christ!  I am more in Him than this ugly, life-stealing disease!

You are More- Tenth Avenue North