I battled low self-esteem and body-image issues throughout my teens and early twenties. Feet, oddly enough, were a thing for me. I wanted beautiful feet so badly. I remember once flipping through a Lands’ End catalog looking at bathing suits when I noticed a swimsuit model—beautiful, thin, everything I thought I wanted to be—and she had a bunion bigger than mine. Instantly I felt better.
Even now, I still have a tendency to obsess about shoes and feet. it’s a strange weakness for me.
In high school, I always felt fat. Always. At the time, I didn’t know what bloating was. I didn’t know I had an enlarged uterus. I only knew that I felt fat, and therefore I assumed I must look fat, and therefore I must be fat.
My friend Lisa used to get frustrated with me. Clearly, I wasn’t fat. I wasn’t chubby. If anything, I was probably slightly underweight. Yet because of how I felt, I used that feeling as a barometer for how I looked. Looking back now, knowing what I know about hormones, bloating, and my lifelong battle with my reproductive organs, I understand exactly why I felt that way. and it had nothing to do with how much I weighed.
I also grew up in an time when women were preoccupied with beauty, body image, and thinness. Every generation has its standards. In ancient times beauty looked different, but in my generation it meant being slim and slender with long legs, golden skin, white teeth, long blonde hair, big eyes, a defined jawline, a long torso, and, of course, a flat stomach.
That was the target. if you had these things you got the prize…what prize no one really knew. It was an invisible prize with fleeting results. Meaning all those images were not alive, they were a single snapshot of a moment in that woman’s life, photos never age, they don’t get sick or have children, or reflect that same women in her 50’s.
I wasn’t comparing myself to social media. Social media didn’t exist yet. I compared myself to magazines, television actresses, and models. Julia Roberts, Meg Ryan, Jennifer Aniston, Cameron Diaz, Sandra Bullock. Their hair. Their smiles. Their bodies their cute funny personalities, that were again NOT REAL. They were actresses. Someone wrote those punchy lines for them.
It was far less invasive than what girls face today, and I cannot imagine the battle they fight. Yet even then, I was participating in my own misery. The more I stared at magazines and soap operas, the less content I became when I looked in the mirror.
I poked and pinched every inch of skin that hung over my bathing suit bottoms. I hyper-fixated on ridiculous things like wrists and ankles and feet. I held myself to a standard I could never possibly meet because I wasn’t built like those women. I wasn’t as tall. I didn’t have their hair texture, skin tone, eye shape, or body type.
So I always came up short.
And I always walked away feeling sad.
It didn’t help that I had two older sisters who were on their own beauty journeys. The baggage they carried often became baggage I borrowed . My sister’s worried about tanning, cellulite, spider veins. My mother spent years wishing for a nose job and a chin job. Pricing out plastic surgery and surgeons. there was so much focus on outward appearance that it became tangled up in who I thought I ought to be to be anyone at all. There wasn’t much recognition that these things were harmful or inappropriate back then, but there was certainly an ever-expanding list of things that supposedly needed fixing.
The list was titled: Not Good Enough. And I was a slave to it for many years. in fact I made an actual written list in 8th grade. It was a little poem to God about all the things I wanted: curly hair, green eyes, new clothes and tan skin, straight teeth… I can’t remember the rest. it became more important to me for a long time than things like virtue, honesty and purity. I didn’t know what was important and it cost me things I am not willing to write here.
There was a quiet competition between my middle sister and me. She was jealous of my youth and freedom, having become a teenage mother. I was jealous of her height, her thin frame, her hair, and yes, even her feet.
I was always trying to become at least as beautiful as she was. so I couldn’t compete with Kristy Brinkley and Cindy Crawford, could I possibly measure up to Tammy?
I was especially jealous when my husband was around. I knew she thought he was handsome and cool, and somehow that chipped away at me. Then one day, while I was sitting in my car consumed by jealousy and envy, I felt God speak to my heart.
Do you want what she has?
Do you want Me to take away the things I have given her or withhold what I have for her?
No. I did not
Do you think that anything I give to her diminishes what I have for you?
No.
Then be free. Let it go.
I have gifts for her, and I have gifts for you. They have nothing to do with one another. My hand is a vessel that never runs dry. I could give Tammy the world and still have every blessing I ever intended for you waiting for you. Don’t you want Me to bless your sister?
Yes.
And that was it.
After that day, I don’t think I was ever jealous of her again.
Once I stopped staring at magazines watching soap operas where the women never age, skin never wrinkles, sex is commonplace and love is dramatic and unrealistic, my attitude and self image began to improve. When I wasn’t obsessing over how “perfect” other women were, something surprising happened. I stopped caring so much about how imperfect I was.
I still took care of myself. I still showered, did my hair, wore makeup, exercised, and bought clothes I liked. But my life became bigger than my appearance. The appearance was a side hustle the full time job was my character my relationship with God and my attitude in real time towards others.
I had things to do. People to love. A life to live. things that brought me far greater contentment than weather I had a good tan or not. and to be loved as you are is the greatest kind of love. to only feel you are worthy of love when you look good is the saddest thing in the world.
I still enjoy being fit and healthy. I still enjoy feeling attractive, especially for my husband. But on the days when I feel ordinary—even unattractive—it doesn’t devastate me.
I move on. I accept who I am and how God made me.
Beauty no longer serves as the oxygen keeping me alive.
People do not love me because I am beautiful.
They do not hire me because I am beautiful.
And they do not reject me because I am not.
On another note in regard to who are extraordinarily beautiful, they are not content either. If they are your role models, don’t let them be. Being gawked at by strangers told you’re beautiful regularly, making money from your appearance, and building an online identity around beauty comes with its own burden. I imagine it slowly erodes confidence in anything else you may have to offer.
King Saul comes to mind.
Scripture describes him as not just handsome but the handsomest man in Israel and head-and-shoulders above everyone else. What a heavy burden that must have been to carry. Saul seemed to draw life from admiration. He needed it constantly. It appears to have become the lens through which he viewed every responsibility and every relationship.
He wanted to be the best. but not just the best, he wanted to be worshiped because he knew how it felt to be worshiped and he liked it.
Perhaps he believed his appearance had helped earn him the throne. But in the end, his handsome face could not save him. His appearance could not preserve his position. God rejected him as king, and Saul gradually became a bitter, jealous, murderous man who devoted himself to hunting God’s anointed servant, David.
What a tragic life.
There was so much potential in Saul’s story, and yet he squandered much of it chasing the approval of people.
Beauty can be a gift, but it makes a terrible foundation for life. Anything built upon it eventually crumbles. Beauty fades like the flowers outside wither and die, it is our job to find what is eternal and hold it close. The only secure foundation is knowing God. Let your value flow from how He sees you, not from how the world sees you, and not from what you see in the mirror. I guarantee you will be far happier knowing the beauty of God then pursuing your own.
I say this especially to young girls and women: you do not have to be beautiful to be loved. You do not have to be beautiful to have value in the world, purpose in life, friendship, family, joy, or a meaningful existence.
The world is lying to you; it is the biggest advertising scam ever. For years, beauty is held out before us like a carrot dangling at the end of a stick. We are told that if we could just lose a few pounds, smooth a few wrinkles, fix a few flaws, gain a little more attention, then we would finally arrive. Then we would be enough. But the target keeps moving. The world would have us believe every sign of aging or humanity is an emergency that needs intervention, rather than a part of life. Industries count on people being dissatisfied with themselves. The more ill contented we are with our appearance the more products they can sell us. This is an interesting fact AI brought revealed when I asked: “The global beauty industry drives roughly $570 billion in annual revenue and continues to grow.” Our discontentment is their goal. False promises are what they sell.
But God offers us something entirely different. He invites us to freely eat and drink from the abundance of His garden, why then do we continue reaching for the one thing that promises life but delivers bondage. We chase the forbidden fruit of comparison, envy, vanity, and approval, only to discover that it leaves us emptier than before.
Choose God.
From Him flows wellness. Joy. Peace. Contentment. Confidence. Truth.
And perhaps most importantly, freedom from the chains of “not good enough.”
My Faith Place 