Do You Have A Healthy Identity?
We all have goals right?
Some are healthy, some not so much. I had a goal. A goal weight to be precise. I had 3 kids in 4 years and just between you & me, I got SUPER fat while I was pregnant.
My poor body.
It seemed my self control up and left the moment I fell pregnant! Anyway, I had this dream of reaching my ‘pre-pregnancy weight’. I managed to do it after my first child, one week later I found out I was pregnant again! So after second child… well I didn’t make it back and by number three that ‘goal weight’ was just a very distant memory. Fast forward to when the third child was one and I was determined to reach ‘the number’.
I tried so hard. I ate right, I exercised, I did everything right but eight kgs out I plateaued. It didn’t matter what I did, my number wouldn’t shift. God began to drop hints to me. The hints got louder & louder and then one day as I went to get on the scales God stopped me dead in my tracks & said:
“But why does it matter? you are so much more than a number”
OUCH! I mean seriously God, if I could just get to the number I will love myself right and I will look and feel amazing. Fast forward a few more years and after a very stressful time in my life I started losing weight without even trying. As I watched the weight fall off, I got closer and closer to ‘the number’.
I got on the scales one day and I was under. 0.1kgs under that ‘goal weight’. I felt weird! I always imagined I would be so excited, celebrating when I got to the goal. My body would look amazing again & I would love myself because I was at my goal. But it didn’t change anything. It felt so weird. So surreal. And then it hit me. That number doesn’t change who God says I am.
It doesn’t change my worth as a wife or a mum. It doesn’t change my identity in God or the plans he has for my life.
The thing is, our world is telling our girls that unless they are stick thin with flawless skin then they are no-one. Girls younger & younger are struggling with mental health disorders and eating disorders because the world is constantly telling them that they aren’t enough. Pretty enough, skinny enough, tanned enough.
Let’s make it our mission as Mums to pursue a healthy identity of ourselves & in turn to help our daughters find their identity in God too. Because how cool is it that the creator of the universe & everything in it, looked at the world and decided he needed one of you too!
Genesis 1:27 “So God created human beings in his own image” and He is most definitely enough... EVERY time!
Helen xxx
