The Perfect Picture - Overcome The Inner Critic

I have my make up on and my head tilted looking for the perfect angle. At least three tries before I have a picture worthy to be seen. This is my best side ; the side I show the world.

While in my photo shoot this morning for my new project in the works, it occurred to me that although this is the real me , it's not the whole me. This is my best foot forward and not all the unflattering angles and things I wish to hide.

I am not highlighting my insecurities or hurts from rejections in years past. I don't press the shutter button when my double chin is in frame and definitely will crop out any part of me too far down that reveals all the weight I gained in my thirties!

For many years I avoided mirrors and especially cameras ; never wanting to see any photo taken of me. I bought in to Satin's lies that I had become less of a women because my physical image at forty did not resemble how I looked and felt in my twenties. I think I even mourned my twenties for a time.

Although not an easy road to loving me, much has taken place in twenty years, I am grateful for the journey. It has been a life long lesson in learning to love who God created me to be. Longing to please him with my actions and not others. Desiring my heart to look more like his.

Mostly I have worked on repenting and forgiving myself for all the times I cursed His creation that is me. Treating myself less than others, putting myself down and making fun of myself to others. Those actions do not honor Him.

Here is what I at 45 know today to be true and would never trade for one day in my twenty five year old body, I serve a God who loves every angle of me.

He has seen it all; the good, the bad, the ugly. He knows everything I have ever done and will do. He knows all the times I turned my back on Him, every time I looked to the world for love and acceptance that only He can provide. He forgives me, loves me and He always will.

Thank You Lord Jesus!

I pray this may help someone today struggling with similar things. If this is you, know that you can never loose His love !

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Romans 8:37-39