Tucked

I've spent alot of my life hating myself.

Too fat. Too ugly. Too unlovable. Not enough. Broken. Passed over. Thrown away.

Discarded.

Hating yourself can manifest in alot of ways. Drinking, drugs. Promiscuity.

Food was my drug of choice. It comforted me when I was alone. It was always there.

It numbed me. And I liked that.

Then when I had my babies, I had a huge revelation. I was teaching them how to eat. I was teaching them about their relationship with food. I could decide, more or less, the way they saw food. The way they utilized it.

I have a daughter, who will learn at my hands how to nourish herself. How to see herself. And how to love herself. I was in the absolute throes of self hatred. I had no buisness teaching anyone how to care for themselves.

I needed to get healthy. And I tried conventional means- there isn't a diet I didn't try. I exercised into exhaustion. But I had broken my body beyond it's ability to heal itself and be healthy.

So I had surgery to help my body fix itself.

Nearly 2 years and a hundred pounds lost later, I am confident enough to tell you that I love myself. I love my body for what it can do- how far it has carried me. I love it for housing my babies. And I love it now for the fact that it is easier to move and easier to live in.

I am at a healthy stable weight. I can teach my daughter confidently about nutrition, because I have been educated on what the body needs and wants. She knows that some foods are fo fuel, some for pleasure. She doesn't want to overeat or numb herself with food. This is a victory in many ways.

My body is lighter and it is fueled by quality food.

However, I still struggle.

I carried the majority of my weight in my abdomen, and after losing so much, I am left with an abundance of loose skin. Unlike fat, it doesn't have alot of weight, so it sits low and pulls hard at my back.


There is no high impact cardio I can do without pain. My back aches at the end of the day.

I grappled very hard with the only solution to this problem- abdominoplasty.

In the end, I could do without the surgery to remove the skin. But as I age, it will only get worse. The pain won't go away if I cannot be rid of the source and then build the muscle back up stronger.

So on November 1st, I am scheduled for a tummy tuck.

I'm terrified of the process...because recovery is lengthy and difficult. There is pain involved. Drains, bandages, scarring.

But you know what terrifies me the most? Explaining this to my daughter.

She is 6. She is well aware of everything that goes on with me, and given her caretaker personality, there is no way she will not notice I am in pain.

And also, she has my same body type. Her build, it is just like mine. A little rounder, a little fuller. She is strong and muscular and will never be lithe.

One day she will ask me why I changed my body to not look like hers.

This is what keeps me up at night. That question. What am I teaching her?

How will I teach her to love herself if I am actively changing my body through surgery? Modifying it to be different than what it is?

I don't have the answers.

I do know this- in the end, I am choosing this to better myself. To be more active and to continue to be healthier. I have to pray that she sees this and that in her mind having a healthy momma outweighs the fact that I have undergone 2 surgeries that drastically changed the way I look.

I am hopeful that she will go running with me one day and I will be able to explain to her that all of this was worth it. I hope to be a good example to her of a woman who reaches far past her comfort zone to achieve health.

Ocho

Yesterday was my 8th wedding anniversary.

8 years, 2 kids, countless sleepless nights, loads of laundry, bills, traumatic events, surgeries, fights, and deep conversations together.

I used to think romance was flowers, staring into each others eyes, and talking for hours.

Boy do I know different now.

Romance is wonderful. But it's definition is flawed.

Romance is a man who hangs a fresh towel for me when mine is stinky- because he knows I will just keep using it to save time.

It's a man who will get up and make lunches, kiss little heads good morning, and keep little voices quiet so I can sleep for 30 more minutes.

It's the way he listens to me, no matter how small or big my issue is.

It's the memory of him cradling our babies, changing their diapers, and helping me to sit up and latch them on when I was exhausted from birth.

It's the way I feel when I am wounded, and he is the only one I want.

It's bear hugs and kisses when I am pouty and difficult.

It's the way he makes me laugh when I take him with me to scary doctors appointments.

Romance is laughing until we cry over the stupidest inside jokes.

It's calling him moose and him calling me goober.

It's watching him through the window as I make dinner, and he plays with the kids outside.

Romance is the way my girlfriends all love him and know they can depend on him.

It's waking up to his face after surgery.

It's his hand in mine as we walked the halls and waited for our babies to come.

Romance is a man who holds you as you are ripped apart with contractions and birth. Who looks into your eyes and lies that the pain is almost over, almost over.

It's a man who buries your small miscarried son while you sob.

Romance is someone who loves your soul. Not just the body that houses it.

Mark and I have fought hard for our relationship. It's not always been easy. It's not always been fun. We've both grown and changed. Through babies and job changes and death and grief and sickness we have held firm onto one thing- we will always and forver love each other. Our love will always be the shelter we both run to when the world hurts or confuses us. I know I can always stand behind my husband and he will forever protect me. He knows I will always support and uphold him.

Through the rest of our lives he will infuriate me. I will be stubborn and yell. He will be quiet and laugh at me when I get angry. We will walk through every change together. Every milestone, every moment will be ours to share.

So give me mornings of coffee and the news while our kids run around us. Give me fleeting conversations as we dress in the morning. Give me shared glances across the dinner table. Phone calls from different cities. Give me he tears and the frustration and the coming back together. Give me nights spent apart missing him. And nights together as his hand searches for mine in the dark, even in sleep. Give me laughing until we cry. Tea and television. Foot rubs and back scratches.

Give me him. Forever and for always.

Fierce

There is so much I want to say, and no way to say it. No way to form my mind around what I am feeling.

I'm trying to push through. But these feelings wont leave me alone.

I'm angry. And I'm disgusted with myself.

I thought I was loving in a healthy and productive way, but I have betrayed myself into thinking I was more important than I am.

What the hell is wrong with me? Why can't I get past these issues? Is this going to haunt me for the rest of my life?

Mommy issues. Abandonment issues. Daddy issues.

Jesus.

I've loved how I wanted to be loved, instead of loving others as they NEEDED TO BE LOVED.

I have been overprotective and fucking smothering. I have been fierce when what was called for was gentleness.

Because that's what I always craved- to be protected. To be stood up for. For somebody to stand in front of me and say- no further.

I've imposed myself and my issues into others lives with no regard for their own needs. Just pushed and called it love.

It's so messed up and tangled and wrong I can't even grasp it.

I want to love others. I want to give. I want to be generous.

I want to fix everything and everybody. I want to take the misery away.

But that's not my place.

I can't fix anyone and I can't fix anything but myself.

I've done a poor job of that so far.

And the deluded thing? That I thought I was doing so good, and so well.

I've been pushy and overbearing. Depsite my intentions to just be...loving.

Oh hell.

How do you even fix something like this? How do you fit a round peg into a square hole? How do you love people as they need when you can't see past all that YOU need?

I don't know how else to be.

I've asked for refinement. Begged in my heart for God to change me. Change this heart- make it less fierce. Make it softer. Make it less...myself.

And nothing changes. I still wake every single morning wanting to love the hell out of and fix the hell out of everyone and every situation.

And nobody needs that. And it's not a good quality.

People, in the end, don't want to be saved. They just want to be loved.

But it is...me. For better or for worse. It's me.

It's me.

And you know what else? I'm tired of being strong all the time. I've held so many others up- helped as much as I can. Even if I went overboard.

Sometimes the strongest break the hardest.

I am surely broken.

And I'm weary.

This hurts. It hurts to love and be loyal and not get it in return. It hurts.

Even those that seem strong need to be held. Even the fiercest need comfort.

Even those that can and do defend themselves need protection.

People who love the hardest need to be loved hard too.

But there are seasons in this life. Of loneliness. Of feeling lost. Of feeling as if you will never be whole or right again.

All of these valleys surely lead to peaks. The darkness becomes light.

I'm waiting for the light.

Words

I thought the broken days were behind me.

The days of tears and wounds and the deep deep drowning.

The days of losing time and space and feeling this endless void of nothingness.

Sometimes depression is an oncoming storm,stirring the ocean, riding slowly over the waves towards you.

And sometimes it is a tsnumai, knocking you bodily from your moorings.


I have been rolled through the waves these past few days. Unfurled underwater, staring up through the debris into the twisted image of the sun.

I have felt the sand bneath my hands, the water in my lungs.

I have been pulled into the depths.

And I only have myself to blame.

I've had a catch in my spirit many times these past months, a niggling feeling of unease and of being not right with God.

I've felt it when I opened my mouth with less than kind words.

And when I've kept my mouth shut when I could have spoken.

I've walked, step by step, into being the woman I swore I would not be.

Natural consequences are often fierce and unrelenting.

I have gone back to the prayer I have always dreaded.

"God, if there is anything in me that is not pleasing to you, show me and I will change it."

Being refined is painful. Sorting through, piece by piece, my every mistake, my missed footing, my unconcious part in the wounding of others. Looking at the pain I have caused, with or without intention.

It all hurts. And it's all necessary.

Allowing the surfacing of things I have relentlessly pushed down for months. Bringing them to the light and seeing what I have known but not acknowleged.

I love well, but am overbearing.

I am loyal, but too fierce.

I allow myself to speak of others in their absence as I would not do in their presence.

I harbor resentments and anger.

I panic at the idea of being abandoned.

And on and on.

I don't like the woman I am right now.

What I have heard as I have closed my eyes and quieted my mind these past few days is just two words.

"Cultivate quiet."

I need to sit and look at my life and my actions. I need to look at what kind of friend I am. And what kind of friend I want to be.

I need to look at how I need to be loved. And if I can continue to love the way that I have been, and deal with the inevitable hurt that comes with it.

And above all else, I need to be quiet to learn that my mouth can and should be reigned. That there are words that should not be said. Things that should not be discussed.

Words that should be left only between God and I.


James 3

1Not many of you should become teachers, my fellow believers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly.
2 We all stumble in many ways. Anyone who is never at fault in what they say is perfect, able to keep their whole body in check.
3 When we put bits into the mouths of horses to make them obey us, we can turn the whole animal.
4 Or take ships as an example. Although they are so large and are driven by strong winds, they are steered by a very small rudder wherever the pilot wants to go.
5 Likewise, the tongue is a small part of the body, but it makes great boasts. Consider what a great forest is set on fire by a small spark.
6 The tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole body, sets the whole course of one’s life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell.
7 All kinds of animals, birds, reptiles and sea creatures are being tamed and have been tamed by mankind,
8 but no human being can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison.
9 With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse human beings, who have been made in God’s likeness.
10 Out of the same mouth come praise and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this should not be.
11 Can both fresh water and salt water flow from the same spring?
12 My brothers and sisters, can a fig tree bear olives, or a grapevine bear figs? Neither can a salt spring produce fresh water.