Having felt abandoned in childhood by my own father, I have struggled many times with accepting myself and finding the good in me. There have been times when I have struggled with being good enough, looking skinny enough, feeling pretty enough, and even being loved enough. I felt this great emptiness in the pit of my being because I didn’t have the love of a family. My mother was often working long hours to support my sister and me on her single-mother’s income. I often felt alone and deprived of the proper childhood. I wanted to look like the others looked. I wanted to laugh with my family like they laughed. I wanted to feel beautiful and to know I was loved by a father who, on his own accord, chose to walk out of my life to seek something greater for him. I had completely forged this idea in my mind that the only way I would ever be good enough for someone to truly love and accept me would be to change in entirety the person I was. In elementary I found that pushing myself to be the top of my class, the first to succeed, the best at everything could give me an edge over everyone else that might make me feel good enough. This made me bitter and arrogant. In middle school I thought that if I just didn’t eat or just worked out a little harder I could be skinny. And skinny means beautiful, right? I thought could make myself be sought after and loved by depriving myself. Nothing I did, nothing I tried, nothing I pushed myself to be ever felt like enough. Nothing ever seemed to get better. More importantly, nothing ever made me feel like I was “enough.” All of this pain and heartache was because I didn’t know my self-worth from an absent father and a hard-working mother. I became a prisoner of this war of beauty and image. However, at the end of middle school and beginning of high school… I found Jesus. It was through this stumbling, shaky, and sometimes complicated thing called faith that I truly found myself and my self-worth. The love and acceptance of Christ showed me there is no such thing as “good enough” but, instead, a perfectness in being who I was made to be all along. This gracious and merciful love showed me how to be whole. It replaced the desire in my heart to seek others approval with a desire to glorify God in everything I do. God’s acceptance showed me that sticking up for my faith and loving the Lord with all my heart was the most beautiful masterpiece I could paint.
I would love to say that the love and acceptance of Christ has completely demolished the issue of this image we are supposed to portray in this world; however, it hasn’t and for good reason. I am human. I will stumble, I will trip, and I will probably fall flat on my face, but it is through these hardships that I seek God and become closer with Him strengthening the relationship and my trust in his ability. There is no cure for the ugly of this world. There is no answer to eliminate the hurt and pain that we inflict on ourselves by seeking others approval. Yet, there is an answer to find self-worth and self-appreciation. Through this journey, one can find the best version of themselves and how it is important they represent that version in order to better this world. This journey is seeking a desire greater than this world which allows one to avert their attention from these worldly things and accept there is a far greater purpose in our lives than to prove our worthiness to others.