God Don’t Make No Junk
Anyone else just a little bit afraid of your spring and summer clothes?
The ones that are made with way less fabric, and that you haven’t tried to put on since long before holiday snacks and winter inactivity?
I spent a lot of time disliking my appearance and physical abilities when I was younger (being a preteen girl in the 90s was not an easy thing to be!) My peers were sometimes unkind to me, but to be honest I was more unkind to myself. I didn’t like the way my hair was frizzy and unruly, I didn’t like my big nose, my bushy eyebrows, my size, my psoriasis-spotted skin, my clumsiness and lack of sports skills. I straightened the hair and tried to makeup the nose and smashed myself into fashionable-but-full-coverage clothes to be “better.” To look more like “everyone else,” whoever that was.
But this is how God made me. He evidently wanted my big-teethed, big-haired, low-voiced, physically-unfit self in his world for a reason, because he made me and gave me these features. He knows every hair on my head AND which direction they’re going to stick up today. In Psalm 139 he tells us just how specifically he sees and knows us:
“Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.”
Turning from self-criticism to self-love was a very gradual process. First I started in my closet, owning the size I was and what actually felt comfortable to wear, and not pretending I liked what was mass marketed. Then I stopped fighting my hair (it was always a losing battle, anyway) and decided whatever way it grew out of my head was the way it got to stay. Then I gave up makeup for the sake of covering up or “fixing” and put it firmly in the “for fun” category.
Some steps toward self-appreciation were decidedly out of my control - I didn’t have the patience or money to try and “correct” the gray hairs I sprouted at age 20, so those got to stay. No matter how much exercise I got during my 20s, I stayed exactly the same body type I’d always been - and low and behold my body fat percentage and hip measurement helped me grow and birth four beautiful babies, unimaginable gifts from God. The entire skincare aisle of every pharmacy can’t seem to budge the skin I’m in. So gradually I’m becoming someone I can admit was an intentional part of creation rather than a defective model of human that somehow slipped through the cracks. (God is perfect, and everything he does is perfect - including you and me!)
It’s become easier as I’ve been entrusted with children to teach about everything and anything. “Mom, why do I have a mole?”
“Because that’s how God made you, isn’t it neat?”
“Mommy, why’s my eyes is brown?”
“Because that’s how God made you, they’re such a beautiful color!”
It feels so natural to explain my children to themselves through this lens - I should work on applying that same simple explanation to myself. Why am I the size I am? Why do I have the features I have? Why does my mind work the way it does? Why is my skin so imperfect? Because that’s how God made me - isn’t it neat? How beautiful.
This process isn’t every really over. We’re never going to love ourselves perfectly; only our Heavenly Father can do that. But we can certainly honor his creation better by not treating ourselves poorly. Let’s think of it this way - when someone makes us a handmade gift, we don’t open it and proclaim all the flaws it has, all the places it isn’t quite how we would have done it, do we? As we slowly peel back the knitwear layers and emerge into sunshine and warm temperatures, can we try and treat ourselves as the artful creation we are, as someone God intentionally made exactly how he meant us to be, instead of picking at ourselves and what we perceive to “need improvement?” Many years ago I remember seeing some type of poster or greeting card that had a cartoon of a disheveled little girl on it and it said, “God don’t make no junk.” How true that is! He formed us, saw us, ordained each of our days and knows the number of our hairs. He has made even the weeds that sprout up in the ditches beautiful, how much more the crown of his creation - you!
If we can’t quite zip those summer clothes anymore, the actual problem will be we need new clothes, not that we’re a failure as a person. If we break out in some rash just in time for bare arms and legs, the actual problem is we might need a cream, not that God made us defective or that we need to hide. We’ve each been constructed exactly as He intended, and whatever unique features each of us has to present to the world is how God made us. Isn’t it neat? How beautiful.