Little do we know the impact our world has on our lives and the lives of our families. My husband and I tend to limit the exposure our children have to mass media. We monitor the things they watch, listen to and read, but there is only so much any of us can do to keep the world from them.Jesus knew this. He did not pray that His disciples would be removed from the world. “I am not praying that You take them out of the world, but that You protect them from the evil one. They are not of this world, as I am not of the world. Sanctify them by the truth; Your Word is truth” (Jh. 17:14-15).
The need to pray these same words for my kids hit me last weekend. I was hanging out with the three of them in their room. They were playing all around me, but often times what happens when I am available to them is that the door for conversation about their hearts and lives opens up.
One of them said, “Mom, I have something to tell you. You might get mad at me though.”I responded, “Go ahead, I won’t get upset.”
She said, “Well, Mom when I look at pictures of other people I feel embarrassed by you. I think you aren’t as pretty.”
I said, “You mean like pictures in magazines or on TV?”
She said, “Ya, you don’t look as nice as they do.”
I wasn’t hurt for myself (parents are the pride of their children, Prov. 17:6), but instead for her. She is little noticing all kinds of things, and what is going to happen when she is thirteen and moves from comparing me to the women in magazines and starts to compare herself. I have had years of practice accepting myself (not always successfully), whereas she is just at the beginning. She has a standard of perfection she is holding me to, that no one will ever reach, not even the models in the magazines.
Thankfully thought the door for open, loving and safe communication is already there between us. My son and other daughter both opened up with all the same kind of feelings that their sister had just shared. We talked about the unreal expectation society projects…buff, ripped, muscles, perfect bodies, and unblemished faces.
I then shared with them the struggles actors and models face. I didn’t go into eating disorders, but we talked about steroids and plastic surgery, and what these things do to their bodies. Then we talked about their hearts. How people in these areas of life have such a huge focus on appearance that the slightest comment about their looks throws them into an unhealthy pattern of trying to reach perfection.
They seemed to get a little of this. Then we talked about what God looks at. That He looks at the heart not the outside like people do.
When I talked to Shon about the kids questions, he had them watch a YouTube video which shows a model at her most basic level, no makeup, hair not fixed, plain, and her transformation to a billboard super model. From her physical makeover in the studio to the computer makeover that moved her eyes, checks and the rest. We are in a visual society, and this visual made an impact that all my explanations never could.
