Sex After Baby Part 6: Self Worth

As the family hustled about the house this morning, getting ready for the day, I noticed my 5y/o was MIA. This wasn’t too abnormal, but usually when she disappears from sight I can at least hear her. I peeked my head in a couple rooms until I finally found her behind the closed bathroom door. She stood at the sink, a puddle of water around her feet, furiously brushing her dripping hair. 

“Mama, if I brush it hard enough do you think it will dry straight?”

It broke my heart. My daughter has been blessed with long, beautiful, light brown, curly hair. 

But she doesn’t see it like that. 

She sees her friends that have pin straight hair and the princesses on tv with long, flowing, straight hair. 

I broke the news to her as gently as I could. No, her hair would not remain straight just because she wet it and brushed it. 

I then reminded her that when God was thinking of how to put a Vivianne together in Heaven he decided she needed curly hair. No other hair would look right on a Vivianne. It was HER hair. And her hair was curly. 

She seemed half satisfied with that answer and finished getting ready for school. 

But it made me stop to think: do I talk to myself like that? Do I remind myself that every aspect of my body was put together for the glory of God? 

Do you remind yourself of that? 

I have been obsessing lately about my emerging double chin. I am the heaviest I have ever been in my life and am uncomfortable. I don’t want to make excuses or look at someone to blame. It's been a hard year and I have not been making my health a priority. 

There are other parts of my body that changed after kids, too. My belly is no longer firm and flat, my breasts hang and my nipples look down at the floor. That coupled with the fact that I just do not have the time or energy after caring for everyone else all day to care for myself properly means I just don’t like who I am anymore. 

Its hard to want to have sex when you just don’t feel sexy. 

I look at pictures of myself 10 years ago and wish I looked like that again. I miss the old me, but this feeling of “if only” is nothing new.

I have always had these issues, even when I weighed 60 pounds less. If only my nose wasn’t so big. If only my thighs were thinner. If only my hair wasn’t so thick. 

I’ve never been totally satisfied with how I look. 

So today I asked myself this question: If I cannot love and be at peace with my body today, what will change with weight loss, other than the number on the scale? 

I cannot fix my issues with self worth by trying to look a certain way. I cannot feel better about myself when I curse the parts of my body I dislike. 

I cannot be content, until I truly understand and embrace who I am and what I am worth. 

Every human has a desire to feel important. The world teaches us to use comparison as one of the methods to meet this need. Comparison makes us feel better. We look at the shortcomings of others and compare them to our own virtues and it makes us feel important. Comparison says I am better than you because _______.

 Ultimately that comparison fails, because it was birthed through shallowness and malcontent. It fails because the state of mind that goes one way also goes the other. We compare the best in other people to our worst traits. We look at what someone else has and wish it was ours. 

In doing so we are breaking two pretty clear commandments that God asked us to follow. 

The first is: Have No Other gods Before Me. Exodus 20:3. 

When we obsess about our looks, when it is the only thing on our minds. When we can’t think about anything else, that is what is getting our worship. It is what has become our god. 

Even if you hate yourself, you can still be your own god. Your desire to look better and feel important is your god. 

The second one is the tenth commandment: You shall not covet. 

To covet means to desire. To long for. It's not one of the ten commandments that we focus on. We live in a material world of abundance and often when we see something our neighbor has our first thought is “I want that, too”. 

Among the many things we can covet are the looks of others. We wish we had their genetics. Their hair. Their butt. Their eyes. 

We compare ourselves to other people and take our eyes off of our first priority.

Comparison is a distraction that keeps us from our true purpose.

1 Peter 3 begins as an instruction to wives. This chapter is often misinterpreted and hard to grasp. I plan on going deeper into it in my next post, so if you have a hard time with it please stick with me. 

1 Peter 3:3-6 says: Your beauty should not come from outward adornment, such as braided hair or gold jewelry or fine clothes, but from the inner disposition of your heart, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is precious in God’s sight. For this is how the holy women of the past adorned themselves. They put their hope in God and were submissive to their husbands, just as Sarah obeyed Abraham and called him lord. And you are her children if you do what is right and refuse to give way to fear.

If you got caught up on that word “submit”, then I ask you again, stick with me. I know it has been misused and is very unpopular to even say that these days, but I am going to thoroughly go through that topic in my next post.  

Today, though, we are focusing on the beauty part. You should not worry about being beautiful from your outward appearance, but from what is inside. 

I do not believe this means to neglect your body. On the contrary I believe that part of serving God and our husbands is to take care of ourselves and look presentable. However, we do not prioritize our outward appearance above the state of our hearts. 

One final thought to leave you with. In Psalms 139 David proclaims: 

For you created my inmost being;

    you knit me together in my mother’s womb.

I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;

David acknowledged what a masterpiece his body, mind, and spirit were. He knew God created every little detail in his body. He knew how miraculous and wonderful his entire being was. 

The same is true of you. You are a masterpiece so it's time you stop disrespecting your creator by talk down on and trashing his creation. 

I have just one more thing for you. In the link below you will find a printable worksheet that will help you dig a little deeper into how you truly feel about yourself and start discovering how God sees you. If you don’t have a printer at home no worries! You can still work off the document with a piece of paper.

Click HERE!