My Face

Ok, so here's my twopenn'orth on the no-make-up-selfie debate.

Some people feel that it has nothing to do with cancer or cancer awareness and is therefore pointless. As far as that goes, I think it makes as much sense as the thing about the colour of your underwear a few years ago. And to be fair, it does at least seem to have got people talking about the subject of cancer. Many people are donating to cancer charities and posting useful cancer information as well.

Apparently, the thing actually started as a campaign for women to be sponsored to go out in public without make-up. It's certainly easier to see the sense of that - although, as I say, I can see that good things have come from the facebook trend as well.

So my general verdict is that it's something that is doing some good, both in raising awareness and in raising funds to help finally beat cancer.

* * * *

But you know what strikes me most about the actual phenomenon as it appears on Facebook?

We are seeing women's faces. Their actual, real faces. And I think that that in itself is a very positive thing.

Practically every single ad break on TV contains at least one advert telling women that they need to change something about their appearance - often several of the beastly things. The world has sold us the lie that we need to cover our faces with paint in order to be acceptable. It has stolen our self respect, and sold it back to us at the price of cosmetics. And hair products. And anti-wrinkle creams. And goodness knows what else!

But now, we are seeing women's faces. Real, human faces. And I love it. 

What troubles me is that in almost all the ones I've seen, the lady in question has felt it necessary to apologise for her face in some way. Or to add a derogatory description of herself in the picture - some kind of put-down against herself.

I can understand this - it has taken me 41 years to learn to love my own face. But now, finally, I do. I love my own face, because it IS my face. 

MY face. 

It doesn't have to conform to any of the bizarre and unrealistic expectations placed upon it by the world. It is MY FACE, and I have decided that I like it.

* 

Ladies - you do NOT have to apologise for your face! It is NOT "hideous". It will NOT "break anybody's computer". It will NOT "traumatise" anybody.

It is YOUR FACE. A real, human face. It does not need to be covered up with paint in order to be acceptable. It does not need to look like anybody else's face, and it certainly doesn't need to look like the photoshopped pictures in magazines and on adverts!

It does not need anything added or taken away. It is YOUR FACE.

We are all on a journey about these things, and I hope anyone who reads this will understand that I respect wherever you may be on that journey. As I say, it's taken me 41 years to get this far! And I'm not all the way there yet.

But I do urge you all to think about this stuff - about why you felt the need to apologise for your face (if you did so). About why you feel that your own face, just as it is, is not something the world should see.

I would also urge you to turn the sound off and go make a cup of tea when the ad breaks come on.

And thank you - each and every one of you - for 

letting us see your real, human face!

Honesty is the Best Policy

I haven't blogged much lately. The basic reason for this is that I've been going through a particularly tough time and I wanted this blog to encourage people, not depress them! But I think I've now reached a stage where I can begin to talk about what I'm learning from this tough time. So here goes.

Recently, I have come to realise that I am teetering precariously on the brink of clinical depression. I haven't been there in 20 years, so it was a bit of a shock to find it happening again. Once I acknowledged that this was happening, I was able to think about how it came to happen...

THE STORY SO FAR
As followers of this blog will know, a little over four months ago, I had my heart broken. (I have thought in the past that I had had my heart broken, but judging from this experience, the other times must just have been nasty sprains! :'D) I was finding it very stressful to have to see the person who hurt me in this way regularly at church meetings, which in turn had an adverse effect on my M.E. (which does not respond well to stress). So as soon as I could manage it, I went away for three weeks to give myself space to recover.

The time away was a really good time with God, during which I was able to work through things in a healthy way, and I returned feeling refreshed and much stronger. So far, so good.

Where I went wrong was that I had decided that by the time I got back, I should 'be able to cope'. So when I found that it was still a great strain, I started to bottle things up again and went into a form of denial. Unsurprisingly (with hindsight!) this amplified the stress to an alarming degree, and resulted in the state in which I now find myself. (Things were not helped by the sudden death last week of someone I was once very close to.)

PHYSICAL CAUSES
Since I have acknowledged to myself where I am, I have started to improve again. I have got myself I a little book called "Coping with Anxiety and Depression", written by a Christian nurse called Shirley Trickett and published by Sheldon Press. I heartily recommend it to anyone who is going through anything similar. She explains that depression and anxiety both occur when your nervous system has had more than it can physically cope with. Then it starts to malfunction in one or both of the following ways:

Your nervous system has two parts: the 'sympathetic' nervous system and the 'parasympathetic' nervous system. The 'sympathetic' side speeds things up. It is what gives you an adrenaline kick when you face a crisis. Ms Trickett invites us to picture it as a man in red Ferrari with his foot on the accelerator! When this side goes into overdrive, it causes anxiety.

The 'parasympathetic' nervous system (which Ms. Trickett pictures as a man pootling along in a blue Morris Minor) is the side that slows things down. When this side malfunctions, it causes depression. Simple, really.

My overloaded nervous system has been swinging between the two, which is apparently not uncommon. I had anxiety for days before a meeting, and depression for days afterwards. This pretty much filled up the week! This had a very bad effect on my M.E. quite apart from the anxiety and depression in themselves.

CONCLUSIONS
As I say, once I acknowledged the problem and it's causes, I was able to begin to deal with things again, and have been starting to improve. I realise now that I had put a burden on myself that God never meant me to bear. He certainly never intended me to lie to myself, which was what caused my system to overload.

Jesus knows our human frailties; He has lived with them Himself. He doesn't require us to be 'Superpeople'. If we are struggling - yes, we are supposed to praise God in it, but nowhere does the Bible tell us to pretend that we are not struggling! The Apostle Paul acknowledges his struggles time and again, while still giving God glory in the midst of them.

The problem was never God's faithfulness. He has been staggeringly faithful through it all, including leading me to things that helped me, like Ms Trickett's book. The problem was how I handled things. It wasn't that I stopped talking to God, or even that I stopped asking Him for strength. But because I wasn't acknowledging the true state of things within myself, I wasn't able to receive all the help and strength that He wanted to give me.

So if anyone else is in a similar situation, I urge you to acknowledge this to yourself! You cannot receive the fulness of the help God wants to give you until you do. Honesty really is the best policy.

.