filters

Lately I have been working on upping my instagram game, and one of the things I have tried to fix up is my "grid." If you don’t know what this is (like I didn’t), it is what everyone first sees when they pull up your instagram page. I will be the first one to tell you that social media isn’t exactly my thing- I post what I like and hope other people like it too most times. BUT I decided to give this whole grid thing a go. Disclaimer: I gave up on it promptly because it was way too much work for me. Anyways, I talked to one of my best friends whose grid is cohesive and appealing, and she said that the key is in the filter you use on your photos. You want to use the same filter every time so that they all look the same. Filters. That was what differentiated the way people saw her instagram grid. That is the difference between a “good” grid and a “bad” one; it's just about something as simple as a filter. Amy Shumer is staring in a new movie called “I Feel Pretty,” and the whole thing centers around this idea. Nothing changes on the outside for the main character, she just hits her head and all of the sudden sees herself as pretty. She sees her bumps and lumps and doesn’t want to change them because she doesn't see them as flaws; she sees them as things that make her even more beautiful. Summer is one of the most difficult times for girls, in my opinion. At least, I know it is for me. All of the sudden our news feeds and TVs are full of women with perfect bodies looking AMAZING in their tiny bikinis. Instantly, my mind goes to comparison. Her stomach doesn't roll when she sits, her thigh gap is there where mine isn’t, she looks cute with no make up on and I look like I’m 12, and on and on it goes. My mind circulates these thoughts as I see picture after picture. It seems like a hopeless battle. The thing is, I can’t change what I see, but I can change how I see it. I can change the filter. I struggled (and still struggle) for a long time with body insecurity. I would let my mind settle on the lies that Satan fed me as I examined my body versus every other girls'. I allowed the filter through which I saw myself to be skewed by thoughts of imperfection. I looked in the mirror and saw myself as all of the things Satan told me. Chunky. Ugly. Imperfect. Some of the best guidance I received in gaining confidence was to write down the lies I listened to. Every single one. I did, easily. Then, she told me to find truth in scripture to combat the lies. Every single one. I did, not so easily. It was so much easier to believe the bad than the good. No matter how hard it was, though, truth is truth and lies are lies. Truth is what God speaks to us, words that actually carry weight and meaning. Truth like, I am "his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand" (Ephesians 2:10), crafted by a maker who hand picked every single feature of me and who knew my name when I was in the womb. He molded me with love and gentle care. He picked out every little thing about me: my nose, my curly hair, my butt chin. All of it, beautiful. Yet all of it is imperfect one way or another, and that is ok. My hair will be frizzy sometimes, my nose will look big in certain pictures, and little girls at after-school programs will call my chin a "booty chin" (true story). That is how God wants it to be because his strength is made more evident in that imperfection when we choose to see it through a filter of his truth and fight the lies. When we combat the lies about our imperfect bodies, we glorify God because we choose how he sees us instead of how Satan wants us to think he sees us. The issue is, we have to change our filters to where that is the filter we consistently use when we face our reflection. Ultimately, the thigh gaps and tight tummies will go away leaving us unsatisfied. How can we ever be unfulfilled when we filter the way we look at ourselves and remember that a holy God creatively and uniquely picked everything about you and saw it all, bumps, lumps, freckles, and frizz, as truly good?