Your children are watching
Ok, ladies, I need to get real & vulnerable with you and tell you part of my story.
I grew up with a mother who was always on a new diet. She tried them all & her weight seemed to always be an issue. I then grew up & the minute I thought I might need to shed a few pounds I would try a new diet or even a diet pill. I was pretty successful keeping my weight under control until I was about 32. By then I had three children, all of them C-sections. All my kids were miracles. I had to take fertility pills to have each of them. But I had always struggled with female problems, so it was no surprise that at age 32 I would need to have a hysterectomy. After my surgery, the weight crept up. I tried all the things I had done in the past to lose the weight. I knew how many fruits & veggies to eat. How much protein to consume in a day. To stay away from sugar & fat. And limit my (complex) carbs. I did & still do drink a ridiculous amount of water daily! But diet & exercise didn’t seem to help me like they used to. Meanwhile, I have a daughter who watched me struggle & agonize over the scale. She saw my diligence & my frustration. She saw my dissatisfaction with my body and all the while I had no idea I was teaching her the same bad habits I had. My message to her was “you need to be thinner to be enough” “the number on the scale & your jeans matter.” I’m struggling with the tears as I am writing this because I am so convicted.
Little did I know at the time that my obsession would send such a strong message that she would spend the rest of her life-fighting.
She’s an adult now & is married. Several times a week I hear her frustration about her weight. It doesn’t matter how much I tell her she is beautiful and she isn’t fat.
That message is deep, and it is primal… and the saddest part is that I wrote that tape in her mind. Without even knowing I did it.
I don’t know how many of you have daughters. But if I can convey one strong message to you it would be to caution you about what you are doing to yourself in front of your daughters!! They are watching, and they are learning. Even if you aren’t aware they are watching, they are! And it’s a deep message that may take them years to recover from. Some of them never will.
Years ago my husband bought a “Snapple”, and it said on the bottom of the bottle cap “Children are natural mimics, no matter what you Tell them to do they will continue to do what you do.”
THERE IS HOPE
The great news is that after my revelation about the “tape” I had made for my daughter unknowingly. I was able to go to her & ask for her forgiveness & grace. I was also able to speak to my “safe people” that I can get real & vulnerable with & receive love and grace from them as well. (Insert John Townsend info. & book)
I love God’s redemptive Grace. In fact, I am nothing without it!! We are going to be imperfect because we live in an imperfect world. After the “fall” we will fail & make mistakes. We will feel that same shame that Adam & Eve experienced after eating the fruit.
“in Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace”
I was in the shower this morning re-playing the voices in my head & heart. The hormones in my body are preventing me from achieving my goal of losing weight. I am dissatisfied. I still have a strong desire to lose these 20-25lbs I am carrying around. And yet no matter what I do, I am not able to accomplish my goals. The voice in my head says “well it works for everyone else, what’s wrong with you” and they are telling me that everyone around me is judging me “well if you just worked harder & made better choices you could accomplish your goal.”
But the bottom line is what’s in my heart… and it’s the discontentment & frustration that I can’t be enough…. (in my eyes or the world’s eyes)!!
I am broken.
I know I need to get to the place where even if I am unable to drop these extra pounds I need to be content to live out my life to the best of my ability without these feelings of frustration & shame.
There I said it, shame
