Thinspiration.

Hi, my name is Maggie, and I am addicted to Pinterest.

Pinterest gives me the little creativity outlet that sustains me when I don’t have time to sew in between diapers.  It also supplies me with a list of cool crafts and sewing ideas that I will never complete in this lifetime.  But I can dream.

 

The last few weeks, though, I’ve noticed something on Pinterest that really bothers me.  A lot.

There are a lot of women who have boards solely devoted to pictures of women who are skinnier than they are.  They label them clever things like ‘thinspiration’ and ‘20 pounds from now’.  This is bothersome.  What is even worse, is that they pin pictures of women who are clearly not healthy.  Women who are not ‘in shape’ but are ill in the way they view their bodies.  There are enough women pinning these pictures that they are aggregating on the list of popular pins.

 

As a mother of daughters, this scares me more than any words I can contrive.

 

My daughters,

  Know that I am on my knees, pleading for your understanding of worth.  By all means, I want to teach you how to be healthy and care for your bodies, but health is not what you see in the mirror.  I pray that you never look into a mirror and find your worth in what you see.

  God made you.  Let me pause there.

God made you.

And when he made you, he looked at you and saw His beautiful daughter.  He made you to be beautiful from the inside out.  As I pray for you, I pray that you find your purpose in growing in love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, and self control.  I pray that you find your worth in being a child of God.

 

The world will tell you that you have to look different – no matter how you look.  The advertisements will tell you that what you are is not good enough. (One of the primary reasons we don’t have a t.v. – which I’m sure you’ll hate me for at some point.)  There is no end to striving after what they tell you to be – because they will always tell you to be something else.

And  they.  are.  wrong.

Your beauty is not a number on a scale, or a tube of makeup, or a special cleanser that makes your pores smaller and your zits disappear, or a different outfit that makes you more acceptable to them.  It’s not even defined by your ‘failures’ – because that is how we learn.

Your true beauty will be defined in your character.  In your generosity.  How you won’t think twice about giving all you’ve got because someone else needs it.  Your true beauty will be defined by your selflessness and humility.  Your true beauty will be defined by how you display love that is not of this world.  Really it’s only when you stop focusing only on what you see in the mirror that you can show anyone your true beauty.

Right now you are so confident.  You do something (like spin in circles) and then yell, “Look, Daddy!”, so sure that what you are doing is wonderful.  You are confident because they haven’t gotten to you yet – they haven’t been able to tell you that your spinning just isn’t up to par, it’s not twirly enough, or that your butt looks big when you spin.  You don’t know, yet, that the whole world is waiting to tell you that your spinning just isn’t good enough, and that the quality of your spinning should define who you are.

I plead that you will not get caught up in this world.  It’s just not worth it. 

When I look at you, I see beauty because of who God created you to be.  You are beautiful because you were created in His image. 

Please don’t listen to them.  Please.  Keep spinning.  It’s beautiful.