I used to want to be the perfect and good girl with potential. So perfect that no one would ever leave me or lie to me or tell me I was unlovable. So much potential that I had lots of possibilities to be good and perfect. I tried so hard. It was a tough cycle to follow, but I kept at it. I worked hard at showing everyone just how perfect and good I was. In fact, I almost convinced myself.

I came to Christ for the first time in 2001. I came empty-handed with nothing to give Him, except bag upon bag of sin. It was unfeasible to me that I could lay it all down before Him, and He’d actually take it. Before Jesus could refuse, I grabbed a couple of bags of my potential and took them with me. Consequently, I left with my potential.

The first time I went to church, I sat in the parking lot almost hyperventilating. In my heart, I wasn’t quite good enough yet. When I walked through the doors I thought for sure the sirens would blare and everyone would see me for the fraud I was. I was a nearly perfect and good girl but I was full of potential. It was obvious to me. Surely, the church would see that too.

The harder I tried to be the perfect and good girl, the more I realized it had nothing to do with anyone not loving me, lying to me, or leaving me. It was just me wasting a lot of time.

Until the day, I actually saw myself the way Jesus did. I stopped being someone else’s latent possibility, and started acting like the wonderfully and fearfully made girl I was made to be. I was a messy, broken, overweight, beautiful, breakable, lovable girl, and I belonged to a King.

The layers of potential started to peel away.

I changed the way I saw myself and a paradigm shifted.

You can change too.

Shed a layer of your potential.

This doesn’t mean that no one lies to me. It doesn’t mean that no one will tell me that they don’t love me or I won’t be hurt or disappointed. Those things still happen and are still painful. What it does mean is that there is One who loves me and will never leave me, and I don’t have to be perfect for Him to love me.

I don’t need potential.

Stop being who you think you should be, and be who you are to Jesus. Be who the Lord made you to be, even if that is messy and broken. In fact, we glorify Him the most when we are messy and broken.

Strip away the layers of the perfect and good girl with potential.

You may find that has everything to do with your weight loss journey.

I did.

Praying,

P31Wife

“For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them,” (Psalm 139: 13-16).