Jardin de mon mind

One day, I will be strong. I will feel beautiful. I don’t consider beauty to be linked to physical attractiveness. I’ve written a whole “shpeal” on that before. But I want to remember, or maybe even feel for the first time, beautiful - to feel like I have true value and purpose. One day, I will look back on these years as stepping stones that refined me into a more compassionate and stronger person. I will be whole. I will have grown into the exact person I am supposed to be. So for now, I’m putting these berating thoughts to sleep. I am taking a deep breath. Even though every day we’re a little closer to the end, in the words of Edward Bloom, “This isn’t how I go”. One day, and I think and hope it should happen sooner rather than later, I will beat this forever <3

soyclaire:

I went to the bathroom to brush my teeth and ended up making myself stand in front of the mirror in my underwear until I felt less negative about my body. I’ve been in such a low confidence rut lately and it cannot continue. It just makes being positive about the rest of my life harder.

I wish I had just an ounce of courage to look in the mirror at myself like that for more than two seconds without feeling disgust wash all over me. This is beautiful. One day, I want to be at that point <3

Lisa Harper on “Spiritual Spanx” and her book,
A Perfect Mess (Why You Don’t Have to Worry About Being Good Enough For God)

“I think so many women in Christian culture wear ‘Spiritual Spanx’.
We try to keep everything in. Because even though we’ve been taught grace, most of us think ‘You know, really, there’s no way a perfect God could love a girl like me’.

I grew up in church hearing the gospel, hearing about Jesus. I understood that I needed to be delivered from my sins. I didn’t get, and I still don’t really get it. That’s a misspeak. But I didn’t begin to grapple with the fact that God didn’t just come to deliver me but he delighted in me probably until I was in my thirties.

The message I got was you have to have a purse that matches your shoes, you have to talk right, you have to learn a lot of big works, and you have to fill in all of the blanks. If you didn’t do all of that, then you weren’t good enough for God. Even though that wasn’t necessarily preached from the pulpit, that is what I inferred. That is kind of what was modeled for me in the Christian community. 

Recently, someone asked me what is my story. I said, ‘It’s the cover of the book’.”