Our small campus is one filled with beautiful girls smart girls thin girls rich girls busy girls girls who seemingly have it all together. If you look around and try to compare yourself there will always be someone who has a life that seems easier happier or more privileged than your own. There will always be someone with nicer clothes someone whose body looks better in those clothes or someone who has more confidence in that body.
What amazes me — and it never ceases to no matter how many times I hear it — is the story of brokenness insufficiency or anxiety behind each beautiful busy wealthy face. Every single person on this campus has a story that isn’t being told. And not one story is lacking pain or hurt or flaw the kind that makes you love the possessor of the story for who she really is and the way her story resonates so powerfully with your own. Behind our façade of appearances and expectations there is a campus weighed down by sadness anxiety guilt shame poor body image disordered eating and self-injury. There is a campus yearning for healing and freedom and love. I’ve heard it time and time again throughout my career at Pepperdine — in classes in small groups in Bible studies and now through Wonderfully Made — the burdens that are being carried and the desire to lay them down.
We’re never going to find healing just by covering up our wounds or hiding them from a community of outward perfection. We’re never going to be able to be those vessels of God’s will that we were created to be if we continue to harbor resentment towards ourselves trying to be someone different. There is something so powerful so inspirational about a truly authentic community — the presence of which is so apparently needed at Pepperdine and so readily available through Wonderfully Made.
Wonderfully Made is a student-led women’s ministry on campus designed to create an open and honest community for young women seeking their worth in the Lord. A small yet powerful force of truth and light on the Pepperdine campus Wonderfully Made began with a leadership team of eight women and has grown to more than 30 girls on campus.
As a leadership team we all come from differing pasts of brokenness and a unique understanding of God’s grace and purpose and healing in our lives. Wonderfully Made brought us together at a time when we needed it most — the authentic community the hope and freedom of living in God’s grace and the truth that we have been made wonderfully by a wonderful God and with a wonderful purpose in mind. We hope that our mission will spread into the Pepperdine community creating a safer space for women to thrive during their time at Pepperdine.
Based on the words in Psalm 139:14 “I praise you for I am fearfully and wonderfully made Wonderfully Made was founded by Allie Marie Smith, a former Pepperdine student, who saw the power and truth of those words and the need for young women to hear and believe them. The Pepperdine chapter was founded in the fall of this year and has been growing steadily. Any girl on campus can be a part of it. Each month we put on a coffee house called Herstory with musical performances and a testimonial by a young woman within or outside of the Pepperdine community. These stories are reminders that we are not alone in our brokenness and that we can rest in the hope of God’s grace and ability to provide us with healing. Every week, we have a Girls in Action (GIA) event in which we get together to do something active, whether it be taking a hike in the Malibu mountainside, doing community service together, or practicing yoga on Alumni Field. These outings provide opportunities for all of us to get to know one another in a fun and relaxed setting while witnessing the beauty of God’s creation.
This semester we have started one of the core aspects of our ministry, two compelling small groups being held weekly on Monday and Thursday nights. One group is studying Brennan Manning’s The Ragamuffin Gospel and the other is what’s called a HEAL group, a group focused on Allie Marie Smith’s book HEAL: Healthy Eating Abundant Living.” HEAL is an invaluable workbook designed to help young women make peace with food and their bodies and to find freedom in living the abundant life God has planned for them. It is in these small groups that the process of healing is taking place and where the transparency we’ve been lacking up until now is making a real difference on our campus.
At Pepperdine we spread ourselves thin with commitments and activities but what Wonderfully Made needs most for the future is a team of leaders willing to make the ministry a priority so that it can become a group increasingly equipped to meet the many needs of the many young women on our campus. Currently we are taking applications for leaders for the upcoming year. If you are interested in getting involved either for the remainder of the semester or for next year please contact Caitlin Cury at caitlin.e.cury@pepperdine.edu.
Regardless of where you’re coming from know that Wonderfully Made is eager to serve all women of Pepperdine despite any flaws weaknesses or insufficiencies you see in yourself. Rest assured we see the same flaws in ourselves but we are learning to love ourselves through the lens of God’s love taking it one moment at a time and best of all journeying together with loving and inspiring women.