Wednesday, July 3, 2013

The Truth: I'm Not Worthless

 I struggled a lot with self-worth in high school. I always thought I was so fat...
This is me a couple of months after graduating high school and that isn't even a picture of me at my smallest high school weight.
 This is the face I would give if the girl in the above picture told me she was fat. Because she wasn't. And even moreso than that, she's gorgeous.

After getting married, I thought all of that was over. Someone picked me out of every other girl. Someone chose to love me forever and ever. I realized shortly after getting married that marriage doesn't fix everything. In fact, I'd even say marriage makes lots of things harder. I got pregnant and started eating whatever I wanted. I was put on bedrest. I had a c-section. I got pregnant when my baby was 7 months old. I had another c-section. There were so many excuses as to why I wasn't happy with myself.

Then I got diagnosed with infertility. My self worth went completely down the drain for a while. I was so hard on myself. I started thinking that because I had made mistakes in my life, God was punishing me. I told myself I was worthless and often times, thoughts of unworthiness would creep into my mind, telling me I wasn't even a good person anymore. Everything kind of spiraled downward for a while when my husband stopped attending church with our family. I felt completely alone. In counseling, I couldn't pinpoint why I had anxiety and why little things were hard to deal with. It wasn't until recently that I realized I haven't stopped to pat myself on the back in a very long time. I haven't cut myself a break or told myself what a good job I'm doing at living this life I was given.

Throughout these past couple of weeks, I've started to give myself little pep talks and really, truly see all of the good I am doing. I didn't realize how far I had let Satan in. He had convinced me I'm nothing but that isn't true. When it comes to my worth, my size doesn't matter and my faults don't matter. I will always be worth something in God's eyes.

The hardest part of all of this is teaching myself how to love myself more but once I started realizing how much I am worth, I knew that loving every part of myself was the next step. It's a continuation, it isn't just there. I have to continually remind myself to just be nice. When I look in the mirror, don't tear that girl down. When I spend too much time on the computer, don't tell that girl she's a horrible mother. When I forget to cook dinner, don't tell that girl she is a failure as a homemaker. That girl isn't perfect but she's worth something.
In order to teach this little girl how to love herself, I need to set a good example of what that looks like. I need to teach her to see how precious she is in God's eyes by remembering how precious I am in His eyes.

1 comment:

natalli said...

It's so hard to balance always wanting to improve and be humble with seeing the value we already have. It's something I've been thinking a lot about and struggling with lately (motherhood just adds one more area we can find flaws) but at least we know we're not alone and it's good to see you overcoming it!