What Has Your Body Endured?

I don’t always like looking at old pictures of myself. Mainly because I start to compare myself to myself. I see the weight I’ve gained since then or the tightness of my skin when I was 20. When I look at old pictures my immediate reaction is to think I’m not as small, as cute, as young, as ________. You name it.

We are quick to criticize our own bodies, aren’t we? The battle comes at us full force when we look in the mirror, scroll through our phones, or when we walk out the front door. We start comparing our shape and frame to a famous influencer or to our 21-year-old bodies and say, we aren’t enough.

My sister said something to me that made me rethink my perspective. While our default is to use guilt-ridden criticism to impact our bodies — I hate my legs, my hips are too wide, my face looks too round — it’s kindness to our bodies that truly transforms. And we all know how often we underestimate the power of kindness. Here are my sister’s words. I pray they move you to be kind to your body as you navigate how you see and treat it. 

When it comes to the way we view and treat our bodies ,“we as women try to take on the world because we think we should. The thing is, we need to learn how to be proud of what our bodies have gone through. Viv, your body has endured childhood trauma, living in China, and has survived childbirth. It continues to survive stress and heartache. If your body has handled all that through the years, we should celebrate it’s resilience and treat it with gratefulness."
Now I pose these questions to you:

What has your body endured?
How can you show kindness to it?
Can you thank your body for it’s resilience? 

To help you put this kind of gratitude into practice, I’ve attached a sticky note above for you to steal and tape to your bathroom or bedroom mirror! Above all else, we can pray for the eyes to see our bodies through the eyes of our Creator. That alone can shift our perspective from despair to hope each and every day.

God, help me see my body how you see it. I pray for the words to speak gratitude and life over the body you gave me. Help me see my scars, my shape, and my design the way you do . Help me treat my body with respect and care. Just like I would treat a painter’s painting, give me ideas on how to care for my body as your creation.

Amen.