a few weeks ago, we went to a "free" travel club seminar in order to receive a "free gift" (we ended up with a short vacation which will be fun in the future). i was reminded, though, of a podcast entitled "something for nothing" where they make the case that we always pay. no matter what.
i felt that we paid by being exposed to incredibly blatant, and latent, lies.
i have been previewing a book that i will be using this fall with my high school small group girls. i have learned so much from it about myself as a christian and as a woman.
there are so many lies that i tend to believe.
i am prone to judging myself as a woman based on so many cultural standards. at the travel club presentation, they made it seem like it was a woman's right to be "spoiled" by her husband and that men needed to lavish their wives at all times and give them what they want.
lie.
i am constantly assessing my femininity based on magazines, even ones like real simple and oprah.
it is a lie that you must always get the newest gadgets, organizing systems, clothes and makeup colors every season to be a successful, honorable, and respectable, beautiful woman.
it's hard, though, for me not to believe those things. it's like, as john piper put so clearly in a sermon i heard this weekend: "we step into a circus hall of mirrors...in one mirror, you're short and fat, in another, tall and skinny...in one mirror you're upside down..."
the travel club experience was a hall of mirrors that really took some time and effort for me to shake out of my head to see the crystal clear reflection of Christ that is my Self.
so, i continue to seek how to see myself in purity and in truth. it sounds cliche to say that the world's standards of beauty are not God's standards. but it's true.
its part what the Gospel is about, why it is such Good News.
we have to keep preaching it to each other because we forget so easily, everyday.
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