Hiding Behind Clothes
Baggy Clothes
Sharing my story. This story may seem like it’s focussed towards those who are the same size as me but it pertains to really everyone who developed a deep hatred for how they were created; shape, size, color…whatever is your story.
I didn’t realize until middle school when the other girls in my grade began to develop into their “womanly figures” that there was something wrong with me. In middle school I made a vow in my heart:” Even if I’m ugly, as long as the rest of me is ok…I’m ok” I didn’t realize the other side to this agreement…was that if the rest of me wasn’t considered to be “ok” I would then end up searching endlessly for what I felt like I needed to add to make me “ok”. I saw all this going on with the girls around me and decided I was forgotten about..by God. At that young age I somehow believed that God intentionally gave me the body, the shape, the form He did…to hurt me. To spite me. He somehow made a mistake. After absorbing the insults that were hurled at me such as “ugly, stick, skinny…and other demeaning things..when I transitioned from middle school into high school I did not want to feel that way ever again so I started doing things to hide what I did not like or rather felt like God messed up on. I would do things like wear really big hair that would fall low to hide my body or I would wear layer on layer. It then transferred into wearing baggy clothes. At one point in my college career, I only wore mom jeans, and lots of layers. Sometimes even wearing another layer under my mom jeans to “fill them out a little more” so I would be viewed as “more of a woman” (which also comes from an involvement with a young man that constantly demeaned by body which is…you guessed it ANOTHER STORY).
I chose “mom jeans” because the shape of the jeans disguises or rather doesn’t fit to your shape. I lived this way consistently with no one knowing that I actually was dealing with body hatred. Mind you I did not look crazy I wore completely fashionable outfits (another thing I hid behind which is yet another story) I cleverly hid my layers in fashionable ensembles but on the inside was this middle school girl trying to find what I needed to be “ok” and failing miserable. Tired of the search January 2017 I decided to “GIVE THE LORD MY WARDROBE”. Sounds crazy right? To me it looked like saying ok God instead of everything that I would do and add to each outfit…Lord I give my sense of dress, my style, to You. And the Lord redefined my style where instead of me creating the most elaborate outfit to gain attention to myself ultimately to draw away from the things I felt like I was lacking, He gave me the creativity of heaven embodied in outfits and ensembles that He gave me visions of..CRAZYYY! I gave that desire completely to Him and in return He gave me something so much greater. Not just an even better style BUT a desire to seek Him for my affirmation. My Heavenly DAD!
November 20th 2018 I decided I was going to BURN my mom jeans. Pretty extreme, but I was ready to be free from this decree I made in my heart really in elementary school. No, I did not end up burning them but I went through my entire wardrobe in my apartment and got rid of all the clothes that the Lord was calling me to “let go of” in order for me to walk in the freedom He has called me to…and I did exactly that. It is still a journey there are many things that I have had to let go not just externally but internally words things spoken over me, lies I accepted as truth, and clothing items that I allowed myself to have a dependency on. It is literally an everyday thing. Even though the “giving up” seemed hard…there was so much freedom and a greater beauty on the other side that no clothes no word no thing could have uncovered but the Spirit of the Lord himself.