Every time she looked in the mirror, something just wasn’t good enough. You would never guess this, because she was in great shape. She did yoga every morning; she ate the right food. She was in the best shape of her life, but inside, she felt like a bag of worthless potatoes. It didn’t strike her until later on, after much frustrated prayer, that something was wrong. In her heart, all the exercise, all the nutrition and all the water were tools she used to wage a war against her body—this monstrosity that could only appease the fickle taste of all men and women if it fit perfectly into a size 7. It wasn’t until God whispered into her sensitive heart that she belonged to Him, and Him alone, and that all this work to please the public was going straight down the drain, that a chain broke within her. Something needed to change, and it wasn’t her body, though that would inevitably follow. It was her identity.

This girl is not a fictional character. She was me, a year ago. The thought of escape was heavy on my heart—I did not want to be me, and I was fighting like a maniac, trying to accomplish this mountainous goal. Do you know how impossible it is to get away from yourself? It’s like trying to cut a limb from a starfish—it will just keep coming back. Two ways exist for you to seek refuge from yourself—close your heart down, or open it up wide. Initially, I chose the former, but that way leads to death, I soon found out.

When I was younger, my primary source of identity hinged on how appealing I happened to look that day. Every day was like a gamble, because there was no telling what might happen to my eyeliner. The faulty part of this thinking lies in the fact that your identity depends on what others say about you, and not the One whose opinion matters the most. The biggest realization you can come to is knowing that who you are is rooted in God alone, and His vision of who you are, who He created you as. Cultural ideas of beauty come and go. Perfectly shaped eyebrows last about a week, if you’re lucky. Physical strength and toned arms count for nothing when you’re in a dark room, and the only thing you can do is pray. When you have the
choice to give yourself to a man who does not love you, or the choice to walk out that door, the beautiful tone of your skin holds no swaying power whatsoever. It’s when the lights have all turned out, and you’re all alone, that your true identity surfaces like a night owl pushing his huge eyes awake. Here, where no one can sit in judgment at how well you fit their standards, where you can’t even see your own body, the truth becomes inescapable.

Magazines catering to the fashion-conscious woman may push the ideal that the female identity connects solely to her looks. This explains only one side of identity, leaving the inward self dry and dead. There’s a trend going on for women today: being sexually open and free. To be pleasing and acceptable to all. Models and people pose half-naked on runways and in magazines. The message is that your body and your mind are for public approval and judgment. The are not. They belong to God, even after marriage, even if we’ve given ourselves to unworthy men. I used to ask myself if I was good enough for the world. Not until I began looking to God for my identity did life take on a completely different hue.

It’s important to know that, as women, we are His beautiful workmanship. Who we are has everything to do with who God says we are. When every step of our lives revolves around Him, something beautiful opens up—His Kingdom, His love and true life, which begins here and continues past the end of the body. We need to know, above all else, that we are His, and not our own. Our appearance and our hearts are intertwined—a beautiful gift to us, and to one who knows how to handle immense good.

Your heart is more sensitive than you think or try to hide. Your heart may be lost to yourself, hardened and almost dead. But it is never lost to God. The goal of a healthy identity lies in cultivating a more vivid sense of God fully involved in our lives, as opposed to catering to the sense of aloneness and independence from Him. A thousand factors vie for position as the main source for our identity—accomplishments, awards, failures, how much attention we get from guys, what our boyfriend thinks of us. But unless that role is held squarely in the hands of God, we are bound to experience a crumbling when that source of identity passes away.

My primary source of identity used to hinge on how appealing I happened to look that day. Can you imagine how unstable I was? Picture this: I’m all made up, and I find out it’s windy outside. I feel like the entire world has waged a war against my life! The passage of time itself simply meant in three hours, I would need immediate access to a bathroom and a full-length mirror. Any disgusted or disapproving glance from a stranger carried volumes of self-hatred to be dealt with at home, in the comfort of my journal. I was completely open to attack, and had no idea—until I realized how sensitive I was, and how incredibly exhausting my chosen lifestyle had become. Eventually I decided to stop giving in to all of that. I wanted something deeper, impervious to attack or decay—something eternal.