How My Body Distortions Became Real

My body distortions were there as early as I can remember.

I loved playing Barbies back then. Any time I got some birthday money I went to the store to buy the latest cowboy Barbie or career-girl Barbie. My collection grew to about twenty or so.

My favorite Christmas was the year I got the Dream House for all of them to live in. That year I also got the camper and corvette and pool. It was my own dynasty of glitz and glamour. So began one distortion.

The other began a few years later. Sitting on the stairs as a ten year old girl I announced to my mom that I was only going to eat an apple for lunch from then on.

My body was a little too pudgy, so I thought.

Upstairs in my bedroom I passed this curse on to my Barbies. You know the ones walking around with perfect 36-18-33 bodies? I decided that they, too, needed to eat an apple for lunch. And then run around the Dream House until they could no longer run.

In the coming years controlling my pudginess became a part of my identity. I was the one blessed with a short torso and short legs.

When I tried controlling my growing hips and thighs in more radical ways than just eating an apple for lunch, I knew there was a problem.

The doctors told me that the body I saw in the mirror wasn’t real. I had body distortions.

But it was real to me. Other people were the ones with the distortions.

Many years later I began carrying my first baby. My baby girl. Even though I always wanted a baby of my own, one of the fears was those hips and thighs I had finally whipped under control.

I was terrified of losing control again. I was terrified of gaining weight.

Fortunately, though, I did, and evidence of my baby girl began showing from the inside poking out.

One day as I nested for her arrival I cleaned out some pictures of myself from not too long before. Looking at them I couldn’t believe the first words in my mind, “Wow, I was so skinny!”

Skinny? There’s a word I have never used to describe myself.

Then I walked into our bedroom and saw my bridal portrait hanging on the wall. I have purposely walked into the room before without looking at it because my arms were too big that day. Now my arms looked skinny, too.

For years my body distortions were not distortions at all. They were my reality.

Then, through pregnancy, I finally saw them for what they were – imagined pictures in my mind.

I saw myself from the eyes of Jesus.

Each of us has distortions that show us a make-believe reality. They may be distortions of our bodies or of our worth or of our identity. They may be distortions of the life we think we’re supposed to have or what will make us happy. They may be distortions of what is best for us.

These distortions keep us from truly believing our worth to Jesus. They make us see something that’s not real, and the more we see this way the further we grow away from how He truly feels about us and what He want to do through us.

Today’s Challenge: Ask God to show you the distortions in your life. Pray that you no longer see them as an untrue reality. 

What distortions in your life have you believed as reality and then later you saw them for what they were?