Beauty in Christ

Defeating the ‘Try Harder’ Mindset In Order to Recover

June 20, 2018 By beautyinchrist Leave a Comment

‘Try harder.’ That was always on my mind when I was running, lifting, jumping, bicycling. If I didn’t feel semi-terrible or always out of breath, I wasn’t trying hard enough. That mindset is HARD to get rid of; but I’m not saying we need to TOTALLY get rid of it. My mind definitely had to be renewed and changed to want to try harder for recovery, than trying harder to define myself by athleticism or how ‘strong’ or fast I was.

It’s about resting. It’s about waiting on the Lord. It’s about remembering that my identity is not in the workouts I do or in the work I do. I love to work. I love moving. I love all of those things, but my body is finite. I’m not infinite in my strength, and I NEED rest.

You need rest too if you’re reading this. There is bondage in thinking that it ALL rests on you, in thinking that you HAVE to be enough, you have to be sufficient, you have to try the hardest so you can be a worth while human being.

This is one huge lesson I’ve been learning lately. If there is not liberty and freedom and worship in the way I’m working out and moving that is not the Spirit of the Lord. 2 Corinthians 3:17 says, ‘Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.’

It can be hard to discern sometimes, because it seems like trying harder isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but when it becomes an obsession it is. It’s an idol. It starts to consume me. It starts to become the center of my life. And I can’t stop to see any of the beauty around me and appreciate God’s precious gift of rest, peace, quiet.

There is freedom in walking beside a still river, listening to the gentle sound of the ripple, meditating on the perfect peace Jesus, the Prince of Peace, came to bring, not this continuous striving to make ourselves better, because He knew we couldn’t make ourselves better by ourselves.

He knew He could.

I have to ask myself.

‘Are you believing that Jesus is sufficient for these things?’

‘Is the blood of Jesus MORE than enough to cover all your unworthiness or are you trying 2z2zźzz2

”Are you trying to make yourself a good person when there is none good, no not one? Are you trusting the PERFECT righteousness of Christ that covers you, the blood that washes away your sins, your failures, your insufficiencies?’

The biggest reminder here is, ‘Who are you looking at?’ Yourself? You aren’t perfect, but Jesus is.

He is worthy. And His worthiness has made you redeemed, washed, cleansed, whole.

His blood has made me a new creature.

It’s Jesus who is the reason. Jesus who is my hope. Jesus who is my worth.

Not my:

Social Media

Athletic Abilities

Even My Relationships (because those are imperfect)

My Blog

My Cooking or Baking

(These are all things that I love, but I can’t try HARDER at these just to make my life worthwhile or worth living. I get to do these things because God made me and do them for Jesus who redeemed me and called me out of darkness, but I don’t need to feel this great burden of being enough or trying hard enough, because Jesus is ALREADY sufficient.)

I’m preaching to myself, because honestly, y’all, I’ve been struggling with this. I’ve been wanting to get it all right. I’ve been wanting not to mess up in my relationships. I’ve been wanting to work hard enough, be a good ‘enough’ example of recovery, and I keep seeing that I’m depending on ‘me.’

And then God’s Word hit me again right between the eyes from 2 Corinthians 3:5, ‘Not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything as coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God,’

I’ve been looking at it as the sufficiency coming from me, and I keep falling short.

Jesus doesn’t fall short.

Human beings always will.

God knew that. He sent His Son Jesus, the second person in the Godhead to make it possible for us to stop trying to bear that hopeless burden of being sufficient enough, of covering all our guilt, of doing away with our sin ourselves, because He knew we couldn’t.

That’s why Jesus came, and that’s what I’m preaching to myself today.

If any of you needed to hear this too, I pray that it goes to the core of your heart and encourages you to look to Jesus today.

Do you ever struggle with the ‘I just need to try harder’ because it depends on me mindset?

How have you learned to rest more in Christ Jesus and His work in you?

What I”ve Learned About the Benefit of SHORT Workouts

June 18, 2018 By beautyinchrist 1 Comment

I used to ALWAYS go for workouts longer than an hour, because I always wanted to burn the max amount of calories possible, but it was also so wearing on my body, because I did it 6 days out of 7, almost without fail. My life revolved around workouts. I didn’t like the idea of short workouts at all, because I thought of them as ‘not enough’ or ‘not legitimate’ if it wasn’t over 30 minutes.

God has totally changed my heart here, and I wanted to share it with you.

I was really cocky about how I did the long hard workouts, how ‘strong’ I thought I was, but mentally, emotionally, and even physically my body was breaking down more than it was getting stronger. This past year I really finally felt the effects of that, and they weren’t good.

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Truly Learning to See My Body As Jesus Sees Me

June 13, 2018 By beautyinchrist 1 Comment

It has taken me a LONG time to appreciate the way God made me, but recovery has taught me so much about the intricacy and the complexity of the body God has given each of us. For about 10 years, I couldn’t see myself as Jesus sees me, as the love of God in Christ sees me despite all my wrinkles and flaws and sin issues that I have. All I could see is what I saw on the outside and what I wanted on the outside, and the two didn’t compute. I hated mirrors, because I would just stand in front of them and criticize what I saw. Why? I was basing my beauty on what the world says or what the culture defines as beauty. And that’s a VERRYYY narrow slot. God made variety. He loves variety. He makes trees and flowers and animals of all different sizes, shapes, colors, personalities, and if you just take a glance around you at God’s created people and creatures you will see that not one person is alike.

Now I love the way God made me. I love the way Jesus sees me, because it blows me away. It’s something I can’t logically explain to you. I wouldn’t say ‘I adore my body’, because i don’t, but I love how God made me unique just like He made every single person who reads this unique and different.

That’s why I love the ‘Health At Every Size Movement.’ Why? It promotes being healthy at different sizes. You don’t have to look like the typical athletic person that comes into your mind when you think ‘healthy’ or fit.

I noticed this when I went to CrossFit the other day. There were so many different people there. People who were taller and shorter than me. People who were all different shapes, and I didn’t think about all our different shapes. I was just amazed at the:

Determination
Smiles
Encouragement
Motivation

From everybody, and those have nothing to do with looks.

Learning to see your body in the way Jesus sees you in His unconditional love. #christian…

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Last night we were reading John 16 as a family, and something that struck me and wrapped me up in a warmth, wonder, and awe was this verse from John 16:27, ‘No, the Father himself loves you because you have loved me and have believed that I came from God. ‘

Think about the love of God the Father to send His Son Jesus down to earth for people who are weak and didn’t even want Him to save them. I didn’t want Him to save me before He drew me. But then He drew me by that love. It’s that love that isn’t conditional on what you look like, how successful you are, how tall you are, how much money you make, or how many blog views you get. It’s that love that looked past all the ugliness of sin and said that He would deliver His only Beloved Son for sinners.

This makes my heart sing. How could He love me? Why?

Me with all the brokenness of my past?

Me with all the anger and jealousy over not having a body that I so desperately wanted?

Me who had courted a HUGE sense of pride over my ‘athleticism’ which was really an unhealthy obsession with exercise?

Me who has spent YEARS focused on my outward appearance?

Me who has based beauty and worth on outward appearances of myself and others?

Me who has selfishly coveted other people’s bodies?

Why me Lord? And I can’t tell you why. I do know that it gives Him so much glory, because it’s not anything in me that could have ever merited His love. That’s what has caused me to love the way God made me, to spend less time in front of the mirror, to meditate more on the love of God that was unconditional on anything you or I could do.

It’s worth gaining that weight that makes you feel:

Soft and Healthy

Alive and Optimistic

Not Constantly Hungry but Nourished

I have to say that the years of gaining weight were HARD. I hated the scale. I hated most of my clothing, but Jesus kept taking my eyes and directing them back towards Him, because He is my worth. My size isn’t my worth. His blood and righteousness. His mercy and grace. His fullness and joy are my worth and the reason I can smile every day.

My size is going to change. It’s going to change and fluctuate my whole life, but Jesus doesn’t change.

I want you to know:

Seeing Yourself the way Jesus sees us When He Draws Us is THE GREATEST treasure of recovery. – It takes away the pressure of having to look a certain way or have a certain fitness routine that fits in with other people.

It takes time. It takes heart work. It takes reading about Jesus and knowing His love in a deeper fuller way, but it is worth every single moment of work, every single step.

How have you come to see yourself as Jesus sees you?

Is it hard for you to see yourself as Jesus sees you? How do you usually view the body you have?

The Difference Between Food Allergies and Food Restriction

June 8, 2018 By beautyinchrist 2 Comments

Recovery is not a formula. I repeat. ‘It’s not a formula.’ You don’t have to eat burgers to validate the fact that you’re in recovery. If whole milk yogurt or peanut butter makes your stomach hurt, you don’t need to make yourself miserable in order to prove that you’re recovering by eating them. Since I’ve been on Instagram for about 3 years now, I’ve seen one trend that can be helpful or unhelpful in the recovery community. Often if someone is in recovery, we kind of think that we all need to be overcoming the same fears by eating that exact same food, but what if you have allergies to it? What if your stomach needs some healing before it can endure all of that kind of food? That’s why I wanted to do this podcast with my dear friend Jamie about being sensitive to other’s food allergies without instantly assuming these are forms of restriction.

Recovery can be reduced to a formula, but that doesn’t make it fun. You could tell everyone to just eat all kinds of food. That doesn’t make it individual. That makes it hard and stressful. Just because someone does or doesn’t eat a certain food in recovery doesn’t mean that they are for sure recovered.

Recovery for me looks different from you. Recovery starts in our mentality. It starts in the way that you and I view food. Do we view food as an enemy or a friend? Do we make up allergies to cover up restriction and our bodies are starving? Or do we have legitimate allergies?

That’s why I’m sharing Jamie’s story with you. Jamie is a HARD core recovery warrior, but this girl has had so many hard times with allergies and stomach issues in recovery that she isn’t able to always eat food that she wants to eat.

Recovery for me means that I don’t make myself eat salads every day.

Recovery for some people means that they don’t feel bad about not wanting to eat fast foods or icecream because they’d rather have a giant bowl of salad with all the nuts and dressing made with oils and cheese on top.

Recovery for others means that they walk.

Recovery for others means that they run a bit during recovery.

But at the base what does recovery mean? It means less obsession with food and exercise. That’s why I wanted to bring Jamie, my dear friend, recovery warrior INSPIRATION, and a woman who has walked her own individual recovery journey with such grace.

You see. Jamie is talking about walking recovery with food intolerances, real intolerances, finding those foods that many might eat in recovery, but they genuinely make her body unhappy.

And that’s what recovery is not about. It’s not about making your body unhappy. For me I had to get over fears of certain foods, and Jamie did too, but as she’s worked through those things she’s realized that some of the popular recovery foods that are often advocated for and are very delicious aren’t ones that her body can handle like:

Peanut butter

Bananas

Whole Milk Yogurt

So Jamie and I talked from this perspective:

Why It’s Important to Find Out What Makes your Body Happy in Recovery

Not Getting Sucked into Just Following the Trends With Recovery

Working on Your Mindset around Food (Maybe you don’t fear whole milk yogurt or peanut butter, but your body doesn’t love it so you do dairy free yogurt or almond butter)

Why Recovery is about MORE than Being Able to Eat Certain Foods

Discerning between Genuine Food Allergies, Digestive Issues from Restriction, and Food Fears

Not Being Judgmental about Other’s Recovery Journeys But Asking Genuine Kind Questions About It

These are most definitely tricky waters, and I don’t want to say that we have it all figured out, but Jamie reminded me that we need to be sensitive and understanding towards others in recovery. Just because someone can’t eat dairy doesn’t mean that they’re restricting it; you could ask them about it gently if you want, but don’t jump to the conclusion that they are.

One thing that Jamie said that really stood out to me in the whole podcast is that we need to start in on our own recovery first and deal with our own ‘logs in the eyes’ and be so slow to race to a conclusion about someone else.

I’m not here to claim that I know how to do recovery perfectly, or that I’m going to tell you how to do it, because I can’t!

But I’m thankful that Jamie was willing to share her journey with recovery, food allergies, and learning to find freedom in the midst of it all.

The biggest lesson I took away? We should be doing recovery for Jesus, and not to please other people, and that will keep us on the right track!

Have you had food allergies and intolerances you’ve had to deal with in recovery? How do you do that and keep pursuing food freedom?

Featured Blog Posts

Beauty In Christ - The Book

Defeating the ‘Try Harder’ Mindset In Order to Recover

What I”ve Learned About the Benefit of SHORT Workouts

Truly Learning to See My Body As Jesus Sees Me

The Difference Between Food Allergies and Food Restriction

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