Like Mom, Like Daughter

As a teenager, Maria Furlough struggled with insecurity and body image issues.

As an adult, she thinks differently about those things now, but she admits she's still tempted by those old insecurities. It is hard for me when I'm sitting next to a woman eating a salad without salad dressing. That reminds me of all my past hurt and failure of growing up thinking that that is the right way to be as a woman to eat a salad with no salad dressing. So I acknowledge that in myself, and that's something that I have to constantly be prayerful about. And so I am aware of the way that I am talking about food when I'm around other women. All of our convictions are different. What you're convicted about your body and how you want to take care of it is different than mine. And that's okay.

And I don't believe that it has to look the same for everybody. This is Family Life Today. Our hosts are Dave and Anne Wilson. I'm Bob Lapine. You'll find us online at familylifetoday.com.

How do we think rightly about our own body image issues, and how do we keep from trying to get other people to conform to our preferences? We'll talk more about that today with Maria Furlough. And welcome to Family Life Today.

Thanks for joining us. You asked an interesting question earlier this week, Dave. I ask a lot of your true questions, Bob. You do, honey. You're the most interesting man I know. Listen to my wife.

That is beautiful. You were asking, is it possible for a young woman to grow up in this culture and to avoid the trap of body image defining who she is? And even a young boy now. That's a good point.

It really is dominant, both men and women. There's pressure. We're talking this week with Maria Furlough, who's joining us on Family Life Today. Welcome back. Thank you. Maria is an author. She's a speaker. She's a mom. She's a wife.

She's got five kids at home. She has wrestled with body image issues herself. She wrote a book to try to disciple her own thinking on this, right?

This was basically how you're going to deal with this in your own life, and then you just shared with other people. How she became confident. Yeah, the book is called Confident Moms, Confident Daughters, Helping Your Daughter Live Free from Insecurity and Love How She Looks. When your daughter was born 12 years ago, was this on your mind that body image was something you were going to have to shepherd with her? Yes, I was struck when I was holding her at how much life insecurity had taken from me and how the way that I looked at my body limited me from doing so many things, and I didn't want that for her.

And so that became my heart cry when I held her to be able to help her have a different outlook on the way that she looked at herself than I did. Was an eating disorder ever a part of your past? I had what was called disorder eating, and I think that that has become a more defined thing now that is helpful in that you're controlling what you're eating in unhealthy ways, but it never becomes a full-fledged eating disorder. You weren't binging and purging. I wasn't binging and purging or not eating for days, but in seventh grade I distinctly remember faking like I was eating my lunch and then throwing it out so that it looked like I was eating but that I wasn't. Or at dinner, kind of like skirting around my food and moving it around to make it look like that I was eating but that I wasn't. But I was eating enough to still maintain a healthy body.

This is radio, and we haven't talked about this week, listeners can't see you. Right. You would have an average body image. I mean, if we took you to the doctor, they would say you're where you ought to be for a woman your age.

Boy, Bob, that was a good way to say it. Has that always been the case? Yes, and insecurity does not discriminate. Insecurity in who we are and in how our body is shaped is not based on our size. And that is why it is a chasing after the wind in the most specific sense that we will fight and we will fight and we will fight to love how we look or get to the place where we think our body is just right and we'll never get there because it doesn't exist. So it's as much an issue for thin women as it is for women who are overweight.

Yes, absolutely. And does confident mom or confident man or woman, does it mean that when I look in the mirror, I would be satisfied, that there wouldn't be any sense of, oh, I wish, you know, I could get a little of that jiggle gone, I wish I could. Is that completely gone if I'm confident? It's contentment. It's contentment right where you are. And accepting the fact that if health is something in your life, like getting your body to a healthier, stronger place, if that's a pursuit that you feel called to, then fine, but it's not based on what you see in the mirror.

It's based on a pursuit to grow in an area of your life that you think needs growing and not based on what you see. When somebody says to you, your husband or a girlfriend says, you look, have you lost weight? You look amazing. Oh, you've got this look, I wish the listeners could see. Boy, she responded. Yes. Boom. You got this furious look on your face. I know. I can say this because I don't have to see any of the people that I'm talking to.

I really have a hard time with that statement. And in college, I had become addicted to dieting pills. I had become addicted to them because I was afraid to stop taking them, what would happen to me. And so I decided to pursue counseling to help battle that and he said something to me that I will never forget. He said, you need to go home to your family and you need to ask them not to say anything about your appearance, positive or negative, because the positive compliments about how you look only feed your insecurity, that you have to constantly be working at the way that you look. Because if you stop and people stop complimenting you, that means that you've failed or that means that you've gotten too heavy or something like that.

Those statements when people say or I hear them say, it's hard for me and I have to navigate the waters to see if it's an opportunity for me to be able to share some of the things that God has talked to me about. But that is not a compliment that I will ever give because I don't know where that person's heart is and I don't know what that compliment would do to them. So it's not like I don't notice or that you don't acknowledge, you know, losing weight, gaining weight is a part of this side of heaven. I'm pretty sure we won't get it down until we get our perfect bodies, right?

So I'm not going to acknowledge that that's not something that happens, but it's not something that I'm going to take time to compliment in a person because I don't know what that could do to them. So how does a believer, how does a Christian view this aspect of their life? What should my motivation be to honor God, to be healthy in terms of physical? And I think that's a great question and it's one that I have to track tenderly because all of our convictions are different. What you, Dave, are convicted about your body and how you want to take care of it is different than mine.

And that's okay. And I don't believe that it has to look the same for everybody. And you know, the Bible talks about if what body you eat causes somebody else to stumble. So it is okay that my conviction about eating is different than yours, but I want to protect that in me and in you to not pass that around. So for me, I'm very consciously aware that it is hard for me when I'm sitting next to a woman eating a salad without salad dressing. That reminds me of all my past hurt and failure of growing up thinking that that is the right way to be as a woman, to eat a salad with no salad dressing. So I acknowledge that in myself and that's something that I have to constantly be prayerful about. And so I am aware of the way that I am talking about food when I'm around other women. But that doesn't mean to say that I think that her eating a salad with no salad dressing is bad for her or that that's a wrong choice.

But I just acknowledge the fact that that is a choice that people are watching and noticing and there could be some hurt or insecurity that that rises up. You know, I was thinking it's very interesting in the NFL, in the National Football League, because in every locker room, at least in Detroit, it's in the center of our locker room is a scale. And every day, every player has to get weighed. But here's why.

It isn't how they look. It's mission. We're trying to win a Super Bowl. You need to be at a certain weight to help us do that. You know that.

We know that. So we have a common goal. So they step on that scale. There's no body image in a lot of those guys. They're not thinking I look good or not look good, although it's dominant. But they're thinking this number here is important for my mission. And so it hit me just as you were talking.

Tell me if I'm right or wrong. As a Christian, it could be our motivation is I'm a soldier. We're soldiers on mission. And I should think about food and even body image in that aspect. It's missional.

So I'm not eating less or eating more or working out just to look good. But I'm in a battle. I want to serve God as best I can. So I want to watch what I'm doing with my body so I can be a great soldier. Does that make sense? Oh, that's a great perspective. Our bodies are for using, right? We have work to do. And God has given us these body parts to use them. And so, yeah, I think that is a great perspective to have.

That is our goal and that is our desire to be able to work well with what God has given us, not because of what it looks like, but because of what it can do when it's strong and healthy. Let me go to the mom part of this and raising your daughter. When your daughter was three or four years old, what kinds of things were you doing at that stage in her life to try to sow seeds of confidence and try to make sure that body image wasn't going to show up as a big deal ten years in the future? When my daughter was three and four, I was really practicing working on my confidence and making sure I was getting that down and then constantly sharing with her about how amazing God created her in all of the ways that He created her, in her gifts and in her talents and in her personality and really just having that be the baseline of our conversations and then really just practicing my own confidence.

I think those were really great practicing years. When friends would say, your parents or friends would say, oh, sweetheart, you look so cute. Yeah.

Did you just let that go? Yeah, cute is fine to me. Skinny, larger, heavier, you look so small. These are the things that I kind of get Mama Bear about. And so I'm tender to only interject when I feel like it could be a really damaging statement to her, but thankfully my family and extended family, because extended family for me growing up was a really hard place, right, because we can do the work in our nuclear family that sometimes doesn't extend when we're with extended family. And so I am particular about what is said about my girls, but I think because I was doing that when she's three and four, we've gotten the practice down.

Okay. When she went into elementary school and now all of a sudden there's comparison going on, now all of a sudden other kids are dressed in certain ways, did you start to see seeds of this developing in her own psyche and did you start to speak to her on that? So one of the things that I think is important for us as moms is to be willing to own our own stories and to talk to our girls about our stories. So I try to use age-appropriate stories from my own life to engage with conversations with her. You know, when she's six, remembering some of my experiences from when I was six or seven and then bringing up the topic of conversation to even say something along the lines of like, you know, honey, you might start hearing ways that people might talk about themselves that, you know, is not very confident or, you know, maybe that they don't love certain things about themselves. I'm like, you can be a light to them to tell them how awesome that they are, but just also know that that is not something that you have to take on and believe and just have kind of like open conversations. And of course, you know, as they get older, you get the eye roll. I love that you're opening that door. And in your book, you have signs your daughter is struggling or thinking about it.

What are some of those signs? It gets really easy in parenting as our kids were so little, and then all of a sudden they get to their tweens or their teens and they're just like fine sitting in their room. You're like, oh, this is so peaceful.

Oh, wait, I should probably go talk to them. And just I really try to make constant popping ins because isolation in your room is a really big deal. I used to do that. That's the place where I struggled.

That's the place where I was secretly looking up things. And so really just being present and really acknowledging where my daughter is going on any technology that she has. Really focusing in on pictures of physically fit people or constantly seeing people dressed in certain ways can be damaging to our security. And so keeping tabs on if those are the types of things our girls are focusing on.

So with that, an over obsession with kind of like stars and what they're wearing and doing. Coming from a place where your daughter has always had joy in eating. And then all of a sudden, you know, no, I don't want that or no, I'll pass on that. That's not necessarily right.

These are not like red alert. These are like, hmm, you know, should I draw in there as a mom turning down the snack that they've always had. Just acknowledging any changes in what they're eating and choices and also the way that they talk about themselves.

Right. And the way that they talk about other young women. And to just pay attention to these indicators and to enter in as moms. Because I'm noticing that as the kids grow up, we really do have to work hard to interject ourselves into situations. It's kind of easy just to be passive and to not do anything about it. But noticing and being prayerful, I'm always asking God to help me see the times when I need to enter in as a mom and talk to her about this topic.

What I've seen, I have a best friend who has had total freedom in this area. And it's so unusual to see a woman in freedom. The first time we went out to eat, she's from the South.

And here I am with my salad, no dressing. And she's eating chicken fried steak. And I'm thinking, they're like, what in the world? And she looks beautiful. She's great. The next time we go out, she gets this pasta with this creamy sauce, which for me, I'm like, what is happening? And so she looks at me and she goes, why do you eat like that? And I said, it's so interesting you asked that because I'm thinking the same thing. Do you not worry about what you eat? She goes, I've never worried about what I eat. Do you? And I'm thinking, every woman in America worries about this.

Are you kidding me? But it was so fascinating for me to watch her raise her three daughters because she became this magnet. She's beautiful and yet not focused on her external beauty.

It was more internal. And all of her daughter's friends, they wanted to be with her. They wanted to know, like, how does she have this freedom and she doesn't worry or talk about? She doesn't have a scale. And I saw her daughters have that freedom too.

And I don't think we realize how much pressure our young girls are under and how, as we're confident, it's like this magnet that draws other women in and they're asking, where do you find that confidence? Well, somebody's listening to that and going, she must have a hyper metabolism or something because if I just think about chicken fried steak and pasta with cream sauce, I add five pounds thinking about it. And she did. I guess she got older and her body was changing. She did kind of have a little bit more of a regulation on what she ate, but it never, here's the difference.

It didn't consume her. And she would get on me when I would say, oh, my pants are too tight. I need to lose some weight.

She'd really get on me and I'd have this conversation. I said, I want you to think about this because it's like a balance beam for me. If I'm consumed with food and I'm dieting all the time, I'm consumed with that. But if I'm eating so much, my food becomes an idol. My food becomes, I don't have any control of it. For me, it's almost, is God in control?

Because one of the fruit of the Spirit is self-control. So, it's almost being too overextended either way. I like to be in the middle where I'm not thinking about it very much.

Does that make sense? Absolutely. And is there a balance?

Yes, but I think what balance looks like for every person is different. Your balance might look different than my balance, but it is, there needs to be joy in the food, right? Freedom. Jesus had lots of joyful meals, right? He could have given us any way to nourish our bodies. He gave us food.

And so, really just acknowledging that God gave us the food as a gift and to figure out in my life how I can treat food like a gift and model it that way. Your oldest is 12. Mm hmm. And some would say, you ain't seen nothing yet. Oh, yeah. When it comes to – That's right. This battle of confidence. Right. I mean, most 11- and 12-year-olds are confident, it's junior high. Right.

There are people where confidence starts to get shaken in a huge way. Yep. You did youth ministry for years, so you know a little bit about this, but these weren't your daughters going through it.

This is other people's daughters going through it. Right. Are you ready for the next six years? I am as ready as I can be. And I've acknowledged the fact, she's in sixth grade now, so she is in middle school, but I realize that this is not going to be perfect and that there are going to be ups and downs. But I needed to be as ready as I could be with tools in my tool belt so that when she comes to me and she says, I think I'm fat.

Mm hmm. Or when she comes to me and says, I think so and so, my class is fat. I'm ready for that, and I'm prayed up for that, and I acknowledge that we can get through this, and I have things that I can offer to her.

I have tools in my tool belt, and I have protected our home as best that I possibly could be with these types of things to be ready for it. So when she's 15 and you're sitting down for family dinner and you say, here, have some potatoes, and she says, no, no potatoes. Yeah. And that's all she says.

Right. Do you say, I better have a conversation with her or you just let that go? I think I don't say anything at that moment. I think that that's where me and I think lots of other moms and women would agree, that's when we put foot in mouth, when we just immediately react. And so definitely putting some time between the conversation to have some prayer time. But yeah, I do think that I would have a conversation with her about that and a open-ended conversation. And listen, in my particular circumstance with my daughter, she knows my things, right? We're very schooled on these types of conversations. We started having them, and so to me coming up to her and asking her, I'm just wondering why you chose not to have potatoes? Are you struggling in any way?

What are your thoughts about the potatoes? These will not surprise her. But not being afraid to ask those questions and knowing that God is going to have a story for her and it's not the end of her story, but not being discouraged by that.

And I do believe that there can be a generational shift in this, and that is a big reason why I wrote this book, was because I do believe that a generational change is possible. And that there's a rising up of young women in our church that can view their bodies the way Christ created us to view our bodies, which is that in His image. And let's assume that she maintains a healthy weight throughout her junior high and senior high years. As we said earlier, that doesn't mean that body image is not an issue for her. So, what are kind of the regular check-ins you'll be doing with her during these years, just to see how is she thinking about her own beauty and her own body image? Clothes shopping is one, just acknowledging both of our comfort levels with clothes shopping, being aware of when we grow out of clothes, even for ourselves, right? Like, I'm not going to come in to her and say, I need to get those jeans out of your room.

But acknowledging, okay, we're going to schedule a time to go clothes shopping and get some new things. I think also paying attention to her interactions with her friends. For her 12-year-old birthday party, I had nine junior high girls over at my house, and that was just fascinating.

I bet. It was so fun, but really listening to how they're talking to one another. And there was one particular thing that happened that I was able to witness, that I didn't say anything at the time, but I rolled back around. Both her and her best friend had lingered after the party, and I had a conversation with them about one thing that I had heard her friend say. And just to make her aware of certain ways that she maybe should think of responding to her if you hear something said like that or not. What was it? Her friend told an inappropriate joke that I don't even think that her friend knew was an inappropriate joke. And I don't think that any of her friends knew that her friend tells inappropriate jokes. But it's something that if she had repeated to somebody else or didn't even realize what she was saying. And so I just wanted to, and I loved they were having these conversations in front of me, and I wanted to make sure not to at that moment say, what in the world?

You can't say that. But to not ignore it. And yet, you know, as they go into high school, so much of their body image and how they think about it will be determined by their friends. How do you balance that?

I hope that that's not true. Yeah. You give them the confidence. That they have places where that they've heard other things regularly, over time and consistently, and to talk honestly about it. Like if your daughter comes to you or my daughter comes to me and says, I think I'm fat, instead of just saying you are not fat, you're beautiful. Saying, I am so sorry that you feel like that. You know, sometimes I feel like that too.

And then offering her the opportunity to maybe share why she feels like that she's fat and reminding her that I've been where that she's instead of just shutting it down. Right. Don't feel like that. Stop feeling like that. Offering her the opportunity to elaborate a little bit as to where that root feeling comes from. I think to giving our kids something bigger to live for.

Yeah. It's not just about what they look like or the size pants they're wearing. It's that God created you in a way to do something on purpose for the kingdom, to expand his kingdom. It's giving them vision for how God will use their gifts and strengths. And I think that that takes our eyes off of ourselves. That's good for me to know, not just me, but for our kids too. I think that's important.

Well, and to give your kids a heads up as they head into these years and be able to say, sweetheart, look, you're going to have friends who are going to be so focused on their appearance and their weight. And you're going to hear these things, and it's going to come your way. And what you need to know is that there's a lot of insecurity there. They're finding their value and their worth in the wrong things. And when you hear those things, you need to pray for those friends of yours, and you need to understand they're not thinking right, that God says our worth and our value is in these things. I think helping your kids know these conversations are around the corner so that when it happens, they go, mom told me there were going to be conversations like this. And then they're alert to it, and they go, oh, I guess maybe mom does know what she's talking about from time to time. I think the strategies you've outlined here are so helpful for moms. But again, the big strategy is you've got to start with yourself and say, do I have the right way of thinking?

Do I have a God-based confidence that my appearance is not what's going to define me as a woman, as a person? And I'm grateful for the time we've been able to spend talking about this. Thank you for being here. Thanks, Bob. And I would like to just say, if it is possible for me, if God can do that in me, this little insecure teenager that really hated the way she looks, I really believe that it's possible for anybody.

That's a good word. Thank you. And we hope God's going to do it for a lot of people who have been listening this week. We hope a lot of them will get your book. In fact, we're making your book available this week to listeners who can help support the ministry with a donation. Your ongoing support of Family Life Today is what makes these kinds of conversations possible. So if you can go to familylifetoday.com and make a donation of any amount or call us at 1-800-FL-TODAY and donate, we'll send you Maria's book as our way of saying thank you for supporting this ministry. Go to familylifetoday.com, make an online donation, and ask for a copy of Maria Furlough's book, Confident Moms, Confident Daughters, or call 1-800-FL-TODAY, make your donation by phone, and again, ask for a copy of the book we've been talking about on the radio this week. We're happy to send it to you, and we're so grateful for your support, particularly in these times, because this has been a stressful season for many of us. I'm sure that's true for your local church, other ministries like Family Life Today.

Whatever you can do to be generous and support those ministries that God is using in your life, trust me, they will be grateful. I know we will be grateful for whatever you're able to do to help support Family Life Today in this season. Now tomorrow, Barbara Rainey is going to join us. She's got some thoughts on prayer and how we need to maybe rethink the way we pray. I hope you can join us for that conversation. I want to thank our engineer today, Keith Lynch, along with our entire broadcast production team. On behalf of our hosts, Dave and Anne Wilson, I'm Bob Lapine. We'll see you back next time for another edition of Family Life Today. Family Life Today is a production of Family Life of Little Rock, Arkansas, a crew ministry. Help for today. Hope for tomorrow.