Torture Chamber

Torture = trying on clothes in bright fluorescent lighting in front of a full length mirror!! The dressing room is my torture chamber.😳 Good grief it’s painful! Yesterday nothing fit right…it was a mess. I began berating myself and talking to myself so meanly…in a way that I would NEVER think or much less say to anyone else. I kicked all of my scriptural, positive, healthy self talk to the curb and honestly thought, “Just give up. You’re at your worst ever.”

I left the store and was going home, but I felt compelled to walk into one more store. As I was browsing, a sweet elderly lady literally gasped when she saw me and said, “My goodness, you are the spitting image of my granddaughter! Oh my, you’re a sight for sore eyes! I haven’t seen her in a few years because she lives far away. Even your mannerisms are the same. Oh you’ve made my day! You’re beautiful, child.”

I could have cried right on the spot…not because she told me I was beautiful to her…but because I felt the Holy Spirit so powerfully! I have no doubt in my mind that meeting this lady was a divine encounter! My spirit was flooded with everything that God has been teaching me: Who I really am in Him, what my true value is, and that He is a good, good Father, and I’m loved by Him…fearfully and wonderfully made by Him.

See, He is teaching me to love and respect myself…even with the many imperfections I see…even with the many results of mistakes I’ve made that I see…and to realize He absolutely loves and values me, just as I am.

And the reason I am sharing this is because this is the truth about you too. ❤️

I have a long way to go, but God has really brought me so far! There was a time when I would have never even considered allowing myself some grace. I’m realizing how much God cares about these things. He desires to quiet the mean self talk and the mean words that have been said by others that replay in my head. He is replacing all of that with His truth. It’s a slow process, but it’s the road to complete healing in Jesus’ name! I praise Him for His kindness, compassion and love! And His powerful healing and transformation…available to all of us…no matter how many times we’ve failed! For these reasons plus a million more I will praise His name and take to heart what He does for me. He encourages my heart…over and over again!

Psalm 139:1-2, 13-18

1You have searched me, Lord,
and you know me.
2You know when I sit and when I rise;
you perceive my thoughts from afar
13For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
14I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.
15My frame was not hidden from you
when I was made in the secret place,
when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.
16Your eyes saw my unformed body;
all the days ordained for me were written in your book
before one of them came to be.
17How precious to me are your thoughts, oh God!
How vast is the sum of them!
18Were I to count them,
they would outnumber the grains of sand—