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The Lies Women Need to STOP Telling Themselves

Okay, vulnerable moment. Body image is something I have struggled with since I was a teenager, as is the case for most women. However, my struggle was not something that came from within. It was pushed on me from without- from the very person that any fifteen-year-old girl looks to- from my mother. I remember the day we were shopping for clothes and my mother told me I was ugly and hard to shop for because "My butt was too big, and my breasts sagged like an old lady's." I am sorry for the graphic info, but it's hard to convey without it. As a teenager, I was told I was fat and ugly, and it made me feel worthless. I literally did not even hit 100 pounds until I was 16, but normal development felt traumatizing and every pound I gained (which was completely normal for a developing woman) was the end of the world. My father even called me a fatty at one point. I cannot count the number of nights I cried myself to sleep feeling ugly and worthless.

Eventually the venom that came from outside started to flow within me as well. I looked in the mirror and told myself I was ugly, and no man could ever fall in love with me. I not only believed the venom, but I began to create it and destroy myself with it. It was like a parasite, sucking the life out of me. Now, I was never obsessed with my looks, but I did want to be able to look in the mirror and feel confident in who I was. For a long time, that was impossible.

But then came that fateful and beautiful moment when the man of my dreams fell madly in love with me and I with him. My wonderful husband tells me at least once a day that I am beautiful, cute, sexy, adorable, etc., but I brushed it off. I looked in the mirror, and I did not see beautiful. I saw "Why does he love me? He cannot possibly actually think I am beautiful. Why did he not go for all those other girls he knew that were ten times prettier than I will ever be?" I scoffed at his compliments while clinging desperately to the lies I had been telling myself since I was fifteen. "He's crazy! What can he possibly see in me?" All along, however, I wished desperately that I could see myself the way he saw me- as a beautiful woman worthy of his love and his life.

And then I remembered: No little girl ever thinks she is ugly. Inside every little girl is a princess who wants nothing more than to fall in love with her prince and live happily ever after. So how did I go from that to the young woman who hated herself and felt totally unworthy of love or a fairy tale? I believed what I was told. I believed the venom, and I chose to let it propagate within my own soul, and I chose to continue to tell myself this same vicious lies day after day after day. I chose to shut out the man who loved me with every fiber of his being. I chose to scoff at his loving words instead of embracing them and letting them displace the negativity. I chose it.

So, now I choose to let it go. I choose to let go of the negativity. I choose to see myself the way my husband sees me. I choose to embrace who I am with confidence. Will it happen overnight? By no means! But every single day, ladies, we have a choice. Do we feed the evil, or do we feed the love? And I for one, am done feeding the evil.

Women, I know most of us struggle with our body image because we have been inundated with the idea that we aren't good enough. But really think about that for a second. If we are not worthy, why did God bother to make us? Why did the Messiah die for us? Why have our husbands chosen to spend their lives loving us? Someone thinks we are worthy and beautiful creatures, and it is time we stopped telling ourselves the lies that come straight from the pit of hell.


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