You Are Not the Elephant in the Room

Do you struggle with a challenge you let make you feel exposed and bad about yourself?

I do. I’m overweight.

The Elephant in the Room Syndrome

My apologies to elephants, but if you, like me, struggle with a challenge other people can readily identify, you might sometimes feel like you’re the elephant in the room. You don’t imagine others see an ordinary, plain pachyderm. You’re not shy little Dumbo. No, you assume you’re a twenty-feet-tall, double-wide, neon-bright garish creature, with a “Here I am, shameful me!” sign hanging from your tusks. Another sign hanging from your tail says, “Please don’t look at me!” You’re sure everyone reads it with disgust or pity as you hasten out the door to a safer place. They just never said anything to you because that would be rude, and they don’t want to hurt your feelings. (Unless a three-year-old has no problem pointing out what you wish you could hide, loud enough for all the world to hear.)

If only this syndrome were funny. It’s not.

Assigning and Accepting Elephant Status

My favorite excuse for the poor eating habits that led to so much weight gain first developed when my three children needed so much of my attention and daily stress was high. I remember thinking, I’ll eat whatever I want because it’s something I can do just for me. I’m going to be overweight. It’s too hard not to be. I don’t know why I thought this self-centered, defeatist assignment was legitimate, but I stuck with it off and on for many years.

Too many times to count, I decided to get on with it and lose weight. But having achieved a good weight several times over the decades only to regain at least some of it, I can unequivocally declare that losing weight is simple yet hardly easy.

Nor is maintaining a good weight a snap. One of the times I got into my ideal weight range, I ran into a man I hadn’t seen for a long time. I’ll call him Judd. He’d always been a fitness guru, and after congratulating me on my successful weight loss, he said, “Are you going to gain it back?” That was kind of three-year-old-rude of him, but I replied “No!” Why did I think that declaration would protect me from excuses? Eventually, I was back at pachyderm status, accepting I was an elephant-sized failure.

Judd would think so, right?

Many struggles can be overcome, but what if a challenge is impossible to overcome short of a miracle God might choose not to grant? (Think of the apostle Paul’s “thorn.”) Unfortunately, even then we can assign to ourselves and accept elephant status.

You Are Not the Elephant in the Room

No matter how you feel, no matter your failures, you are not the elephant in any room. Neither am I. We belong to a God who claims we’re his workmanship, his masterpiece (Ephesians 2:10, ESV and NLT). He also knows the struggles that can make us feel bad about ourselves, even when we fail to do something about them when we can. He doesn’t withhold his love and acceptance. He roots for us and offers support, strength, and wisdom.

Even more important, when our struggle isn’t overcome for some reason we can’t determine or help, God is there. We just need to acknowledge his presence.

The Bible Tells Us So

Read these familiar verses from the English Standard Version of the Bible:

• Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go. (Joshua 1:9)
• Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. (Proverbs 3:5)
• God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 4:19)
• [The Lord] will be with you; he will not leave you or forsake you. Do not fear or be dismayed. (Deuteronomy 31:8)
• [Cast] all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you. (1 Peter 5:7)
• “You are the light of the world.” (Matthew 5:14)

I don’t see “consider yourself the elephant in the room” in any of those verses, or anywhere else in the Bible. Still, maintaining legitimate self-esteem can be difficult. Seeing what we let tip us into low spirits must be amazingly sad to God, but I think he understands why we sometimes, in our human frailty, feel bad about ourselves. We take failure—real or imagined—to heart so deeply that we foolishly choose to live with excuses or debilitating shame and embarrassment. We think of ourselves as, well, elephants.

God wants us to be courageous, brave, trusting. He wants us to declare, “I am not an elephant in the room; I am a child of God. With his help, I can change what’s possible to change, and with his help, I can live abundantly with what might never change. I can be light.”

Let God Shape You for Every Room

As I write, I’m a mere week into a renewed effort for better health. I’m reducing calories, making better food choices, and moving more. Of course, the scales show only a slight result so far, but I’ve been thinking about how I can’t live as though I’m the elephant in the room and succeed. That mindset will sink me. Who I believe myself to be must be shaped by allowing God to continue molding the whole of me, not shaped how I feel about the extra pounds I carry.

No matter your challenge and how you sometimes feel about yourself, you are not the elephant in the room. Grab hold of the promises in God’s Word. Then, with his help, change what you can or accept what you cannot change, and be a light—in every room.

Jean Kavich Bloom is a champion coffee drinker and a freelance editor and writer for Christian publishers and ministries. She doesn’t garden, bake, or knit, but insists playing Scrabble is exactly the same thing. Jean and her husband, Cal, live in central Indiana. They have three children (plus two who married in) and five grandchildren. She blogs at bloominwordstoo.blogspot.com.

Photograph © Chang Liu, used with permission