(Due to thoughtful and lengthy responses, this facebook post seemed worthy to move into a blog conversation).

"Returning from a book group of girls ranging from their 20's to 80's.  Today's topic began with fasting and moved into food, body-image, eating disorders, the birth of television and internet. .. Absolutely fascinating, and complex, to piece together change in the past decades.  And to consider restoration in the decades to come! Out of curiousity, if you could say one thing about food or body to the generation below you, what would it be?"

Like a swollen whale?

She’s gonna think I’m gross.

Maybe the tight one will make it better.

They’re not gonna wanna hang out with me anymore.

How did that grow overnight?

He doesn’t like me because I'm fat.

Why aren’t I like her?

This outfit is lame.

What if he saw me like this?

Maybe I’ll wear the baggy dress.

A new pimple?

Stupid eye-liner just broke. 

What am I thinking?  And why am I thinking about this—again, for the fifteenth time today?  Can I please just learn to like myself?  Or believe God likes me?  GOD likes me.  And designed this frame I’m talking to—in the Image of Himself.

We girls are so hard on ourselves.  So mean to our bodies and menial in our treatment of God imaging us into a shared aspect of His being.  There’s a grand difference between being true to who you really are and gracious toward who you’re not, versus being harsh, cruel and critical to the point of abuse.

Where did you first hear these lines?  And from whom did you hear them?  They are not true and they are not what Your Maker thinks.  The mirror is not you; it is a reflection.  And you are worth so much more than what a mirror, or imagined ideal, could ever communicate.

Ask God to help you see your true self today, and to walk well in that frame. To live as if you’re liked, and loved, in that image.  His image.  And I promise to do the same.

O LORD, You have searched me and known me.
You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
You understand my thought from afar.
You scrutinize my path and my lying down,
And are intimately acquainted with all my ways.
Even before there is a word on my tongue,
Behold, O LORD, You know it all.
You have enclosed me behind and before,
And laid Your hand upon me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
It is too high, I cannot attain to it.
Where can I go from Your Spirit?
Or where can I flee from Your presence?
If I ascend to heaven, You are there;
If I make my bed in Sheol, behold, You are there.
If I take the wings of the dawn,
If I dwell in the remotest part of the sea,