Exposing Distorted Truth (body image and eating disorders)

Today please welcome Emily Wierenga to the blog as she shares about exposing distorted truth (body image and eating disorders).

Wind catches the curtains in my children’s bedroom. They sleep with flushed cheeks and eyelashes long and every night I check on them before I go to sleep, and every night I feel both afraid and awed by their beauty.

I touch lips to their skin, remember how my mum prayed over me as I grew in her womb, that I wouldn’t be outwardly attractive. Because it was the heart that counted, the inner beauty, she said.

But I knew I had an appearance. I could see it in the mirror. And because my mum never gave me compliments, when I was young, and my dad was often absent, I began to believe I was ugly. Insignificant. Not worth my father’s time or my mother’s affirmation.

As a result I wanted nothing more than to be beautiful.

And for years I chased this elusive beauty until I became anorexic until it nearly killed me.

Even now when my husband tells me I’m pretty, I wonder why he didn’t tell me that yesterday, and what makes me pretty enough today to warrant a compliment, and I’m desperately afraid of him losing interest in me. Of him never being home, like my father.

But I also have my mother’s fear of vanity. Whenever someone comments on how handsome my sons are, I catch myself saying, “I know, it worries me,” instead of, “Thank you,” and I need to stop this. By assigning fear or worry to looks, we give them more power than they deserve.

And why are we afraid? My mum thought beauty could lead to vanity could lead to an eating disorder. So then I got one anyways.

I am learning to celebrate my children in the same way I celebrate a piece of art. I do not fear the beauty found in a sunrise, in mountains, in a cathedral, in a Van Gogh. It’s a beauty that points to a gracious and loving God. So why, then, should I fear it in the flesh?

We always have two choices: to inspire fear, or to inspire love. And I want to inspire love in my children. To help them see everything in their life—appearance, talents, friends, family—as a priceless gift.

So if God has given them good looks, they need to respect those looks (by exhibiting tender loving care towards  themselves, in addition to integrity, modesty, and humility), and if he has given them extraordinary talents, to honor them with those, and so forth.

I will—and do—tell them, “You are so beautiful!” but I also praise them in other areas too, and then I remind them of where these gifts come from: “God has given you a wonderful gift with people,” etcetera.

I don’t want my children to be afraid of anything, because perfect love casts out fear. Rather, I want them to be motivated by the knowledge that the Creator of the Universe loves us enough to give us good and beautiful things.

Including our reflection in the mirror.

Emily Wierenga is a wife, mother, artist and the author of Chasing Silhouettes: How to help a Loved One Battling an Eating Disorder, and Mom in the Mirror: Body Image, Beauty and Life After Pregnancy. For more info, please visit www.emilywierenga.com.