I’m over it. Worrying about what I’ll look like in a bikini on my upcoming honeymoon. Feeling intense, gut-wrenching guilt because I had dessert. Or even feeling intense, gut-wrenching guilt because I had grains after 3:00pm.  I’m over it. Feeling like I can’t be your friend, because I’m not as pretty as you. Feeling like I’m not as good at my job because my clothes aren’t as expensive. And feeling like I’m certainly not as healthy as you because I eat bread.  I am so, totally over it.        Here’s the bottom line (pun intended): The size of my jeans won’t heal the sick. It won’t end poverty. It won’t stop injustice. So why does anyone care? This morning I’m sitting in this beautifully hipster coffee shop in Long Beach. I’ll tell you what I ordered: a Honey Oat Latte and a Strawberries & Cream Croissant. Dessert for breakfast.  Most days, I would feel a kind of anxiety over these choices that I don’t even know how to put into words, but I’ll give it a shot. It feels like I’m being suffocated, strangled, and wrung out like a towel all while being startled over and over by an electric shock. That’s anxiety. And that’s how I feel when I eat something “bad” almost always.  I don’t feel like that because I have a fragile health condition I need to be very mindful and cautious of. I feel like that because of our culture.  CULTURE SHOCK I’m originally from Sonoma, the beautiful wine country of Northern California. I’ve spent time all over the world, but when I moved to Southern California for the first time, I experienced a type of culture shock I did not see coming. Right at the beginning of my time here, I heard a someone say she had a bagel for breakfast and that she normally NEVER eats carbs like that. I just about lost my 7 bagels that I probably had every day that week.  It didn’t take long for it all to start creeping up with me. I need to say something very bluntly real quick: Southern California didn’t do this to me. Our culture’s standards for beauty did this to me, and Southern California was simply the perfect breeding ground to expedite any possibility of developing an eating disorder.  Which, I nearly did. It took KC noticing all the signs in me of something going wrong and calling me out on it. We had been coworkers and friends, but this moment in our friendship was a pivotal time for sparking something deep and eternal. She took me to church, and to get coffee and a dozen donuts, and we went back to her apartment and ate these donuts over the entire course of the day, while I opened up to her about the issues with food and body image that I was experiencing.  What she was doing was really quite brilliant. KC has a story of overcoming an eating disorder, and it is incredibly moving and beautiful. She knew exactly what to do. In this day of eating my heart out in sugary, fried carbs, the point being made was that I would wake up the next day and look exactly the same, even though I enjoyed delicious food. And I did.  THE VOICES I wish I could say that just like that, I had a better relationship with food. I wish I could say that just like that, I was able to allow myself to enjoy deliciously unhealthy foods from time to time, knowing that unless that was the regular way of eating for me, I’d always wake up the next morning and look the same. I wish I could say the anxiety that came up around food that makes me see my thighs getting bigger with every bite I take had dissipated, but it didn’t. Because when one voice tells you one thing and it helps and it’s beautiful, and then you go back out into the world and hundreds, thousands, and millions of voices are saying the exact opposite, telling you how gross this is and how bad that is, and forcing shame upon you, that little light of a voice soon goes out. Ask my fiancé. One thing I have asked him an embarrassing number of times is to tell me if he thinks I’ve gained a few pounds. First of all, props to the guy that knows how to answer that like a champ, and will still always answer honestly. Second of all, props to the guy who is forced to understand that his soon-to-be-wife, who he sees as incomparably beautiful and unspeakably sexy, lives in constant fear of gaining 3 pounds because her world has told her that if she does, she is less desirable.  IT ISN’T BRAVE Recently, I was chatting with a girlfriend of mine about this entire concept. She wears a size 16. She was telling me about how she had gone to the beach with a friend of hers who has a smaller body type, and her friend was so surprised that she was actually wearing a two-piece swimsuit. Her friend said, “good for you!” and alluded to the fact that she was brave for doing that. Umm… excuse me? Does anyone understand that telling any body size they are brave for wearing something is incredibly degrading and insulting? You are backhandedly telling them that you are surprised they are comfortable in their own skin. As I write that, I am filled with a rage for this injustice that I haven’t even fully accepted yet. This. Is. DISGUSTING. And I am so over it.  PUTTING IT INTO PERSPECTIVE The purpose of this blog is to add another voice of light into your world amidst the millions of voices of dark, feeding you absolute BS about your beauty. So let’s get to heart of what beauty actually is, shall we? It’s interesting, because in many places in Scripture, beauty is spoken of negatively. It is spoken of as something people see in vain (Proverbs 31:30; Ezekiel 28:7; Proverbs 6:25). Let’s face it. It’s clear as to why God included this in His Word in so many places. This is something we have been corrupted and deceived by. We have taken beauty and decided for ourselves what constitutes as beautiful. We have decided that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. But to accept that means to accept that beauty is dependent on another imperfect human’s personal ideas. Do we understand how twisted that is? That we are going to define our amount of beauty based on a flawed person’s suggestions, and we are going to do everything we possibly can to change everything about our diet, wardrobe, hair, and lifestyle in order to be accepted as beautiful by other people who are trying to do that same exact thing.  I’m going to put this into perspective for us. Let’s say you are learning how to paint. You paint and paint and paint, and you come up with something that you love, feel confident in, and find beautiful. Then, you take it to a kindergarten art class, and you ask for their approval. They say they don’t like it, so you scrap your masterpiece and decide it isn’t good because a couple 5-year-olds, who also have no idea how to paint, said so. When all this time, the teacher, who is a world-renown artist, was trying to tell you it was absolutely amazing. He was blown away and utterly tickled by the beauty and creativity. If you had listened to him, you’d know. But you didn’t. You asked a couple 5-year-olds.  This analogy isn’t over-dramatic. This analogy is exactly what we are doing. We are asking 5-year-olds to appreciate our art. We are asking imperfect people to validate our beauty when God, the creator of all things perfect and lovely, is telling you that you that you were created perfectly and are breathtakingly lovely.  “I will praise you because I have been remarkably and wondrously made. Your works are wondrous…” -Psalm 139:14 (CSB) BEAUTY IS NOT THE SIZE OF MY JEANS Beauty is YOU. That’s what beauty is. Beauty is the hand of God deciding every cell in your body before the beginning of time. Beauty is every size, tight muscle and pound of fat. Beauty is diverse, colorful, exotic, and unique. Beauty is all the working parts that have to come together for sight to even be possible in the eyes. It’s even the stretch marks on my thighs that came up when I went through puberty. It’s the cellulite on my butt, the freckles on my arms, and my eye that squints more than the other one when I smile.  Beauty is stopping to give the man on the corner a hot coffee and a couple bucks. It’s picking up your phone in the middle of the night when your friend calls you crying. It’s rubbing your husband’s head as he sleeps in your lap. It’s serving and loving the people who surround you.  Beauty is the wind on your face at the ocean. It’s the birds singing in the morning. It’s the rain pattering on the rooftop. It’s the cooing baby being rocked to sleep. It’s the bulldog snoring on your feet. Beauty is the fingerprint of God in your DNA. It’s every little cell created and designed by Him to make the masterpiece that is you, desired and wanted for this world at this time.  You know what beauty isn’t? Beauty is not the size of my jeans.  I understand that this can easily become out-shadowed by the dark voices, but strength is not in number. Strength is in persistence. (I’d like for you to write that on a sticky note and go stick that to your scale, if you please).  Because if I can convince just one more person to be as passionate about this as we are, then we have 3 voices. And if you can convince just one person, then we have 4. And even if we can’t change the entire world, that’s 4 worlds we have changed, and that is priceless.  “How beautiful you are, my darling. How very beautiful!” ~Song of Solomon 4:1 (CSB) xo, Suz