ACCEPTING YOURSELF

2 Corinthians 10:7 “You are looking at things as they are outwardly. If anyone is confident in himself that he is Christ's, let him consider this again within himself, that just as he is Christ's, so also are we.”

There are definitely some physical traits that I struggled to accept for many, many years. It didn’t help that other people would point these things out to me and joke about them. And my own mother told me once, “We will always see to it that you have what you need, but for things like nose jobs, you have to pay for that, yourself.” I never pursued such things, but I did save up my money for contact lenses. I figured God created me this way; I need to be content with that.

Over the years, I have grown to completely accept these God-given traits and even be confident - in Him. Oh, and ladies, don’t hate your butt. Here’s my theory, I appreciate the form of husband, and he really appreciates the curves of my form. It would most certainly look weird if I had a man’s butt... for what? So I can enjoy looking at myself? Case closed. This almost negates the necessity to ever ask the question, “Does this make my butt look big?”

Why I think about all of this NOW is because we just came home from vacation. During such times, many pictures are taken. And my husband insists that we should have people in the shots so we can prove that we were actually there. I insist, “Why would I want to ruin the shot with me in it?” So while I have the pleasure of editing the photos, I keep coming across ghastly shots of myself. I’m not being vain, here, but I do this weird “eye-thing” which makes me look completely insane. And the more a camera is pointed at me, the more insecure I become, thinking, “Oh no, I’m probably going to do that eye-thing again.” So being self-absorbed in my efforts to look good for the camera - I USUALLY wind up looking worse! Can one even practice humility in front of a camera?

Meanwhile, I was given yet another opportunity to reflect and meditate on what was truly important in life... to get over myself, and focus on what really is important – the inner beauty that God will create as we allow Him to work in us.