Tag: spirituality

What The Ultrasound Didn’t Show

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I have been working on a very different post, about how I’ve transitioning from one eating plan to a different one and why and how it’s going. But this morning, a Facebook memory popped up from 5 years ago, and it changed my direction. The other post can wait a few days.

Baby shower

Five years ago this morning, I was wrapped in pure joy. I was freshly turned 41, very pregnant with my longed-for rainbow baby, and honored with a lovely, overwhelmingly generous baby shower by my home church, surrounded by supportive women, some of whom had known me since I was 2 years old. Glorious. (And that’s my sweet, excited mama by my side).

Today, exactly five years later, I got up early on this holiday weekend morning, threw on the first available pair of shorts and a t-shirt, ran a brush through my dirty hair, and left the house with a notebook, an iPad, and a grim determination to get some desperately needed alone time. I was supposed to be having it in my jammies at home, leisurely flipping through magazines and listening to the birds. Instead, my daughter threw a colossal tantrum, my husband had to rearrange the special plans he’d made for an outing with her, and my choice was to feel grounded at home myself or “run away” before my alone-time, sanity-preserving window closed. With my husband’s blessing, I ran.

Did I go off to a salon and decompress with my toes in swirling bubbles? Go on a shopping spree? Sip coffee in a hip, comfy coffeehouse chair? Nope. Inconveniently, we have recently set out on a journey to be debt-free, and my “blow money” budget was already spent up for this month. So in the interest of fiscal responsibility, I drove to the parking lot of a closed business to borrow their wi-fi so I could watch a video from a parenting series literally titled “Have a Different Child By Friday.”

I really couldn’t have anticipated this at that shower. We knew so many things before her birth – we’d seen her face and her gender and the chambers of her heart from her ultrasound, we tracked her development size week by week relative to various fruits and vegetables thanks to a prenatal app, we’d even chosen her name years before. But with any pregnancy there is no way to know ahead of time the one thing that would actually truly be useful information: their personality.

You can’t possibly know what will make them laugh and what will make them dig in their heels. What they’ll absorb easily and what will be hard for them to understand. And most importantly – you can’t know how very much your own strengths and so-human flaws will be reflected in their little life. I shared about this a bit before I went back to work from maternity leave (you can read that post here), but at 11 weeks old, she still wasn’t offering up a real glimpse of who she might be.

My daughter is bright, funny, and gives the best hugs and kisses. She is extraordinarily observant and loves art and books and our kitty and dresses and glitter. And she has what I have to believe is actually a 2-child’s-worth dose of stubbornness and a highly charged sense of outrage when challenge is presented to her own ideas,  which she might possibly have gotten from me and then amplified it. She will set the world on fire one day, and I pray over her daily that she will allow that strength to be used as a mighty woman of God as she grows up.

Really though, the biggest thing I didn’t know at that shower five years ago was that I’d be challenged to grow up myself. I’d spent over four decades learning myself, just to be beautifully, and possibly humorously from God’s perspective, reminded that in no way do I know it all, can do it all, or can control it all. When I’m stressed out and wonder if I’m doing any of this right, that reminder can feel like a curse. Oh, but it isn’t. It’s a gift.

How much more clearly can I be brought to understand God’s great, infinitely gracious, patient love for me (and for those around me whose deservedness of grace I may be tempted to measure) than to be called on to show that grace, patience, and guidance to my daughter? Today is just a day. There will be so many more; more opportunities for laughter and strength and remembering that the loudest lesson I teach is my own actions. Of course I feel inadequate to the task. I am! But He isn’t, and I can trust Him, with her and with myself. Thank you Lord.

“For I know the plans I have for you,” says the Lord. “They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.” Jeremiah 29:11

Inside Out

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I’ve always been some degree of overweight as an adult. To be honest, sometimes it bothered me and sometimes it didn’t. When those degrees notched up a bit I’d try some diet or another, lose maybe 15 pounds and then get bored or overwhelmed and give up. But in 2013, I was catapulted into the most difficult time of my life, and everything took on new shape and form, including myself.

Completely and totally overwhelmed by becoming a new mom at 41, my husband’s job loss, the devastation of our finances, and the stress that accompanied a job change of my own, I turned to food. I was too embarrassed by the turmoil in my life, by my own lack of perfection to reach out for help for a very long time. Over those months I ate my stress, my sorrow, my embarrassment, and my confusion. I knew I was gaining weight but I just didn’t have any emotional resources left to deal with it. I was outraged at how hard my life was and instead of turning to Jesus as I knew to do, I feared what He might show me about my own weaknesses so I gave in to my anger instead and used food to try to numb it. I gained somewhere around 70 pounds in a little more than a year.

Weight is such a complex subject, perhaps especially for women. For me, it was a barrier between my private hell and the world I was sure was judging me; a literal insulation from activities and people around me. It was also a punishment I inflicted on myself for being so angry and having such ugly thoughts.

Once we started doing the hard work of restoring the right order of our lives (a story of grace for another day), I made a decision I hadn’t anticipated. I gave myself permission to stay fat while I dealt with the state of my heart first. I don’t believe there’s a diet plan in the world that would have worked for me until I could forgive myself for my failings. This was a challenging line to walk. I was becoming lighter and freer on the inside and painfully aware my outside did not match. Although no one said anything unkind to me, I imagined a thousand unspoken comments from those around me of, “poor Heidi, if she could just get a grip on her weight.” I did my best to hold my head up and carry on, wanting desperately to shout from the rooftops that these pounds weren’t the real me, that people had no idea of what I’d been through, what I’d almost lost,  what kind of miracles were going on in my spirit and my home. And that I wasn’t undisciplined or out of control as they may have believed.

Finally, last Spring, I knew I was ready to physically take care of myself like I’d been doing emotionally and spiritually. I signed up for Weight Watchers as a 45th birthday present to myself and the pounds started falling off. Eventually, people started to notice, and the compliments started coming. I am thankful for them. They are flattering, and sincere, and appreciated. But sometimes I hear “You look great, you must feel so much better now” and it stops me in my tracks.

They are not wrong. I do, in fact, feel better. I’m stronger, and faster, and lighter. But I can’t help wishing they knew that what makes me feel better is the lightness of heart, the joy, the peace in my home that came before the pounds started to go. That I was ok before I looked like it on the surface. That I was worth complimenting for honoring my marriage vows, for choosing a forgiving spirit, for simply living my life and not giving up. But I can’t ask from people what I haven’t done well myself.

So I think I’m finding my voice now to say this: I was worth it. God says if He cares for even the sparrows my worth is infinitely greater. Who was I to pour hatred over myself and suffocate myself in the walls I thought were shutting everyone else out. And you are worth it too. If you struggle with extra weight, you might choose to lose it, and I will cheer you on.

But first I’ll tell you that you are a priceless treasure. That we are all an amalgamation of strengths and weaknesses, and no one kind is more valuable than the other. I told myself for so long that my capacity to gain weight made me worthless, diminished my value in this world, was a character flaw. I was wrong. The flaws were the destructive attitudes I chose, and as I constantly tell my preschooler, you can choose a new attitude any time. I believe this for me, and I will believe it for you, until you can choose to believe it for yourself.