As I have traveled along this journey of grief this past year, each step I have taken has brought me to a new and different place. It seems as though that person who started down this path is no longer here, but in her place is a different person. I am a woman who has been stripped away of everything that is not real, there is no longer that pseudo personality on the outside with that little girl longing to be free on the inside. It’s almost as if the Lord has taken me and has unwrapped me, leaving me vulnerable and exposed, that He has removed the veil of shame, of guilt and fear and He has replaced it with glory, innocence and love. There is a new person who has evolved as I have met daily with my Lord, looking to Him for strength, drawing from Him what is necessary for me to take another step, basking in His grace and mercy so I can get out of bed each day and put my feet on the floor, pressing into the shelter of the Most High so I can keep moving forward and make it through another day, hiding beneath the shadow of His wings so I can take another breath into my lungs and breathe in the goodness of life. I have become undone and for the first time in my life, I feel free, free from the bondage of self.
Genesis 1:31 says, “God saw all that He had made, and it was very good.” When God created the heavens and the earth, when God created man and woman, He called it all “very good.” How many times have I looked in the mirror and not liked what I have seen? I look back on that younger me with her beautiful athletic size 3 body, and I remember taped to the mirror were ten things I was told to tell myself each day. I was supposed to look in the mirror and say to myself, “You, Melody, are completely lovable, acceptable, beautiful, captivating, desirable, magnificent, pleasing, flawless, wanted, confident and perfect.” Even though that young woman staring back at me had a very difficult time believing the words that were spoken, I was told by the woman who gave me the list that if I looked at myself and said those things to myself out loud every day, eventually I would come to believe it. How interesting that at the time, on the outside, I was able to win a bathing suit contest, but on the inside, I loathed who I was and I found it difficult to look in the mirror and like who I was, but now that I am quite a few sizes bigger, there are lots of wrinkles and other signs of aging, as I look in the mirror, I have finally become comfortable with who I am and I have come to believe that the woman God made is very good and I actually have come to like the woman in the mirror staring back at me.
As I think about that younger woman who was so full of fear, so shame based, so riddled with self-doubt and self-loathing, I realize I have come a very long way. John Bradshaw in his book, “Healing the Shame that Binds You,” said, “True love heals and affects spiritual growth. If we do not grow because of someone else’s love, it’s generally because it is a counterfeit form of love.” How many of us were raised with counterfeit, conditional, shallow and unhealthy love? That’s not true love at all, and as a matter of fact there is only One who can love us, there is only One who is real and there is only One who has designed me to be the image bearer of my Creator. And one day, all the walls I had built, all the protective barriers I had installed, all of the bricks I had laid were demolished, and what is left is His glory, His image, His majesty, His beauty and the unveiled face of our Lord Jesus Christ and that person is me.
– Melody
