An Epiphany about Loving Myself

I had a major epiphany this weekend that has hit me smack between the eyes and has probably left me with a black eye.  It’s so real that I really don’t know how to process it all yet; and honestly, I’m a bit anxious about being vulnerable and opening up this part of my heart to you.  But before I can share this epiphany with you, I must rewind a bit.

Its no secret, I was never the most skinny or fashionable girl growing up.  In fact, there are memories from my grade school and junior high years that have crept up on me recently and haunted me.  And sure, as I entered into high school and college, I definitely had my moments of hating my body and self-image; but overall during my growing up years, I didn’t let my weight or lack of fashion get me down too much.

As a young woman, I always believed that I would marry someone “bigger” than me, someone stronger than me.  After all, doesn’t society and media tell us at times that women are supposed to be the skinny ones in a relationship, or at least that is how I interpreted it at times.

Now, fast forward a few years and I have just married an amazing man, but one who is most certainly skinnier than me.  It was in the first few months of marriage that I began to struggle with my self-image a lot, not to mention the whole “identity” shock process of now being a Downey and being a wife and life looking completely different than it was when I was single, but that’s beside the point.  Dealing with a horrible self-image after getting married was completely unexpected.  I mean really, Laura?  You are married to an amazing man, who adores you, and all you can do is deflect every positive compliment he makes about how beautiful you are and so forth?!  I mean, it just didn’t make sense, but it was honestly one of the hardest things for me after getting married.

All of this brings me to my epiphany…

I was laying in bed slowly waking up for the day next to my wonderful husband and was thinking about how the past few months have been some of our best months of our married life thus far.  I have felt more loved than ever before!  I didn’t quite understand why I felt that way because married life has treated us well, nothing special had happened in the past few months, and Brent has loved me unconditionally.  But as I was contemplating this revelation further, I realized that the reason the past few months had been so great was because I truly loved myself, though not in a self-righteous way.  I had felt as though Brent had complimented me more in the past few months than before; but I realized that it wasn’t necessarily the quantity of compliments that Brent was affirming me with that had changed, but rather the way I received his compliments had changed.

Before this year, I was the absolute worst at turning every compliment into self-defeating talk about myself.  I never once allowed myself to believe I was actually beautiful, when Brent would tell me I was.  But this epiphany made me realize that in the past few months I haven’t turned his compliments into self-defeating talk, but I’ve actually allowed myself to believe that I’m beautiful and even sexy!  I realized that I have grown to love myself and allowed myself to believe his compliments, the same ones I so easily reversed previously.  And now as a result, Brent desires to compliment me more because he knows I won’t reject his compliment.

I’m still not the skinniest or most healthy woman out there, but the fact that I have made dedicated efforts to better my health has allowed me to love myself more!  It’s an amazing feeling!

I then thought about one of God’s greatest commandments and how it discusses loving ourselves.  Mark 12:31 reads, “The second [greatest command] is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.'”  If we don’t love ourselves, how can we share God’s unconditional love with our neighbors?!

I know I’m going to be reflecting on this epiphany for a while, but this also ties into a Bible study I started in January with the women of our young marrieds group at church.  We are reading through the book Lies Women Believe by Nancy Leigh DeMoss.  As we’ve dug through the contents of this book, it has opened my eyes up to other lies that I have believed about myself.  I plan on sharing some of my discoveries with you from this book sometime in the next few months, so keep your eyes open for that post!