STYES

Months Would Pass by and I would leave lash strips on my eyes

Written By Olivia Brown

You would NOT see me with out lashes. Ever. And I never took them off. Not even when I washed my makeup off and went to sleep. Not only would I never take them off, I would stack multiple lashes one on top of the other until they would cast a shadow under my eye. I carried around “emergency lash glue just in case the lash strip wouldn’t stick”. The moment I took them off I would immediately put them back on. You know you are in bondage to something if the moment you don’t have it you feel the need to point it out so others can acknowledge your appearance as you search for their affirmation. It was bad. When graduating high school in 2016 and heading to college my main fear was “what will think when they see me without lashes”. No it wasn’t getting lost. No it wasn’t the course work. My main fear was my college peers seeing me without lashes. DON’T GET ME WRONG. Makeup is not the enemy here, it’s when you begin to dislike how you were created when you don’t wear it...that is “the enemy”. His deceptive lies of you absolutely “need” this to be complete. IT IS A LIE. A lie that I was in bondage to for too long to dance around the truth about it. I entered into a season of removing the external layers I become solely reliant on to grow into the woman God is calling me to be. Lashes was the first to go. Next SPENDING HOURS A DAY to transform the essence of my being through makeup...had to go. And I HATED me without it. But I had to face that lie that took root in me and see how I was constantly trying to compensate through my appearance to prove I was in fact beautiful. And it was painful. And I fought it. “LORD? Don’t come for my lashes or this beat of the face” And He didn’t but I stayed enslaved to it until I came to point where I was ready to give it up. And it started with me first cutting my hair fall of 2017 (which is whole other testimony) to me letting go of makeup and confronting the truth of how I feel about me. No makeup. No lashes. No weave. No fashionable outfit. Natural Olivia. And the truth was...I hated her. I trained myself to love myself with these things. The Lord however was not in the business of letting me stay in that place of comfort but confronting those lies to bring forth my healing.