How We Talk, Behave and Think Will Shape the Future Generation; Our Children

I just watched a documentary titled 'THIN.'  Its really got me thinking.  So many young girls, and older ones, are so focused on body image, weight, imperfections, dieting.  Why?  Who told them they were fat? Who told them they weren't beautiful? 


I remember being a pre-teen and noticing how thin some girls were in my 5th grade class. Thinking about what I was, or wasn't probably started around this time in my life.   I had a locker next to a couple of the most beautiful, thin girls in high school. My thoughts weren't consumed with needing to be just like them but I knew I wasn't. Of course looking back at it I think how could I have ever thought that weighing 135 in high school wasn't good enough when I've recently been over 100 lbs. more than that and still pretty close.  I do realize it is a mind trick, at least for the 'normal' unhealthy view, if there is such a thing. 


We have all grown up around TV, Movies and Magazines that always display the most beautiful people, a majority of whom have seemingly perfect bodies.  Thin, tan, great hair...perfect.  Most of that is "movie magic" of course.  Photoshop has become the fix-it-all solution for making the 'perfect' even more perfect. Young girls are taught so early that to be loved and acceptable is to be thin and gorgeous.


I really don't believe that TV, Movies and Magazines are the root of the problem though. Its really only what feeds it. Watching the THIN documentary got me thinking about how much more the problem is about emotional baggage brought on by the dysfunctions in life and not so much about just wanting to be thin.  Wanting to be thin is the outcome, the attention getter, the hiding place, the punishment. A way to avoid the hurts and problems or to have something to control when everything is so out of control. There are many other outlets for this; cutting, drinking and drugs and in extreme cases, suicide. They are unable to deal with the hurts of this life and the pain is so real that they feel they have no other option than to make that emotional pain go away by covering it up with physical pain.


The woman followed in this documentary all had one form of eating disorder or another. They lived lives of depression and self hatred. One young girl was only 15 years old.  She felt she was too heavy and wanted to be like the 'other girl's who were thin at her school. Unfortunately, her mother also suffered from an eating disorder and although her mother wanted her to get better, she really didn't back up her support with action. She didn't want help. After being it treatment for a time, she wanted to go home, she missed her old life of bondage to the scale.  Another had a twin sister who she thought was better than her, smarter that her. Where did she get that idea from? Perhaps she always felt the need to compete and could never measure up. She said that she was mean to her sister. She thought it was because she hated herself so much, and since her sister looks like her, she somehow felt she was taking it out on herself by taking it out on her twin. One woman seemed to be the rebel, dramatic and wanting attention. Again, why? It most likely stems from what her life must have been like growing up.  She said she learned about eating disorders and how to have one from her family. I didn't get them sense that this was some, 'lets gather around the table kids and lets all learn how to be anorexic', but rather a learned behavior from watching her mother 'diet'. She said she once was paid $100 by each her mom and her aunt to lose 10 pounds when she was only 10 years old.


There was a time in my life where I was depressed. I wanted to feel good about myself and so I thought if I lost weight and 'looked good' that I would be happier. I got thin, not unreasonably thin, but where I wanted to be, but the 'happiness' was temporary. Proof that our happiness can not be dependent on outside influences. I also remember thinking I was fat because I wasn't the weight I wanted to be and referring to myself as fat. Fortunately I realized that I needed to stop because I didn't want my sons to get the wrong idea about what 'fat' was.  If we think monetary or material things will make us happy, we will never really truly be happy. If we think having the perfect body will make us happy, we are sadly mistaken.


Even the most seemingly perfect person probably can find faults with themselves. How many times have we wanted to change something about ourselves? If we have curly hair, we wish it was straight. If we have straight hair, we wish it was curly. Freckles, no freckles. Dimples, no dimples. Blonde hair, brown hair, red hair, black hair. Why can't we be satisfied with what God gave us? Is it because we think, "If only I had ____ , then I will be happy/satisfied/loved/desirable, etc."? I truly believe that, until we can step back from looking inward and focus on the Heavenly; God's perfect will for our lives and trust in Him, we can not move past the hurts that this world dishes out.


It seemed the overall theme for these woman on THIN was hurt or rejection and unhealthy attitudes that they learned from their family, the ones who were supposed to love and guide and protect them. Please ask yourself; What am I doing that is destructive to myself or to those around me? What words come out of my mouth that are hurtful and damaging to my kids emotions and spirits? What attitudes and habits do I portray to my kids that will ultimately shape their attitudes and habits? We are the number one influence in our kids lives. We must be careful as to how we influence our kids. 


I have a daughter now and step daughters. I want to make sure they have healthy ideas about who they are and what is beautiful. I want them to know that they are perfect just the way they are because God created them to be EXACTLY who they are and to look EXACTLY they way He wanted them to be.  I want all my kids to understand the importance of healthy relationships with people. I want them to learn to be kind and thoughtful and giving. I want them to learn the importance of preferring one another and being happy for others when they succeed.  I want them to have integrity, to be honest and most importantly to love God and desire to know Him. I want to know that I did all that I could to make the most positive impact in the lives of my children so that they might one day do the same for theirs.


I am in the process right now of losing weight. I have been over 200 lbs. for the last few years. I have also been the happiest I have ever been.  My desire to lose weight is not one that is based on a need to be thin, to look good or to fit some standard that the world has set. It is to be healthier, to have more energy and too keep up with my daughter who is just about to start crawling and is already showing signs of a strong will.  I really don't want to even think about how I look or what I weigh. I just want to have a healthy attitude about it and not focus on it so much that it effects those around me, especially my family. I want to set the example that we should be more concerned about treating ourselves with respect and care with a healthy lifestyle because we are worthy of such.  A lifestyle of health in how we talk, how we behave, and how we think.

What Have You Got To Lose.....

Faith isn’t really something that’s easy to have.  I mean think about it…Faith in God: Here is this being that no one can see, that supposedly controls the entire universe and each and every one of our lives.  If you don’t believe in God,  if you don’t believe in Jesus; the Son of God,  if it’s hard for you to have faith in anything but yourself because that’s all you know to be true….I get it, I really do. I mean, it’s hard to have faith in the ‘magic guy in the sky’ who always was.  What? Always was? Seriously, if you try to wrap your head around it, it just can’t be done….I’ve tried. 

Maybe you don’t believe in God, maybe you don’t want to believe in God.  Maybe you once did but something happened in your life that changed your mind; abuse, neglect, a tragic death of a loved one.  You ask, how could this God, who is supposed to love us and take care of us, let this happen?….There must not really be a God.  Because, if there was, then He wouldn’t have let ‘this’ happen to me. 

Well, I’ll tell you what I think…..

God created the universe and all the life within it….including you and I. He created you and I because he wanted companionship.  He chose us to love us and he wants us to love Him too.  The tricky thing about love though…and we all know this to be true…we can’t make someone love us who doesn’t want to.  God is the same way. So, He gave us Free Will. That means we can chose to love Him, honor Him, obey Him, trust in Him, have faith….or not.   The problem with giving us such a ‘gift’ is that it comes with a price.  That price is sin and the consequences of that sin.  We pay for the consequences of not only our own sin but the sin of others.  That’s why when someone says…How could God have let ‘that’ happen? You have to think about all the choices that each person is allowed to make that led up to ‘that’ thing. Then, there is also a horrible, rotten liar named Satan who is hard at work to make sure you don’t choose the right thing. He wants nothing but to see us all rot in Hell with him.  We are up against a lot of crap just because we have Free Will. So why did He give us Free Will? He loves us so much that he doesn’t want to force us to love Him in return because that’s not real love. 

Some think that in order to be a ‘Christian’ you have to act a certain way, or live a certain life.  Sure, in a sense that can be part of it, but it’s simply accepting the ‘paid in full’ status that we were given to take care of all our choices, all our sin. That’s what Jesus did. God knew we’d never be able to pay for it ourselves so He sent His Son to do it for us.  That is love.  And all we have to do is receive it. Do you deserve it?  No….none of us does….but really we do because God says we are worth it. YOU ARE WORTH IT...YES YOU! The whole living right and acting right…that all comes with having a relationship with God.  When you love someone, you want to give them your all, your best.  You want to follow the rules and you may even make sacrifices …just because they are worth it to you.  But God doesn’t expect you to change overnight and he surely doesn’t require perfection.  He will even love you if you never change.  He just wants you to love Him and trust Him…have faith in Him. Also, when you remember that sin has consequences and you don’t want what you did to hurt those around you and ultimately yourself….you start thinking about it differently. 

What is faith:

The bible defines faith:

 Hebrews 11:1- “ Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”

 The Merriam- Webster dictionary defines faith:   

Full Definition of FAITH

• 1 a :  allegiance to duty or a person :  loyalty 
  • b  (1) :  fidelity to one's promises  (2) :  sincerity of intentions
• 2 a  (1) :  belief and trust in and loyalty to God  (2) :  belief in the traditional doctrines of a religion 
  • b  (1) :  firm belief in something for which there is no proof  (2) :  complete trust
• 3:  something that is believed especially with strong conviction; especially :  a system of religious beliefs <the Protestant faith>

There is faith in God, the belief that He IS.  There is faith in God, the belief that He WILL. There is faith in God that He DOES. There is faith in God that He CAN.  If you have any faith in God, maybe you believe all of these or maybe just one or two.  For myself….faith is best defined – complete trust…in all things God.

When I was pregnant with our daughter Aubrey….not knowing whether she would live or die, I chose to have complete trust in God for whatever His will was for her.  I have complete trust that He knows what’s best.  This wasn’t because I just ‘have a strong faith’….it’s because with every event in my life, when I chose to worry, or try to figure it out on my own, I never had peace.  Over and over, I tried to do it on my own.  When we found out about Aubrey, since all my attempts at doing things on my own had failed, I decided to give her to God.  After all it was out of my control.  Or was it? I suppose I could have terminated the pregnancy; it was offered.  We chose life because she was our child and we already loved her.  Our belief in God’s way is that He is the giver of life…we are not the takers of life. More than that….how would we have ever known what God’s plan was if we chose for ourselves.  The doctors could have been wrong. She could have lived. But if we had ended her life… we would still question it to this day.  God was and is in control and so I had complete trust in Him for her life.  She didn’t live and I completely trust that it was the best for all of us.  Having that faith…that complete trust has healing power unlike no other.  You think you could never go through something like that…..I tell you …you can! With God all things are possible!

I have heard people say that they are losing their faith.  Is it that they are losing their faith in God or their faith that He is in control?  If they once have had faith, then they must know what faith feels like, or maybe they never really had it at all. If you feel like you are losing your faith…or you have no faith in God at all, I urge you to think about this:

I believe in God, I always have.  I really can’t explain how or why, but I was told there was a God and I believed it.  Some would think that was naive or gullible; to just believe something you are told.  Ok, so maybe I am.  What do I have to lose?  Let’s put it this way…if there is a wrong way and a right way….I’d rather be wrong about the wrong thing than wrong about the right thing. Basically, if there is no God but I put my faith and trust in Him and I am wrong, what have I lost? If there actually is a God…and all this ‘magic guy in the sky’ fluff is actually true and I chose not to believe it….then I have lost everything!

"You writin' a book?"

Every time I sit down at my computer and type anything my husband Tom asks me, "You writin' a book?" I usually reply with a short and simple "yep" because I mean you ask a dumb question your gonna get a dumb answer. This is just his little way of inquiring as to what I'm doing without actually asking...or so I think. He hasn't asked me yet but I think that's because he's so hungry he's nauseous. Its after 9pm and I haven't made dinner....but in my defense its 'Fend For Yourself Night' and I thought he'd eat when he was hungry. My bad...I guess he didn't get the memo.


Anyway, that wasn't the point to this story. The point is I decided to start blogging because, well, I've got one of those 'everyday lives' and that's the majority of the blogging I see so I thought "hey, I've got stuff to say to so why not?" (He must be really nauseous because he's sitting right across from me trying to eat and he still hasn't asked me!)


So what am I gonna write about? Mostly everything. Like, how as I type 'gonna' spell check tells me its wrong so even though that's the word I want to use I'm dying to change it to 'going to' even though I know I can just right click and add it to the Dictionary. Really, this is what I'm going to write about? No, I'm just kidding.  But really; my thoughts about stuff. That's what I was thinking at that very moment so I went with it, used it as an example if you will.


So what do you think of the name of my Blog? Original huh? I really thought long and hard for like five minutes before I came up with this one. I guess I went with it because who knows if anyone is really gonna care whether I blog or not. I'm really just doing it for me...thought it'd be fun. I sat down last night and wrote about ten topics to blog about. One thing I wrote down because I have a hard time remembering what something is called and it finally came to me so I seized the moment. If you are familiar with the term 'pregnancy brain' (that's not that thing I couldn't remember) then you will understand what I mean when I say....since having my daughter almost 3 months ago, I still have it.
I will bog about that 'thing' though and I will tell you what it is when I get to it. I do random stuff like that!


Ok, so I decided that Tom's gonna make a liar out of me because he's at his computer with his headphones on so he's not likely to ask me if I'm writin' a book....and DUDE!...I'm totally doing something very much like writing a book this time! Or, at least as close as I'm probably ever going to get to it! (See what I did just there...actually wrote 'going to' instead of 'gonna' since I wrote that 5 times already; 6 now. And see I know this because they still have that red squiggly line under it...made it easy to count.)


Gotta go....time to feed the baby (She doesn't have to Fend For Herself)!!!