What Is The Full Well Project?
My husband likes to use this analogy: We’re all born blank canvases. As we grow and get closer to God, he’s making us into his masterpiece—His work of art. There are truths about us that are not up for debate. Solid truths about what God said about who we are and who we are in relation to Him. With our experiences in life, we can begin to lose sight of ourselves. People paint over our canvases with their hurtful words that stain and cover up our beauty. We get blurry vision when we believe we’re less than God says we are. The world’s ridiculous standards of beauty and success will have us believing the worst about ourselves—have us thinking that don’t measure up and that we aren’t good enough. We may even envy other masterpieces that we have our eyes on and think it’s foolish for us to even show our true selves… or the opposite could be true. Either way, it’s flawed.
Our canvases are marred by people or ourselves, but we take it as truth as if God himself painted the words loser, ugly, unqualified, failure, or any other hateful word on our canvas and we automatically take it as truth.
The truth is that those marks and words are lies. They may cover up the truth, but the truth is always there. It never goes anywhere. Our canvases get marked up and dented on purpose and sometimes unintentionally by imperfect people. Those people and their opinions are not our standard and they can’t hold a candle to the standards of God.
I struggled and still struggle to this day with low self-esteem and low self-worth. Like a lot of people, I was bullied as a child and suffered a lot of heartache and abandonment growing up and going through life. I was mistreated by friends and family and had my heart broken a few times by some of my closest friends and had my heart shattered by exes. Their words were all I could hear about myself. How they treated me was how I measured my self worth. I wasn’t beautiful. I wasn’t talented. I wasn’t worth it. I wasn’t worth staying around for. I was a joke. I wasn’t loved.
Moving through life I realized that I wasn’t alone in this struggle with self esteem. My friends and family could not see the greatness of who they were and it broke my heart. I knew for a fact that these people were absolutely incredible, but because of their experiences in life, they could no longer see the truth. They could no longer see that they, too, were masterpieces.
This made me question if God was holding up a mirror to my thinking. It made me question how this made God feel, that this creation that He created could not see the beauty that he saw.
So, I looked for truth in His Word. I asked plenty of questions:
“Who am I?”
“Is there more?”
“Who is God?”
“What does God say about me?”
I’d write down the answers and began the arduous task of saying them out loud to myself, to my face… with no exceptions, ifs, ands, or buts. To this day it’s still difficult to hear and still difficult to believe sometimes. I need constant reminding of the Truth.
I got an idea to make a simple video to share the truths that I was learning and the truths that everyone needs to hear and be reminded of. A got a few of my closest friends together to spread the message that we are beautiful, we are wonderful, we are works of art, we are forgiven, and most importantly, we are loved unconditionally.
We were honest about some of the insecurities we face and lies that we struggle with letting go of, and then combated those lies with the truths found in scripture, and truths we have come to learn about ourselves.
Why “The Full Well Project”?
Some people have asked me to explain the name “The Full Well Project”. While creating our first video, the scripture I used came from Psalm 139:13-14. The end of that scripture has many translations of the same verse;
“…And I know this very well”
“…right well”
“…how well I know it…”
These are only a few versions that I saw. Though, the version that stuck out to me the most was the NIV version that says:
“I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.”
It was strong and communicated the goal that I would hope for myself, for anyone else and for The Full Well Project. I want this to help people to get to a place where we know who we are, who God is and who we are to be to other people and to know that full well.
Since starting in 2014, we have put out media on forgiveness and identity. We had “Love Day” in 2014, which really was a weekend long event. On Saturday, we had a cook out where people came out, ate, played games, and donated food and money for the event that was held on that Sunday.
Sunday was out outreach event that took place in Downtown, D.C. We started off by using the donations of money and food we received up until the event by feeding people with sandwiches, chips and water. Afterwards, we went further downtown and passed out love notes to people walking around the city. The notes had messages of hope, self-worth, love and peace backed by scriptural references. Even though it rained, it was an absolutely beautiful day filled with service, love and joy.
We also released merchandise for The Full Well Project that are meant to be conversation starters and reminders of who we are, whose we are, and who God is. On our site we have pins, necklaces, and keychains with affirming words dealing with the identity that Christ gave us.
We also started our LOVED Tee campaign this year. Our LOVED Tees are meant to be conversation starters. The first hope is that the person wearing the Tee would be reminded that they are loved unconditionally. Our second goal is to have other people see the Tee and either ask questions directly or see the hashtag and search for The Full Well Project to learn or be reminded of God’s Love. It’s a perfect way to break the ice and start the conversation about who Christ is and His love for us. Hopefully by the end of the conversation, if the person doesn’t already know Christ, that person will learn about the God that loves them unconditionally.
Our hope is that God will continue to use The Full Well Project as an avenue to spread His message. If not, my prayer is that someone learned of Christ’s love for us or was/would be brought closer to God or reminded of His love. If it is His plan you’ll be seeing more of us soon!
Please keep an eye out for us in 2019 for our Love Day, Love Challenges, Media, and Community Service Events. We have new media being released this month and next month we have our LOVED campaign starting. So keep your eyes peeled!
Thank you for your interest in The Full Well Project. If you would like to show your support, please share our message and goal, purchase your Tee, donate, or pray that God continues to use us. Remember that you are valued and loved by a perfect God and you are a wonderful work of art. Know that full well.
Please feel free to comment, share and support!
Visit The Full Well Project at www.aleciarenece.com/thefullwellproject
To support by purchasing a LOVED Tee or an affirming pin: www.etsy.com/shop/knttd
To watch our very first video “The Full Well Project”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTtIeERzPQQ
To Donate: PayPal TheFullWellProject@gmail.com
Contact: TheFullWellProject@Gmail.com