When I look at pictures of Andrea Ivanova I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. This 22-year-old woman from Bulgaria was dissatisfied with her pretty looks. She particularly hated her lips, which she believed weren’t big enough. So she paid a doctor more than $3,000 to have a series of “hyaluronic acid lip injections” – at least twenty of them. Now she looks freakish, as though she’s wearing a pair of those giant wax lips kids used to play with at Halloween. Her lips are so bulging that she can no longer close them. They look like two half-folded pink pillows, one on top of the other.
But Andrea is happier with her lips now. So I guess “it’s a good thing.” Yet, I suspect that part of what’s motivating her is the praise she’s receiving from her Instagram followers. Yes, she claims to have 22,000 Instagram fans who are praising her every time she posts a photo after each injection. And she plans to get more. “Bigger is better,” one admirer wrote her. But she doesn’t seem to know where to stop. I wonder how many of her admirers are willing to undergo the same cosmetic treatments.
But Andrea is hardly alone in her dissatisfaction with the looks God gave her. Millions of people subject themselves to all sorts of body modifications. Some of these are so extreme that they turn them into sideshow freaks. Far too many normal, good-looking people mar their bodies by turning them into some creepy idea of beauty.
Yet I can’t criticize any of these people. Just like them, I too have been thoroughly dissatisfied with my appearance. “If only I were taller, better-proportioned, and had different coloring,” I tell myself. Even things about my personality bother me.
But this is no way to live, in such misery. It is the work of Satan to make us loathe ourselves and our appearance to the point of self-destruction. This self-hatred paralyzes us, robs us of energy, hurts our relationships, and hinders our service to God.
Most tragic, our self-hatred conflicts diametrically with God’s feelings and thoughts about our appearance and personality. God loves the way we look. He loves the person we are. After all, who do you think personally picked out every component of our personality? Who do you think chose our gender, our color, our size, and body configuration?
God is the One who made us what and who we are. And He made us to His own specifications – not those that our parents would have hoped for or what others wish we had. So stop hating yourself, when God loves everything about you. God knit you together in your mother’s womb. True, He used your parents in the process, but they had little power over what you would become.
God chose the time and place of your appearing on this planet – and the family you would be born into. Therefore, if anyone has a gripe about your natural looks or your personality, then direct them to God. And if you are dissatisfied with yourself, then you have no idea how much God loves and adores you. You may hang your head with a sigh every time you look in the mirror, see a photo of yourself, or hear the sound of your own voice. But God smiles with delight. So learn to accept what God’s given you. Learn to love yourself.
PRAYER: Dear Father in heaven, please open my eyes to Your love for me. Help me to grasp the height, depth, length, and breadth of Your love – and to feel and experience Your love. Help me to see myself through Your eyes of love. Here and now, I gratefully accept what You have made me and submit to Your will for my life. Amen.
(Information from: https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/weird-news/woman-biggest-lips-world-shows-21974019)