Compared to Who? A Book Review

The evil queen in Disney’s “Snow White” made a soul shattering mistake. She looked in her magic mirror and asked the question: “Who’s the fairest of them all?” When the answer came back that a beautiful girl, Snow White, had usurped her in that role, the queen was consumed by jealousy and thereafter sought to end the life of her chief rival.

Heather Creekmore, in her new book, “Compared to Who?: A Proven Path to Improve Your Body Image,” would agree that comparison is a killer. And self esteem, which is what the queen wanted the mirror to help build in her, is really counter productive. Heather submits, “If we want to see true freedom from our body image struggles, we need to forsake esteeming ourselves and pursue esteeming the king.”

Having struggled with body image from a very young age, Heather, the wife of a pastor and church planter in Dallas, Texas, and mother of four, speaks from a very personal place. Her honesty about her issues throughout the pages of this book speaks to the thousands of women who are bombarded every moment of every day by images of super models and celebrities, Pinterest-, Facebook- and Instagram-perfect women who seem to have everything we could ever need to finally be happy.

Yet fad diets, hours a day of exercise and and an Imelda Marcos-sized wardrobe don’t solve the soul-craving that keeps us disgusted with the way we look even when others might look upon us with envy. So what is the key?

In “Compared to Who?” we are given, as the subtitle suggests, a way out of
our struggles to have the ideal body. It’s the gospel. Pure and simple.

Does that mean it’s an easy task? Just do these 5 things and you’ll never struggle with body image again. No, and thankfully, Heather does not sugar coat (great word picture for a body-image article, isn’t it?) the process.

So what is at the root of our body-image issues? Sin. What do we need to break free? Salvation.

And community.

It was just 2 1/2 years ago that I began my weight-loss journey that I talk about in this post. I could not have done it if it wasn’t for the group of women with whom I traveled and continue to travel to this day. A monetary incentive didn’t hurt, but the accountability and encouragement from others was key.

As Heather says in “Compared to Who?”: “My dream is for Christian women to relate to each other differently. Until our friendships move beyond superficial endorsements of our struggles, we battle alone. You may have 1, 849 Facebook friends and as many Twitter and Instagram followers, but until you have one or two women in your life willing to listen to the heart behind your words, offer you grace, and show you how the gospel applies, you walk alone.”

I don’t really struggle badly with body image. I’ve never taken diet pills or tried fad diets, or lived at the gym. I don’t look at fashion magazines or compare myself to celebrities. I needed to lose some weight and ended up almost 30 pounds lighter after our challenge 2 years ago. But I don’t always smile when I look in the mirror. And I have a 14-year-old daughter who needs to see her value in Christ and trust the gospel to tell her the truth about who she is. I’m desperate for her to see Jesus as He really is and therefore see herself through His eyes.

I am thankful for Heather’s words in this book. I highly recommend it to anyone who has ever looked at anyone else—whether their body, their hair, their home, their children—and thought, “I wish I was more like her.”

And the evil queen’s magic mirror? Its mistake was simple. The best answer to the queen’s question about who’s the fairest of them all should have been, “Jesus. He’s the fairest, and He’s all you need.”

 

See more of what Heather Creekmore has to say at her blog: http://comparedtowho.me/ . Buy your copy of “Compared to Who?” at Amazon  or Christian Book Distributors.

Images from The Disney Wiki and http://www.comparedtowho.me

Once Upon a Time

Last night, Morgan and I started watching the first season of the television show “Once Upon a Time.” The basic premise is that a black curse was cast upon all the inhabitants off a fairytale land wherein lived all the characters about which we grew up reading: Cinderella, Rumplestiltskin, Gepetto. Jiminy Cricket, etc. The main characters are Snow White and Prince Charming, who were the impetus for the curse from the evil queen in the first place. This curse threw everyone into this alternate, horrible world (ours), into a little town in Maine, where no one knows who they really are or remembers their past. If you ask them, it’s all kind of a blur.

There is one boy there, Henry, who knows that there is a curse, and he’s figured out who most everyone is. He was adopted as a newborn by the mayor of “Storybrooke,” who is actually the Evil Queen. It seems as though she knows who she is, but not entirely. In the fairytale world, Henry is the grandson of Snow White and Prince Charming, because their daughter–Henry’s birth mother, Emma–was saved from the curse by being hidden in an enchanted tree. But I don’t think his adoptive mother knows that. It was foretold by the evil Rumplestiltskin that Emma would be the only one to break the curse. She would, on her 28th birthday, come back and save them.

Which is what is happening in the series.

What struck me about this show is the spiritual parallels it draws. Whether these are intentional by the creators and writers of the show, I don’t know; but they are obvious to me.

We live in a world under a curse

We have no hope here; our only hope lies in the place we were meant to be

The evil one is constantly trying to thwart our efforts to break his stronghold

We don’t really know who we are until we find our identity in Christ

As followers of Jesus, our job is to help people discover their true identities–children of the King

Figuring out what is true and what is not can be difficult sometimes

We can change the world and lift the curse

Good always wins

We haven’t yet learned why the Evil Queen (Regina, in the town of Storybrooke) hated Snow White so much. She said she took something from her that was very important, but they haven’t yet–as of episode 5 of the first season–revealed what that something is. Unless I missed it, which is entirely possible.

Hope is very important. Henry, when asked by his psychologist (the Jiminy Cricket character, whom he sees because Regina wants this whole “town under a curse and she’s the evil queen” thing to be counseled out of his brain) why it’s so important that his theory about the curse is true, said “because this can’t be all there is.”

You’re right, Henry: This isn’t all there is.

“Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me. My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. You know the way to the place where I am going” (John 14:1-3, New International Version.)

Thankful today for:

624. a retreat for the men in my  household

625. girl time

626. just the outer bands of a hurricane affecting us

627. sleeping in

628. a day with no agenda

629. pumpkin puree