Grace For Your Waist-Living A Lifestyle Fitted With HopeSample

Labels and Lies

Every year, right before Christmas, my grandmother sat me down on her big couch. She put a Sears & Roebuck catalog in my lap and encouraged me to “just circle the things you like!” I carefully leafed through age appropriate clothes, looking for my size in the normal girl’s clothes section. But every year I found my up-sized clothes labeled “chubbies,” a few pages back from the normal sizes.

And I distinctly remember the days of those dreaded school photos. My mother dressed me in a plaid dress… that dreaded drab plaid dress. The years of “plaid and chubby” are etched in my mind, as those were the years when my self-esteem tanked. No outfit I wore made me feel good about myself. I still avoid the camera today because of those memories. 

It’s painful how those childhood labels stick to our worth like static-charged dryer sheets. My past defined me as a defeatist: forever fat, plain, plaid, drab, rejected, shamed, blamed, and forever flawed. 

Looking back, I see how the labels of my past only compounded my emotional emptiness. I was in a trap of deception about who I was and allowed unworthiness and insignificance to take over my heart. Therefore, shame took up residence in my mind, expanded my mental anguish, and left me questioning my identity.

Can you relate to this question: “God will I ever be enough?” You too can have courage to walk in your true identity, even if you have a few of those old pesky labels hanging in your closet. We all have a validation “tank,” and God is the only one who can affirm what He’s put inside of you! It will not come from faking fine or any other false feelings that try to attach worth or significance to you!

You’re not God’s leftover. You are never His afterthought. Those labels are lies. The truth is you were designed with GREAT consideration. God knows you inside and out and understands the purpose and desires He put inside your heart. He knows you intimately and intricately. And the beauty of this kind of knowing is He sees you as highly valued, even with all your flaws, and He loves you all the same.

What labels attached themselves to your life? How do they compare with how God thinks about you?