by Duggar, Jill
So I hurried back downstairs to the closet and stood there for what seemed like another ten minutes, trying to find something to wear. Then I heard Dad’s voice over the intercom saying, “Everyone hurry up! It’s nine forty, and the first vanload is leaving for church.”
I grabbed a skirt off the rack and tried it on, but then I remembered that the shirt I usually wear with it was dirty. I hurriedly put that choice back on the hanger and found a cute denim skirt—only to realize the zipper was broken. I was growing more frustrated and about to settle for the original outfit I had put on that morning when my eye landed on a brown-striped skirt. Perfect, I thought. Why didn’t I think of this in the first place?
While we sometimes do the shopping for our family at warehouse stores, our favorite place to shop for clothes is thrift stores.
But then I had to change my shoes to go with the skirt, and—or where were those sandals that looked so great with this skirt? I finally rushed out of the clothes closet and around the corner to the bathroom mirror. Oops! With all the changing, my hair had gotten messed up. I hurriedly worked to restore order to it and then discovered we had run out of hair spray in that bathroom. Running to another bathroom to grab some, I could hear the car horn honking as the second load of churchgoers waited for me.
It was nearly ten o’clock—church time—as I rushed out the door. Not exactly the way one would want to prepare for a morning of worshipping our Creator! And it all started because I compared myself to one of my sisters and felt that my appearance fell short.
It seems like such a trivial matter now, looking back on that morning, but it’s so typical of teenagers, especially young ladies. It’s easy for us to compare ourselves to others and think we have to be like them to measure up or to be accepted. But too often it’s impossible to meet the goals of perfection we set for ourselves, and as a result, we end up dealing with all sorts of destructive feelings: poor self-worth, lack of confidence, jealousy, discontentment, and so much more. Before we know it, momentary concerns about our outward appearance turn into lies about ourselves that swirl constantly through our minds, telling us, “I’m not good enough.” “I’m a failure.” “Nobody loves me.”
Ultimately, we lose sight of what’s most important: our inward character.
GIVING POWER TO OTHERS
FOR MANY YEARS, I (Jessa) couldn’t care less about what I wore and how I looked. I was the typical happy little Duggar kid, filling my day with homeschool work and playing with my siblings and friends.
But life changed for me when I was about twelve or thirteen. Whenever I was around friends outside our family, I became very quiet and self-conscious—really insecure about the way I looked, dressed, and acted.
I had friends who were really beautiful, and whenever we were together I compared myself to them and always came up lacking something. These critical feelings caused me to have a mistaken view of my friends and myself—thinking they were perfect and I wasn’t. I felt so ashamed and awkward that I couldn’t even talk to anyone about my feelings. I felt overwhelmed and stuck in that negative mind-set.
I remember during that stage of my life having mixed feelings when I was invited to a friend’s birthday party. I was eager to go to the party but overly concerned that I had to look and act just right. What a dilemma, worrying about what clothes I would wear, what I would say, what gift I would bring!
I can still feel those butterflies fluttering in my stomach as we drove up to the birthday girl’s big yellow house. I was excited but nervous at the same time. I was thinking about all the conversations I’d had with the girl and our friends that focused on outward appearance—who had cute clothes and who didn’t, whose hairstyle we wanted to copy and whose hair was always a wreck. The butterflies continued to churn as I arrived at the front door with another guest.
Our younger sister Joy is beautiful inside and out.
“Oh, I love your outfit!” the birthday girl said to the friend beside me.
She didn’t say anything about what I was wearing, so I immediately assumed she didn’t think my outfit was as perfect as the other girl’s.
Soon the party was under way, and I enjoyed all the games, but after we’d sung “Happy Birthday” and settled around the living room for cake and ice cream, the topic of movies came up. I hadn’t seen the popular movie the other girls were talking about, and I felt out of place. The critical thoughts came bubbling back up: Jessa, you don’t fit in. It’s obvious you’re not as cool as the other girls.
Looking back, I can see how my inward struggles grew worse because I craved the birthday girl’s approval—as did several others in this group of friends. I wanted her to like me. Receiving her approval made me feel good about myself. But when she let me know, or when I assumed, that she didn’t quite approve of my appearance or something I said or did (or didn’t do), I felt worse about myself. I felt as though I had failed—and I carried those feelings with me for days after we’d been together.
My friend seemed to be the perfect picture of the girl I was not. She was tall with beautiful hair and big, brown eyes. She was slender and attractive. After being with this girl, I would look in the mirror and see frizzy hair, ordinary eyes, and a body that wasn’t as slender or as beautiful as hers. Constantly comparing myself to her was the perfect recipe for jealousy and discontentment.
ACCEPTING THE UNCHANGEABLES
WHAT POWER I WAS giving my friend by allowing her to make me feel that way about the girl in the mirror! The same girl who all my life had smiled back at me each day and been an accepted and essential part of me now became someone I looked at with a constantly critical eye.
Thankfully, about that time, I heard a Bible teacher share an inspiring message about how God has perfectly designed each one of us with ten aspects of life that, without extraordinary action, we cannot change and that He wants us to accept:
1. Who our parents are
2. Who our siblings are
3. The order in which we are born into our family (oldest or youngest, etc.)
4. Our nationality
5. Whether we’re a girl or boy
6. Our mental capacity
7. The time we were born in history
8. Our physical features
9. The natural aging process
10. The date we will die
This teacher said that if we reject our physical features, we reject our self-image and often assume that others will reject us, too. This assumption can cause us to make poor decisions based on our own misperception of ourselves.
That’s right where I was in my relationship with my “powerful” friend. I realized I had been ungrateful to God for the wonderful way He had made me. I had pushed aside what the Bible tells us—that God looks on each one of us as His uniquely beautiful creation—and instead I let an immature teenage girl make me feel bad about myself.
When my parents realized what was happening, they wisely helped me rethink the priority I had put on this friendship, and they encouraged me to ask God to forgive me for not appreciating the way He had created me. Looking back, I feel sad to think what it must have been like for God to see me, His unique and carefully designed Jessa, looking in the mirror and disliking the girl He’d created with such love.
Have you been there? Standing in front of a mirror with a negative attitude about the girl you’re seeing? You’re not alone! All of us, including the Duggar girls, have had times when we compare ourselves with the way other girls dress, do their hair, how much they weigh, how they carry themselves, and how guys respond to them.
But if we’re upset with that girl in the mirror, it means we’re upset with God for how He designed us. We may start to think He messed up when He designed us or even that He doesn’t love us. And that leads us to put our confidence and trust in someone else—such as a teenage peer who somehow gains a more powerful influence on our lives than God.
Jill, left, and Jessa followed the traditional custom of taking a “mud bath” while visiting the Dead
Sea in Israel.
If that’s where you are right now, we’re here to help you see yourself through new eyes—God’s powerful, love-filled, encouraging, and forgiving eyes. We hope to convince you that God loves you more than anyone else in the world loves you and that He has a unique plan for your life. We’ve learned through firsthand experience that when we make Him the priority in our lives and seek His way and His approval, He will fill us with a humble confidence that gives us inward strength and makes us immune to the sometimes-harsh judgment of others who don’t have our best interests at heart.
Our parents worked hard to instill that idea within us as we were growing up.
HONORING HOW GOD MADE YOU
ULTIMATELY, HOW WE CARE for ourselves (hair, makeup, clothes) tells others what we think about the way God made us. So our primary goal is to honor the Lord with our appearance. A friend of ours said it this way: “A girl’s outward appearance should send a message that says, ‘This is who I am,’ not ‘This is what I do.’ ” We want to maintain this perspective and keep our focus on pointing others to God.
Accepting the way God has uniquely made us helps us not to be so concerned with how others view us. Many people have demonstrated that truth to us. One of them was a sweet, Christian woman I (Jill) met last year when we were on a trip out west. She invited us to her home for dinner one evening, and while we were there, she and her husband showed us around their place and told us a little about themselves.
She shared that she came from an Italian family, and then she joked that a lot of Italians have long noses. She said when she was about to graduate from high school her mom came to her with a check that was a gift for her to be able to get surgery done to make her nose smaller.
The woman told us she was taken by surprise—and so was her mom when the daughter told her she wouldn’t be carrying on the family’s “nose job” tradition. “I’m content with the way God made me,” she said.
That conversation really made an impact on all of us girls, reminding us that none of us can choose the design God selected for us when He created us, but we can choose how we respond to His design. Contentment is realizing that God has provided everything we need for our present happiness.
Another key is recognizing the “unchangeable” things in our life and choosing to live joyfully with them. For this lady, it was accepting her Italian nose. For us it may be our ears, height, shoe size, gender, parents, siblings, or any number of other things.
Sure, it’s technically possible to change some of these things. You can renounce your citizenship and pledge your loyalty to another country, and you can have surgery to change some of your physical features, but before you do, we hope you’ll carefully and prayerfully consider what God originally gave you when He created you. If you go through life comparing yourself to others, you can always find someone who is smarter, better-looking—whatever—and it’s easy to become discontent, depressed, or even angry at God.
But if we choose to be grateful and thank God for the unchangeable things in our lives, whether it is facial features or a birthmark we were born with—or even physical scars that have come about later in life from accidents such as burns or being injured in a car wreck—it changes our whole perspective on life. We will finally be able to overcome fear of rejection and live confidently and contentedly with these unchangeable things that we did not choose for ourselves.
IMPROVING THE CHANGEABLES
NOW, SOMETIMES THERE ARE changeable things in life that can use improvement—our weight, for instance. When we were younger, most of us could eat about anything we wanted to and not gain weight, but those times have changed. We’ve found that most of us older Duggars have a tendency to gain weight.
We might not be the neatest sushi makers, but Jana, Josie, Jedidiah, and Jackson sure had fun trying when we visited the Japanese Sushi Academy.
Over the years, Mom has done her best to prepare nutritious meals for us, and she has always kept healthy fruits and vegetables around for us to snack on throughout the day, whether they are grown in our own garden or purchased from the local farmers market. We have chosen to avoid pork, and instead we choose grass-fed beef or lean poultry. While we do eat some processed foods, we try to be selective, and we do not keep a stash of sodas, potato chips, or Pop-Tarts around the house.
And the Duggar children are very active, whether we’re building a tree fort or playing our favorite sports together—some of which include basketball, kickball, football, foursquare, and volleyball (and we have enough players to make up at least two teams!). But just the same, we have found that as we grow older, it can be challenging to stay fit and in shape.
Just last year our oldest brother, Josh, decided to lose some weight, and he felt like the first thing to go should be his sweet tea and sodas. With his work and busy schedule, he had not been watching his intake of those sweet drinks, so he was surprised when he hopped on the scale one day and realized he had gained more than twenty pounds. When he cut out the sugary drinks, started drinking more water, and exercising a little, he saw the weight drop off.
Mom told us she put on nearly forty pounds a few years ago throughout the course of several pregnancies. She tried several weight-loss programs but began to think she would never be able to slim back down. Finally she tried Weight Watchers and learned about making wiser food choices. During one of the weekly meetings the leader said, “When it comes to losing weight, it’s really eighty percent diet and twenty percent exercise. You can eat more calories in a few minutes than you can burn off in an hour-long workout.”
Weight Watchers taught Mom about portion control, and it provided a great accountability system. She also started exercising three miles a day on an elliptical machine. By working to keep in shape, she looks and feels great, and she’s been a big inspiration to the rest of us!
A couple of other changeable things in life are makeup and hair. We heard a pastor say one time, “Any ol’ barn looks better with some paint on it!” Our goal when we wear makeup is to look natural, so no wild colors and it’s not painted on an inch thick. But cosmetics can help cover blemishes, accent natural beauty, and draw attention to your countenance (another word for your face).
It’s the same with hair. When cared for properly and thoughtfully styled, it too can be a beautiful frame to draw attention to your countenance.
We Duggar girls choose to wear our hair rather long, but we could wear shorter styles if we wanted to. Our hairstyle is our choice, and we choose longer hair based on our understanding of 1 Corinthians 11:14–15. It says that even nature itself teaches us that, while it is a shame for a man to have long hair, a woman’s hair is her glory. We figure, if God says our hair is our “glory,” then He must have considered it a gift to us, and we want to take care of it and put a little effort each day into styling it.
Twenty-five Duggars plus our cousin Amy, Grandma, and our film crew traveled together to London, where the girls took time out from sightseeing for a photo in front of Buckingham Palace.
But if we become obsessed with having the perfect hairstyle and spend two hours in front of the mirror every morning making sure every hair is in place, that’s going a little too far. (And it would also be nearly impossible in the Duggar household, given the limited number of bathrooms and the seemingly unlimited number of people needing to use them at any given time!)
One thing we’re trying to do in this book is to share not only what we’ve been taught but also what we’ve learned through firsthand experience. I (Jana) can tell you I learned an important lesson about hair—and also about making rash decisions.
One day several years ago when I was a young teenager, some of us girls were talking with a friend and she mentioned something about how you could put highlights in your hair by simply using peroxide or lemon juice. It was certainly inexpensive and sounded easy to do, so I decided to try it. I wasn’t making a big change to my sandy-brown hair, just adding some highlights, so I didn’t consider it a big deal and didn’t ask
Mama about it—and didn’t mention my plan to anyone else. I didn’t know exactly how to do it, but I was sure I could figure it out. I mean, how hard could it be to put one simple liquid on my hair?
So, a few days later, I got some peroxide and put a rather generous amount on my hair, dabbing it on and then combing it through. I stood there looking in the mirror, not seeing any change, and thinking, Hmmm. I guess it didn’t work.
Oh well. It was a nice, sunshiny day, and I decided to do some work in the flower beds, something I enjoy.
A few hours later, I came back inside and couldn’t believe what I saw in the mirror! Everyone else was surprised, too. My twin brother, John-David, said, “Wow, Jana! Did you dye your hair orange?”
When Dad saw it and I explained what I’d done, he said, “Oh, Jana, peroxide isn’t something to mess around with. I wish you had talked to Mom about it first!”
By that time, I was wishing the same thing! I told Dad, “I didn’t think it would bleach my hair this much.”
It was hard living with the prolonged consequences of my spur-of-the-minute decision. Then, as my hair began to grow out, it was no longer just orange but two-toned orange and brown. I was so embarrassed by it that, once again, I acted impulsively. I went to a beauty supply store and asked the salesclerk what she recommended. She suggested I cover up the problem by using a slightly darker shade of hair color than my natural shade.
I was so determined to fix the problem that I ended up picking a color that was too dark, leaving me with nearly jet-black hair—and teaching me an important life lesson. Since then I’ve been content with the color God chose for my hair.