I am 14 years old, newly arrived at an elite boarding school, and every opportunity is before me.
At 4 AM there are no lights on outside my dormitory window. I quietly slip out of bed and into a bathrobe, tiptoeing softly so my roommate doesn't wake up. My toiletries are already next to the door. I pick them up, close the door slowly behind me, and walk down the hall into a large bathroom with mirrors on every wall. Now illuminated by fluorescent lights, I begin to analyze every portion of my body – my face, my arms, my stomach, my thighs. Not good enough, I decide.
I wash and dry my hair, but there's a strange wave in the back of it, so I wash and dry it again. It's 5 AM now. All the other girls are still asleep. I sneak back into my room and grab a handful of shirts. In the bathroom, I try them on one by one. Did I wear this one too recently? Does this one make my arms look fat? Oh no, this one must have accidentally shrunk. (I'm very tall for a woman, so shrunken clothes is a real and present danger to my wardrobe.
By 7 AM I'm ready to go to the dining hall to see my friends. Some of them are still in their pajamas, their hair pulled back into messy buns. I look at the cart full of cereal and the sausage laid out in platters in front of the kitchen. Then I place my hand over my stomach. Is it too large? I really shouldn't eat, I think to myself. Choosing what food to eat is as difficult as finding the right clothes.
I decide that a glass of milk should be enough for the morning – maybe the entire day. I sit down with my friends and we talk about our classes, our crushes, and our futures. Nobody knows of my early morning rituals, and no one can tell that my fear of food is about to manifest as an out-of-control eating disorder.
Why was any of this such a struggle? My struggle was not with food, clothes, or body image – those were just symptoms of a defective mindset. My real struggle was with this simple question: How do I become worthy of love? In that question, itself, was the lie that ensnared me. To pursue that question was to agree with its premise that I was not already worthy of love.
Why is it important to know you are worthy of love?
If I am motivated by a paucity of love, I will never be all that God intended – I will never see myself the way He does. Furthermore, anything I do will be tainted with fear and anxiety.
However, if I am motivated from a place of having encountered God's love already, I will operate from my identity as His daughter. God never asked me to prove myself to Him; rather, He proved Himself to me many times over, and in doing so, He freed me from the burden of having to earn His favor and love.
Can you imagine waking up and knowing you are enough, just the way you are – with your current job, your current bank account numbers, and your family circumstances? Can you imagine carrying such a peace in you that nothing could temper it? That is the kind of peace God gives us. There may be times that He places an impetus in our hearts to move, become, and grow, but we do so from a place of being loved – being enough – rather than striving for a gift we've already been given. Such a peace does exist.
There is no shame in who we once were – all the more glory to God for carrying us through those seasons. By the time I graduated high school, I was much more confident and outgoing; I usually slept in until just before classes started. My morning rituals were gone and so was my eating disorder. I still strived to be worthy of love, and that anxiety manifested itself in other ways. It wasn't until I encountered God's love – unconditional, unequaled, and unassailable – that I realized this truth: God is not building me from my past up, but from Heaven down.
This needs to be said: if you are looking for reassurance that who you are is enough, the answer is yes. It will always be yes. While many people – myself included – have tried to change in order to be loved, that's just not how it works in the Kingdom. We grow from a place of being loved already. Once we accept Jesus into our hearts, we are already planted in His vineyard, and He will continue His work in us until we are complete.
The real question then becomes: is He enough for us? Having encountered His love, I would say yes – He is more than enough. He always will be.
Grace lives in Redding, California.. She is constantly inspired by the beauty around her. She loves to hike, fish, ski, and take long walks. She is passionate about worship and seeing God's love lived out through her community.
Grace Wood's articles may be viewed at http://www.pressserviceinternational.org/grace-wood.html