Do Not Compare...

“A sound heart is the life of the flesh: but envy the rottenness of the bones.”

Proverbs 14:30  

Again, I muse at the famous image of Sophia Loren and Jane Mansfield, seated together at some Hollywood event.

 It captures the comparing issue. Sophia Loren’s eyes look off to the side, staring at Jayne Mansfield’s cleavage. Here they are- two beautiful women. Yet there still seems to be a “fairest one of them all” competition in place.

See yourself here? What do you and I use as a measuring stick? For those of us with disordered eating and negative body image issues, it hinges upon a specific definition, usually a thin one, of beauty.

It certainly did for me. Four very specific words, in fact: “Cute, pretty, beautiful and small.”

As a little girl, my mother and I had a rating system for females, focusing on those exact words. I suppose it could be viewed as a four star system; cute was a one and small (a/k/a, thin) was the highest four start assessment.

It was not uncommon for the two of us to focus on a friend, a classmate, a teacher or a celebrity and decide where she fell under the “Cute, pretty, beautiful and small” system. Great mother/daughter bonding, huh?

And it wasn’t just a judge-y sport, it also underscored a dominant rule which eventually sparked my full-blown eating disorder behaviors: anorexia, bulimia, binge eating and, of course, constant self-loathing.

“...They were now competition for me. If I could be thinner than these women, then I’d be better than they were as well.

                Ah, at long last, control over something in my life. I couldn’t control who loved me or what was going on in my family, but I could control this! I could control my body! And soon this control did turn into something I’d hungered for, craved my entire life: power, power in the beauty, the newfound thin beauty I was discovering...I was the Sheryle I always thought I wanted to be.

                Competition grew between me and any thin girl or woman. Mirror, mirror: I had to be the thinnest one of them all. It was life or death importance, anything less than that was unacceptable. Gaining any weight, whatsoever, meant failure, simple as that.

                So, to keep going on my quest for perfection, a thin body deserving of love and approval, I increased the amount of exercise and decreased what I ate... It still wasn’t good enough...

...What I didn’t realize at the time was that my eyes and mind were incapable of seeing anything but a distorted image...”

(Excerpt from “Thin Enough: My Spiritual Journey Through the Living Death Of An Eating Disorder”)

Try as I might, no matter what I did, I could never perfectly attain that fuzzy four star rating. And so, what was I? Answer: an ugly failure.

Envy and coveting are both spiritual issues; we’re warned about the risky behavior:

“But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your heart, do not be arrogant and so lie against the truth. This wisdom is not that which comes down from above, but is earthly, natural, demonic. For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there is disorder and every evil thing.”
James 3: 14-16

I reference the film, “The Silence of the Lambs.” In the movie, a serial killer has taken to murdering women and wearing their skins because he, himself, wanted to be a woman. And so, the FBI agent on the case reluctantly enlists the help of convicted prisoner and cannibal, Hannibal Lector. In a discussion with the FBI agent, the Lector character brings up the issue of coveting, stating, “we covet what we see.”

Now you and I probably wouldn’t consider ourselves to be serial killer evil, but are there things we covet in our lives? What-who- where are they? Is it an obsession with beauty and being thin? What about money? Fame? Power? Achievement? Career? Family? Do you want something you see someone else has?

What are you and I eyeing? Why aren’t we enough?

It’s because we see ourselves in the wrong way; we don’t see what God sees.

Someone else’s stuff does not detract from who you are. You are not “less than.”

Still need God’s beauty/value rating system? Check out The Song of Solomon:

1:15: “Behold, thou art fair, my love; behold, thou art fair; thou hast doves' eyes.”

2:14: “O my dove…let me see your form…for your form is lovely.” 

4:1: “Behold, thou art fair, my love; behold, thou art fair; thou hast doves' eyes...”

4:7: “Thou art all fair, my love; there is no spot in thee.”

6:4: “Thou art beautiful, O my love...”

7:10: “I am my beloved's, and his desire is toward me.”

This is who you are- right now. No need for coveting, insecurity, pettiness or low self-esteem. We don’t need to compare and believe we’re “less than,” in the presence of someone we believe to be “more than.”

We are ALL This!

“...I am fearfully and wonderfully made…”

Psalm 139:14

Copyright © 2015 by Sheryle Cruse