How Do You Feel About How You Look?

Yesterday I wrote about embracing the season we're in, about accepting the aging process as our bodies are changing. Today I'd like to share a link to a post by a gal from a younger generation who writes about women who tend to think a lot about their bodies. It's both those who think they look great and those who think they aren't attractive enough who have the same problem. (And it isn't just the younger generation.) Here's a brief excerpt, but click here to take you to Melissa's full post.

I wonder how many women out there, if we really admit it, spend a large portion of every day obsessing about the way we look? How many times a day do you have a hateful thought about some body part you despise? How often do you long for a body or face like someone else? Have you ever, like me, left the house for church on Sunday morning completely crushed by the feeling that you are not attractive enough?  

Or maybe you are on the other side of things. Maybe you love your body so much that you show it off at every opportunity. Maybe it is what defines who you are in your mind. Maybe you love your face so much that you spend large chunks of your day taking selfies so that you can get the approval of the world on social media. ~Melissa @yourmomhasablog.com  

Image ~ Mariana in the South, John William Waterhouse, 1897

public domain via Wikimedia Commons

Sometimes I Connect. Sometimes I Struggle.

We were discussing idols of the heart in our small group fellowship last evening. Some thoughts and comments have lingered with me throughout today. This is an issue that I've come face-to-face with many times over the years, or should I say.. heart-to-heart with over the years--my heart connecting with, and sometimes struggling with, God's heart. My desire for as long as I can remember is to be a woman after God's heart. Sometimes I connect. Sometimes I struggle.

I've learned, and am still learning, that the scent of struggle itself is the deep down whiff of my heart...a heart that is seeking its own satisfaction, its own delight, its own expectations. And so often in the struggle, I'm struck with the realization that I've been looking to something or someone other than God Himself to satisfy me, to delight me, to fulfill whatever expectations I may have.

I'm learning that so often I have God created in my own 'love language'. If He truly loves and cares about me, He would show His love in a way that is meaningful to me, a way that would give me warm fuzzies. Well, of course! He would fulfill my expectations, satisfy my longings for whatever, delight me with gifts and blessings and relationships and....  No, no. That's the psychobabble of much of today's counsel. God wants us to have a heart after Him, not a heart after ourselves.

The Bible tells us that we don't really know our own hearts. My experience has been that I've so often not even realized that I was idolizing something or someone. I just knew that there was a struggle going on within me. Amazing grace! That is one reason God sent the Holy Spirit to live in the hearts of His children. He searches our hearts, to see if there is any wayward way. And He teaches us God's ways. So thankful that I am not on my own to figure all of this out! And so thankful that God gave us the Scriptures so we could learn more about Him.

Bottom line for me...
     Stay in the Word
     Keep learning about God and His ways
     Seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness
     Don't give in to the struggle of my own expectations

Painting ~ Breakfast Time, Carl Holsoe

The Morphing of A Desire

 One of my pleasures in life is spending time on my screened-in back porch. Some days I have to remind myself that there are other things in life to do and pull myself away. When the season allows, I love to go out early of the morning for my quiet time and watch the sun break over the hill. I enjoy serving meals there whenever we can, and it’s a wonderful place for quiet chats and talking into the night. Well, you get the idea!

I’m very thankful for my back porch, partly because I enjoy it so much and partly because God used it to change my heart. You see, I’ve wanted a back porch for years and years and years. It started out as a good desire, but became something that controlled me. God used a counseling class that I took about a few years ago to teach me something about myself. One of the papers that I had to write was a response to a reading assignment by Paul David Tripp on how a desire can become an idol of the heart. Let’s pick up here with my response paper—

One of the concepts that particularly struck me in this reading was the morphing of a good desire into something that controls me. The desire itself can be positive, something that could be a blessing if it stayed simply as a desire and didn’t become an idol. As I look back at it now, I see this downward progression in a simple desire to have a back porch.

I think porches are calming and offer brief respites in the midst of the tasks of the day. We have a deck, but a porch would be different. A porch has a roof, so I could go there whether it was sunny or rainy. I dislike dragging out a chair cushion for a few moments of rest and cranking up the umbrella to get out of the sun, so I don’t use our deck very much. With a porch I would simply take a few minutes to rest, watch the birds, maybe read a chapter or two of a good book, and breathe in the fresh air.

I’ve seen this desire for a porch morph over the past several years into a controlling desire. Tripp says that the next step is demand, followed by need. However, with my porch it seems to me that I first viewed it as a need before I began to demand it. I needed it for times of tranquil rest. I needed it so I could go outside and be out of the sun without a lot of rigmarole. I needed it so I could invite people to come and sit for a spell and we could have a good chat. Once I convinced myself that I needed that porch, I tried to convince my husband that I needed it. The demanding came in the form of ‘You must help me get what I think I need.’ Because I know he loves me and wants to provide what he can for my perceived needs, I soon began to expect him to jot this little need in his planner and set aside time to tend to it. But it seemed to me that he was giving half-hearted attention to it. Time and again I would bring up the need for a porch, and I soon realized that I probably was not going to get it. There were various and sundry reasons given for not getting a porch—how to attach it to the house, the slope of the roof, the cost, the time to personally build it.

My expectation was not being realized, and I began to equate my husband’s resistance to getting me a porch with poor character qualities on his part. Even though I didn’t express this to him, I began to feel sorry for myself that I didn’t have a porch because of my husband’s self-centeredness and lack of ambition. And so disappointment set in when year after year I didn’t get my porch. To my shame, a big disappointment was his birthday gift to me this summer—a screened canvas gazebo to sit on the deck. I felt like it was his way of saying that was as close as I was going to get to having a porch, and my heart rebelled! I kept my thoughts about it to myself as he happily installed it on the deck. It didn’t even match the house, and I was wallowing deep in self-pity. As Tripp says, disappointment leads to some form of punishment. I didn’t thank my dear husband for his gift. I didn’t even sit in it for several days. Even though I didn’t express my attitude to him, I was angry because he substituted what I desired for something I felt was easier for him.

God began to show me the sinfulness of my heart. I was the one who was self-centered with an ungrateful heart. My husband had done what he could to give me what I wanted. I asked God’s forgiveness for my attitude, and He gave me a grateful heart. I began to show my husband that I enjoyed our little gazebo and appreciated the gift. We have Saturday breakfast there and often sit there together after he gets home from a day’s work. We enjoy watching the birds come up close that don’t even seem to notice us behind the screen. I do some of my reading there in the cool of the morning or the quiet of the afternoon.

I don’t even want a porch now. I’m satisfied with the little screened gazebo sitting on the deck because I see the loving heart of my husband in desiring to give me something he knew I wanted. I now see that the porch had become an idol, morphing from a simple desire to controlling my heart.

Ezekiel 14:2 And the word of the LORD came to me, saying, "Son of man, these men have set up their idols in their hearts and have put right before their faces the stumbling block of their iniquity."

Now the deck and the little gazebo are gone. Two autumns ago Mike had my back porch built. I believe God in His goodness had kept a good thing from me to work a better thing in my heart. He often withholds something good to give something better. And then in His abundant grace He gave me my porch as well. 

For the LORD God is a sun and shield; 

The LORD gives grace and glory; 

No good thing does He withhold from those who walk uprightly. 

~ Psalm 84:11

Why Do We Do What We Do?

Sharing a book recommendation with you from my daughter Elizabeth.

I have begun working with a new counselee, and have therefore been spending a lot of time contemplating, "why do we do what we do?" Counselees struggle with a plethora of issues, but I cannot be satisfied simply picking one of their problem areas (i.e., depression, eating disorders, marital strife, anger) and helping them change in that area. No, there is something at the root of all these problems - something that explains why they are where they are, or in other words, who or what controls them. I must seek to uncover these root issues, these "functional gods," or these "idols of the heart" if I am to direct the counselee to lasting change. Anything short of this will be temporary and self-directed.

One resource I regularly return to when helping counselees discern the issues of their heart is Elyse Fitzpatrick's Idols of the Heart. This is an excellent book, not only for explaining what our idols tend to be, but in helping the reader walk through her own issues in a very practical way.