Searching for Perfection

I am going to write a piece about something I struggled with for nearly three years of my teenage life.  Let me just say right off that it’s taking a lot for me to put this on paper. I’ve never actually told anyone all the details of my struggles. I’m trying to consul myself by believing that no one reads my blog anyway …but that would defeat the purpose of writing this…so I really hope people do read it.  This was an incredibly emotional thing in my life. It may not sound big, but to me it was huge, it was life or death.

First off, let’s face it, this world is enticing to girls my age (to everyone really.) It takes things so close to the truth and then turns them into lies. It makes evil look beautiful. It takes pure things and turns them into cleverly disguised sins that are incredibly easy to fall into, believe me, I know.

This world is trying to reach into the susceptible and impressionable minds and hearts of young girls. They tell them that life will be better if they only look or dress or act or talk or walk or even think a different way. They make it seem so natural, so simple. They give us girls to model ourselves after, thus beginning the cycle of unsatisfied and unsettled hearts. These girls are seemingly flawless. They have everything we could ever want. Of course it must be a good thing because they are so rich and always have the perfect boyfriend. Everyone loves them. If only we looked like them we would be successful and happy like they are.  

We begin to spend time and energy trying to achieving “the perfect look.” Before long we are skipping meals to make up for something we ate the day before.  Each week we resolve to start over and eat only what we need to stay alive and enough that our parents won’t notice what we’re doing.  Sometimes we chew the food and then spit it out so we don’t have to count the calories. On top of starving ourselves we begin to exercise. We spend hours torturing our bodies then rush to mirror to see if we look thinner. We cannot do anything that doesn’t remind us of how weak and ugly we are. When people compliment us we deny it and remind ourselves that we fell from out “diet” just yesterday so we can’t possibly be pretty. We tell ourselves repeatedly that we hate who and what we are.

Mirrors become torturous to us because every time we pass by we are reminded of what we look like. And it only takes one trip to the grocery store to remind ourselves what we desperately want to look like.

The scenario above is incredibly similar to what I went through. Actually, it is my story.  I am being brutally honest about this because I hope that it might help girls who still struggle in this area. From age 14 to 17 my life was consumed (even though it was somewhat unconscious) with the fact that my body wasn’t perfect. In response to my plight, I acted in ways that were borderline anorexic, though I didn’t realize it at the time. If you read a list online of the symptoms of an anorexic, I had almost all of them. I would starve myself for three days, then fall and eat anything I could get my hands on.  I think it became a mental game; I wanted to see how long I could go without eating. I never skipped a day of running and another hour of exercising every night. I would wake up and realize I haven’t done a certain exercise and I would get up to do it. I would exercise in between each meal. I would say I wasn’t hungry when I was starving. I tell you all this, not for pity, but to show you that I had fallen right into the devil’s trap. I had thought it was normal, I had thought that every girls put this much effort into being thin. I thought it was okay. I wanted to be perfect, didn’t every girl? I wanted guys to think I was beautiful, didn’t every girl?

Until one day…okay, maybe that’s a little misleading, I wasn’t completely free from my struggle in one day, but things dramatically changed inside of me. I remember thinking how much I wanted to be perfect. I remember trying to explain to myself all the reasons that I was doing this. Why I was basically killing my body to achieve my goal. Suddenly, it all looked so disgusting to me. I hadn’t ever really realized what I was actually doing and the real motivations behind it.  It felt like a slap across the face. Suddenly I saw everything so differently. I felt pretty and I wasn’t sure why.

Over the next couple weeks and months I saw that I had been completely and totally wrong. I had been trying to find my worth in something other than who I was in Christ. I saw that God says I am fearfully and wonderfully made. I was beautiful to God and that was all that mattered!

God told me that day that I was beautiful! I was beautiful and there was nothing I could do to change that. I was His. He had, in the complexity and beauty of how He works, fashioned me exactly how He wanted me. The outer shell on my little body didn’t matter; it’s the young woman within that He cares about.  I felt so convicted about my obsession. I realized what an idol it had become to me. Did I spend that much time on my knees in prayer? Or reading my Bible?

So, where did I go wrong? It was my mindset. I was looking for perfection in something other than Jesus Christ. I was looking in this world. I was looking in myself. I wanted to reach the goal that I had set for me. I wanted all of this for me! I wanted everything to work out for me. I wanted (me) to be perfect.  It was ALL about me! Jesus is the only true perfection…so logic would say that trying to find it anywhere else is pointless. Well, that’s what I figured out. I figured out that Jesus’ perfection covers me. I am His. He loves me. I am who He created me to be. I make Him smile.

Girls, here’s my plea to you…if you are searching for perfection like I was, look only to Jesus Christ, you won’t be disappointed, I promise.