Inner dialog: The cycle of dysfunction

I wasn't going to continue on my last post, but my post about raising my daughter led to a wonderful long conversation with my grandmother.  A conversation that shed some more light into the things I was trying to communicate in the previous post.

I sounded pretty terrified and insecure in my previous post, and all those things I said were true, sometimes are still true.  But what I realized is how much God has healed me from so much of that fear.  It used to be, if anyone ever paid me a compliment, I quickly pass it off to having pulled off a fun outfit.  All my confidence and beauty rested in how thin I was and how great my outfit was; my superficial appearance.  My acceptance never went any deeper than how I appeared to others.  I say with confidence now, how God has used the last couple years to slowly reveal my inner self to me in a way that I see and love because it is the me he has transformed.  I now believe that I am lovable even on my bad days, (sometimes believing that is still really hard), but that I still deserve love because God has claimed me and has transformed me.  My worth doesn't come from how much I get done, how great my kids behave, or my fantastic closet, though that is my favorite part.  I am the same me on good and bad days.  I am normal.  I am loved.  I am a creation designed by the creator.  I won't ever be anybody else, and I am more OK with that than ever before.  I like me now.  I'm still not proud of my behavior most days, but I understand that mistakes are a part of life, and God is still working in me.  I still don't shower for days, yell at my kids when I am tired and immediately regret it.  I waste days on TV sometimes and get down on myself for not being more than I want to be.  I am proud, and selfish, and angry still, but I am also forgiven, redeemed, selfless, and giving too.  I am a strong combination of good and broken.  I am human.  But I am me, and I kind of like me, because God has placed good in me, he has placed his Spirit in me.

I would like to pass that Spirit filled confidence onto my daughter.  I would like her to see in me a woman who seeks God in all she does.  A woman who tries to love others as best she can.  A mom who did her best and rejoiced over her children.  I would like her to see a REAL woman who accepts who she is and lives her life to God's glory.  I want to give her that.

What I don't want to give her is a negative inner dialog.  I don't want the bad things I say about myself to be her guidelines for what a woman should be.  If she hears me always angrily calling myself fat, than she will understand that 1. her mom doesn't like herself, and 2. that the measurement for fat, is the weight her mother is at and apparently that is a bad thing.  Now I'm not overweight, but if she hears me saying I'm fat, than she must remain thinner than me to NOT be fat And if I don't like myself, what does that say to the child who looks up to me?  This is very confusing to a child who thinks the world of her mom, the person who outweighs everyone else on the planet.  No one is better than mom, at least for awhile. And what does that say, when your favorite person doesn't like herself?  Cuts herself down, and disregards the child's compliments that they are beautiful?

If someone pays me a compliment, and my immediate response is, "Oh no, I don't have any make up on, my hair is a mess and I'm in sweats.  I look terrible."  This inadvertently communicates to her that in order to be beautiful, I need to be put together.  I need make up, I need my hair done and I need to dressed in a fun get up.

Why are so many of us women are always cutting ourselves down so easily?  We are so incredibly harsh on ourselves.  Why is it so impossible to see the beauty in ourselves?  Because the thing is, we are the measuring stick by which our children will understanding beauty and confidence and self acceptance.  In the way we talk about ourselves, we are giving them their inner dialog.

So, my children will never hear me call myself fat.  EVER.  Even if I feel it, I have never said these words in front of them.  One time Big heard me say, "oh man these jeans are getting tight, I have put on some weight."  His immediate response was, "Mom you are NOT FAT!"  I said without hesitation, "You are right, I am not fat, however, I probably shouldn't be eating two desserts a day and sneaking one as a snack.  It's not healthy, and not fitting in my jeans is a good indicator that I should stop."

My children won't ever hear me criticize myself in a photo.  Doesn't matter if the camera added 10lbs, or if it was a bad angle, the photo was there to capture a memory. I don't want them hearing me care more about my looks and cutting myself down, than I do about the fun moment that photo captured.

When I get dressed up to go out, I have decided to use the word fun when asking how an outfit works.  "Is this outfit fun?  Does it match?  Would different shoes be better?"  This may sound really silly, but the last thing I want to hear or have them understand is that the outfit makes me beautiful.  The outfit may be beautiful, I may be beautiful in it, but what I am wearing, in the end does not make or break me.  The beauty is in my confidence.  The beauty is in how I treat people.  The beauty is in how love lives in my life.

I try to take captive every negative thought about my looks before they leave my mouth.  This way, in every way possible, they don't have a mother who cares most about the way she doesn't like they way she looks.  However, in my behavior, my children always hear my repentance and prayer for God's strength to do better, so that there is more love in our house than anger or frustration.  I want the comments they hear me say about myself always to reflect my character, not my looks.  I hope they understand in this, that character and spirit are far more important to work on than the way we look.  (with all obvious health issues aside, this is purely cosmetic talk here.)

You may think all of this is a bit over the top, but I don't care.  For as long as I can remember, I only had negative inner dialog.  Do you know how hard it is to change your entire mindset?  It's taken me awhile, and I would like to save my daughter as much of that pain as possible.  Your inner dialog about yourself COMPLETELY effects the way you interact with other people.  Your partner.  Your family.  Your co-workers.  Your friends.  Your neighbors.  And the way we see ourselves, talk about ourselves, becomes our children inner dialog, their frame work of how to understand who they are.

Don't get me wrong, I still struggle with some of these things.  It's hard to live one way your entire life, and then try to think completely different.  It takes time, but God is faithful, and he has worked miracles in my heart already in this.

God is bigger than all of this, and heals every kind of pain and issue, but can't we participate in ending the cycle?  Helping give them a healthy self awareness?  A love for themselves because they are created by God?  This is what I want to give my daughter.  I used be very afraid that I couldn't overcome my own demons and create a healthy inner dialog for myself to ensure that I could give her one too.  But God is good, and he has done wonders in the dark places of my head.

And in the end, when I read this, its not even at all about the way we look.  It's about who we are.  .