There's a fancy looking cup in my kitchen that I always thought was extremely valuable.
I keep it in a safe place on the shelf and barely use it because I'm afraid I'll break it. I've held it in such high esteem thinking that it's a costly item that cannot be replaced.
Well, two days ago I went to the grocery store and got a bottle of sparkling red grape juice. (That's about as crazy as we get around here.) I decided to get down the glass just for fun and poured Brian one, too. I went in for an over the top cheesy "clinking" of the cups only to hear a very different sound than I was expecting. "Are these...plastic???" Brian said looking at me with disbelief. We clinked again and then again just to make sure. It WAS plastic. A very thick and good looking plastic in my defense.
I think sometimes we have things on our minds and in our lives that we treat like the cup in my kitchen. We hold it in such high esteem and make it so important when really it should be treated like what it truly is...plastic. And maybe we treat our true valuable things like they are paper cups without even realizing it at times.
For instance...many of us as women focus A LOT on body image. Even super skinny girls that I think would never think of it are constantly thinking about it. We treat this search for beauty as the most expensive glass cup in our kitchen when really it's just a plastic cup. It shouldn't be as important as we make it and I'm NOT talking about a healthy lifestyle. I think it's good to lose weight and try to be healthy and stay away from foods that aren't good for us. I'm talking about when it overtakes our minds and gets to a place it shouldn't. I'm talking about the search for perfection and when body image takes up more of our mind than God does. I'm talking about the moment when we think we are worth more if we weigh less.
I know I've been guilty of treating body image like the fake glass cup in my kitchen, like it's more valuable than it is. I let too many times in my life when boys would pick the skinnier girl than me affect my thinking too deeply. I would see even the good Christian guys only go for the bomb shells and that would really get me down. In those moments when I thought the only way to get attention was to be smaller, my thoughts about God became more like a paper cup.
I have learned a lot by my weight gain during pregnancy believe it or not. I learned that there are more important things in life like self sacrifice and a baby that are truly worth it. I have learned that before I got pregnant I focused entirely too much on how I looked and put it in a place that it shouldn't have been. I am working hard to get back to where I was and I truly believe in a healthy lifestyle and exercise, but it will all be meaningless if I make it TOO important again. It will put me in misery if I believe the lie that the better I look, the more people will accept me. If my reasoning for doing it is wrong...it's meaningless. If it takes too much of my thought life and overshadows my thoughts about God...it will be in vain.
I guess I just want all of you to stop judging yourselves because it's exhausting. And there's much more important things in life to focus your mind on. Besides, if your mind and heart aren't doing well and you start treating it as more valuable than it is...no amount of weight loss or beauty product will ever be enough.
(BTW..the links in orange are NOT my doing...the internet is just making it a link.)
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