Compassionate

Earlier this semester it dawned on me that I should take every opportunity to use my body in any way possible to glorify God. My earthly body is a gift from God, so shouldn’t I be always be using it for Him?!

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My favorite verse that highlights this is Romans 12:1 (NLT), “And so, dear brothers and sisters, I plead with you to give your bodies to God because of all he has done you. Let them be a living and holy sacrifice — the kind he will find acceptable. This is the way to worship Him.”

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I often get so caught up in my own life and my own feelings that it takes continual effort to remind myself of what my purpose here on earth is.

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When I focus on this eternal perspective, it is easy to see how us giving our bodies to God is a representation of the ultimate sacrifice- Jesus coming down to earth and dying on the cross for our sins.

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If you believe this truth, proclaim it!

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Use your words and your actions to love others constantly, show kindness in the little moments, speak wisdom, and share the gospel even when it might seem scary!

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We are each made in the image of God, but entirely unique, so these ways of worshipping our Lord will look different. I feel God’s presence the most when I spend intentional time with people out in nature, and seeing the beauty around me.

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Use your body to glorify God because He has given each one of us them as unique gifts!

Hi, I’m Lydia, and I am Nursing major at Brookhaven College. This wasn’t the path that I had laid out for my life. Which was exactly my problem…to think I was the one to create a life plan away from God.

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My daughter Shiloh was born on August 14th of this year, and that is an example of God’s grace!

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All throughout high school, I used my body as a tool to get attention from others. I wanted to please people, be loved, and be known, but I was going about it all the wrong ways. Instead of leaning into God’s truth during my seasons of struggles, I pushed away and listened to worldly lies.

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Throughout my high school years, I constantly told myself, “You’ll be fine, you’re already saved” and “I have struggles, but THAT isn’t MY struggle.”

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By feeding myself these lies, and being consumed by how I would look or feel, I was in a dark place without Jesus. The shame, the guilt, and the deceit was miserable. I viewed myself with a critical eye, especially as I criticized my body, thinking it that wasn’t up to “standards”.

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Through Shiloh, God has shown me how much he loves me and how he made me just the way I am — a part of HIS design!

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I have a CD that I turn on when it’s nap time for Shiloh. It plays bible verse songs. One of them is Psalm 139: 13-14. It says, “You knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made.”

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How uplifting is it to know that from the beginning, you are WONDERFULLY MADE! God made you just the way you are from the very beginning!

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God used Shiloh to show me his abounding grace and love when I didn’t think I deserved it. Now he is teaching me how to show Shiloh how much she is loved, appreciated, and beautiful in God’s image.

Growing up, I believed that skinny was pretty. And that everything else was unattractive. Unworthy. Meant to be criticized.

My parents poured encouraging words into me, but their words were not enough. In the battles I fought, I needed more than praise.

I fought the idea that girls and women should diet if they looked a certain way. My Southern grandmother fed that idea to her daughters, and we heard our mothers speak. I can’t remember a time when my family’s women weren’t talking about trying to lose weight.

I fought the idea that girls and women should compare themselves to soap opera actresses and magazine models. I grew up in the 80s and early 90s; that was the messaging.

I fought the idea that girls and women should one-up each other, size up each other, and take shots at each other so as to make themselves feel like the smartest, prettiest, and most attention-getting in the room.

And so, my teen years were full of fighting. And controlling.

In the midst of the fighting and struggling with how to love my alcoholic father and trying to hide my sadness in the midst of my parents’ divorce [Read more…] about From Hate to Love: My Body Image Story