Does God Has Chicken Legs Too?

I hated looking in the mirror at my miserably skinny legs when I was a child. I felt incredibly self-conscious about them, but nothing I could do would improve what healthy diet and the third world genes of my parents had given me. I had "chicken legs" so badly that I earned the nickname "KFC". Not only did I hate the mirror's truthful reflection of my legs, but I found fault with most of the rest of the image my mirror presented as well. I would have given anything to have exchanged my dark locks for golden blond hair like my barbie doll, or my caramel skin for the porcelain-white skin of my friends. As a preteen, I became self-conscious about my ethnic nose, which had grown ahead of the rest of my body. By my teens, I added to my ever-growing list of insecurities my full cheeks, my figure (or the lack thereof), my strength of personality, and my intellect. If I could have, I would have waved a magic wand over myself in order to become a sweet, perky, petite, five-foot-tall, blond chick with a tiny little nose--someone quiet who didn't stand out. In the absence of the existence of such a wand, a tall, slender, ethnic girl with a loud voice, waist-length, wavy, dark hair, and an outspoken streak the size of Texas stared back at me defiantly from my mirror.

Somewhere between childhood and young adulthood, many of us women begin to believe the lies that magazines, diet-product companies, peers, and billboards sell, wounding lies about beauty and worth that penetrate to the core of who we are. After we grow up, we continue to compare ourselves to our friends, to our parents, to air-brushed images, to anything, really, that perpetuates the the insecurities that we have developed during our growing-up years. Criticizing ourselves becomes a common denominator in conversations in our heads and between our friends.

By the time I was a wife end a mother, the insecurities of my childhood had become so native that I did not even recognize them as being foreign until, at twenty-six, I began to see the same characteristics that I had found so objectionable in myself, in my daughters. In them, however, I saw beauty, not flaw. Jordan has my ethnic nose and my tan skin. Meryl owns my slender legs, and my dark hair. Seeing bits of myself in my girls shone light on what I had believed about myself-- lies that I did not want to pass on. And so, my search to understand truth to teach myself and Jordan, Meryl, and later Micah Jade began.

I'm a unapologetic, hard-core Christian, so the search for truth should always send me straight to the Bible ( which also means that I should not have let myself be let astray a little at a time by so many contrary ideas). The Bible is my source for truth that transcends time and location, my anchor in the ever-changing waves of culture. What I found there as I researched was truth I already knew; but I suppose there is a huge difference between knowing truth and believing it in a way that you live it out. These are the things I began to teach my girls from the time Jordan was three and Meryl was eighteen months old, truths that have begun to form the way they see themselves and to reform the way I see myself.

1. You are made in the image of God; you are his masterpiece. At the beginning of time, God created everything we see, the sun and the moon, the land and the water, the plants and the animals, and most importantly, human-kind. Where the rest of creation was made from the imagination of God, man and woman were made to reflect his image. Everything God made, he pronounced as "good". God has not made any two women are exactly alike; we have different shapes and skin colors and hair colors, different noses and eyes and heights. We are each unique and made in a way that reflects unique aspects of the beauty and creativity of God. Each of our bodies is God's individual work of art, perfect apart from the approval of our own eyes or the eyes of our fellow creatures. We are each beautiful because we are made by God.

2. God's good work extends not only to our bodies, but also to our inner person. Psalm 139 talks about how God knows each of us. He knows what we think and what we will say before we speak it because he "created our inmost being"--our personality or our spirit--whether we are creative or concrete, number or word-oriented, sensitive or strong. Everything that we naturally are as women was carefully made by God on purpose. Whether we are loud or quiet, melancholy or charismatic, chiefs or Indians by nature, our inmost being is God's work, and he calls all his workmanship "good". (I don't mean that we can excuse bad behavior by personality, just that God made our personalities too.)

3. Man looks at the outward appearance, but God looks at the heart. God has made our physical selves beautiful in his sight, but what really matters more than our bodies is what is inside our hearts. We post-modern, Western humans put far too much importance on physical beauty, on what our peers think of us and how we come across, while God places prime importance on what is inside our hearts. Physical beauty cannot mask ugliness inside, nor can what society sees as "ugliness" mask true inner beauty. God sees to the hearts of each of us. Growing in kindness is far more important than perfect hair,new dresses, and the right toenail polish. Who we are becoming on the inside is infinitely more important than external beauty, which necessarily fades with the passing of time.

4. If you are a Christian, you are God's house, so take care of yourself. By having faith in Jesus, Christians trust that God takes away the wrong things that we do so that we can have a close relationship with God. We believe that the Spirit of God is with us everywhere we go. By believing and trusting in Him, we become his "temple". As Christians, every bit of us belongs to God, so we have to take care of ourselves like we would take care of his house. This means that we don't spend time in self-destructive behaviors of any sort because when we tear down ourselves, we tear down the dwelling place of God. We don't spend time around others who would tear us down or physically harm us. We eat healthy food and exercise in good stewardship of our bodies so that we can spread God's love on earth for as long as God chooses to give us life here. We don't neglect our physical selves, but show our bodies appropriate care. Being the temple of God is a privilege, and we should treat ourselves with respect due to the residence of the Spirit of God

For a large middle chunk of my life, I believed powerful lies that held me captive, but I will not live in the shadows of them any longer, nor will I pass them on to the ones I love. Lies that are deep inside us can not be fought by the latest self-esteem curriculum, or by the changing currents in psychology reflected in the magazines. No, deep and wide and ingrained lies are not fought and destroyed except by the power of knowing Truth, truth that is older than time, truth that brings freedom and joy to places where there was once pain and slavery.

I teach my girls the truth in the hope that, long before they are thirty-two, they will see themselves as I am beginning to see myself. I am beautiful, not because I fit a societal norm of beauty in either the USA or Oz, not because I have had my stretch marks or wrinkles or breasts fixed (I haven't), not because my husband thinks I am sexy (he does). I am beautiful because I am made in God's image, because I am one of God's unique masterpieces as a woman. I will never be sweet and, though I am at peace, I am rarely quiet, but God intends the force and honesty that he created in me for his good purposes; somehow, God needs all types of personalities, both soft and strong. I will pay attention to who I am becoming on the inside because that is more important to God that physical beauty, which fades with time. I will take care of my physical self like I am taking care of God's property (which I am), so that I can enjoy God's dwelling with me for as long as I am around on earth.

My legs aren't any thicker from the appropriating and teaching of all this truth, but between truth and cycling, on most days I'm coming to terms with them. I have really begun to believe that God has created all of me to reflect His image, even my legs, and so, I have reluctantly concluded that God must have chicken legs too.

Here are my Bible references, in case anyone is interested--

1, Genesis 1: 26-27, 31 ²⁶ Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground." ²⁷ So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. ³¹ God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day.

2. Psalm 139: 1-4, 13-16 ¹ O LORD, you have searched me and you know me. ² You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. ³ You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways. ⁴ Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely, O LORD. ¹³ For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb. ¹⁴ I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. ¹⁵ My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place.When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, ¹⁶ your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.

3. 1 Samuel 16:7 The LORD does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.

4. 1 Cor 6:19-20 ¹⁹Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; ²⁰you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body.