Responsibility and Truth

As a kid I'd eat my cereal every morning and read the comics. I remember reading the "Cathy" comic and shaking my head, annoyed because I didn't find it funny. Or clever. Or cute. Sometimes I'd wonder if maybe I just didn't get it. Maybe, I thought, maybe when I was older, I would just get it.

Today I crossed a threshold. Bit by bit I've been coming to a sad conclusion over the last year or so and today, as I verbalized the thought in between sobs to my mother over the phone, I didn't like it at all.

"I'm unhappy with my body."

That was what I said to her. I was driving home from the gym, and the scale in the locker room, and the mirrors in the room where classes are held. I told her that I've been aware that I've gained some weight and I haven't loved that fact, but I've still just never cared. I generally eat healthily, I'm not a total lump and my husband thinks I'm beautiful. It's never been important to me and I've always been happy with what I saw in the mirror. It was almost as if the neural connections from my brain to my eyes had been rewired so that my understanding and my vision suddenly didn't cooperate.

Today's events make me feel like I've left a certain realm of existence-the last portion in my life that was free of worry or concern has now been contaminated. I know this is all a bit melodramatic, but seriously, I'm having flashbacks to my adolescence!! You know those moments? Like when you discovered that your dad is a guy. He's a person. Not just "Dad." Or when you saw crime and terror on the news and the world kind of burst around you as you were forced to know that there is a lot of bad in the world? That was my moment today. I didn't want to care, or to cry or to dislike what I saw in the mirror-but the image made me so...unhappy.

There are two parts to the end of this sob story. Part one is this: I have been given a gift! Not everyone has two working legs, two working lungs, a good immune system, strong muscles...I have a responsibility to be a good steward of this gift. I GET to be responsible for this. I could most certainly eat more healthily and be more dilligent about excercise. I could/can/will be. I absolutely accept that I have not been entirely respectful of the flesh in which I reside. I see it as a spiritual discipline in which I would LOVE to grow more. I look forward to this venture and the different facets it will grow in my friendship with my Savior!

Part two is this: The "moment" I had today may be something that we dismiss as being a part of life that all women experience at one point or another, but I'm choosing not to dismiss it as that. I choose rather to accept that I listened to a lie. The lie I was told was that my arms should look more like the girl's on T.V. and my pant size should be the same as hers and, "I am such a loser for not exercising as well as she did." I've allowed lies like these to creep in around me. The Father of Lies has used many outlets to tell me this nonsense and I've listened.

Here is the Truth: I am a daughter of the living God. He has a plan for me and intentions for EVERY portion of my life-including my body. He cherishes me so, so much. He can work in and through me TODAY. He desires that I be filled with His truth so that I can know the joy He designed for me to know. He gave us His baby boy so that I could exist without guilt or shame. It's a lot of truth to really know and get but I'm so thankful that it was made clearer to me today!

So I may have left childhood a bit further behind with some new realizations, and there are definitely new ways I will relate to women, more jokes I will "get," and more conditions to which I can empathize, but I still think that "Cathy" is the lamest comic ever. Forgive me, Ms. Guisewite.