Pleaser

Growing up I was always the chunky smart girl.  Treasurer of my high school student council, and an A/B student, I never had much of a social life.  I didn't even have my first boyfriend until I was a senior in high school!  Then you add into the equation a mother who is very critical.  Grades were never good enough, weight was never low enough and so on.  I am not bashing my mother by any means.  I understand why she thought she had to be so critical.  But it does shape who I am today.

I am a people pleaser.  I feel like my acceptance is based on my performance.  The more I do, the more I will be liked by others.  It is very stressful because no matter how deep of a friendship I might form with someone, I feel like I have to constantly live up to expectations in order to keep it that deep.  I have a wall up, and there are only a handful of people that know the other half of me.  The other half that I keep tucked away because I fear judgment, criticism and most of all, rejection.

We cannot serve two masters.  If He is truly our Master, we will desire to please Him above all others.  If pleasing people is our goal, we will be enslaved to them.  People can be harsh taskmasters when we give them this power over us.  If He is the Master of our lives, He will also be our first love.  Our serving Him is rooted and grounded in His vast, unconditional love for us.  The lower we bow down before Him, the higher He lifts us up into intimate relationship with Him.  The joy of living in His presence outshines all other pleasures.  He wants us to reflect His joyous light by living in increasing intimacy with Him.
Matthew 6:24; Revelation 2:4; Ephesians 3:16-17; Psalm 16:11

God reminds me today that I cannot serve Him and others.  I never thought that people pleasing means people serving, but that makes sense.  I do things to please people when I should be doing things to please God.  I get so consumed with being the person I think people will like that I lose who I truly am.  I stop embracing the real me.  I am fearfully and wonderfully made by God.  Trying to change who God made me to be is saying that God did not do a good job.  It's saying that I do not want to be who God made me to be.  That I would rather conform to what people want me to be.

Last night was Friday family fun night in our household.  We ordered Chinese food (our favorite except for Jeremy), and rented Wreck-It-Ralph on the Wii.  If you have not seen the movie, Ralph is this huge guy who has BIG fists and anything he hits, he wrecks.  I want Ralph to come wreck the wall I have put up.  I want to stop pretending.  I want to be who I am without fear.  I want to embrace every part of me.  I want to let people in because that is what forms deep, meaningful friendships.  If my friendships are based on performance, they aren't real friendships to begin with.

Today was STATday.  I lost .25" off my arms.  I am kind of frustrated because I haven't lost any inches in a few weeks!  Maybe I am doomed to have all this loose skin for the rest of my life.  But I do feel great.  Yesterday I went to the mall.  JC Penney was having a huge sale, and I needed some shorts.  I grabbed some sizes that I thought would fit, but I discovered in the fitting room that they were actually too big.  Moments like that is the reason why I keep pushing on even though the scale stays the same, and the inches do not change.  It is not all about the physical, but the mental and emotional as well.  If I am on this journey just to change physically, it will not last long.  The mental and the emotional is what will change me forever.