Anybody who has children at home knows that they spend a lot of time in the kitchen. You can fix a meal, serve it, and not twenty minutes later, your children are already thinking about a snack. You go out, and you pack a snack just in case they get hungry. You go to the store and you pack a snack for the cart, so they'll be more content while you shop. All of this time spent with food, not only feeds our children, but sometimes mom ends up eating more than she realizes, and then before you know it, we've gained a few pounds and wonder how it happened, and then we start to tell our bodies how we feel about our appearance. Some of the conversations we have with ourselves about our bodies are conscious, and some of the things we say about our bodies, we are not aware of. I think 90 percent of our self-talk about our bodies just plays in the background of minds over and over. It is like turning on a radio and just letting it play continually, hearing some of what is on that station, but most of it being just background noise. However, if someone shut it off, we would notice.
I believe these "conversations" we have about our bodies are absorbed by every cell that makes our physical self up. If we started to write down the conversations we have about our bodies, it might shock us. Standing in the shower, the conversation is, "Gee, I hope I have a good hair day today - I hate my waves, and this color..I really need to think about a new color." Here's another conversation, "I'll take my clothes off in the corner to avoid the mirror because I'm too ashamed of the way I look. I wish my stomach would just disappear." And then there's the conversations we have in the department stores trying on clothes. "I look disgusting in those dept. store mirrors. And I am supposed to try on a bathing suit in there? I could cry trying to find the right suit for this body." And then there's the conversation in our heads about losing weight. "I wish I could drop 10 pounds. I really should try some of those pills they advertise. It probably wouldn't work anyway. I never have the discipline to follow through. My thighs are beyond help anyway.
We punish ourselves by trying diet after diet, and going through the cycle of gaining and losing weight over and over again. We punish ourselves through anorexia and bulimia. We punish ourselves by denying we have an addiction to food, and we convince ourselves that we are eating because we love to eat. Instead, we are eating because we don't feel love. We punish ourselves by denying that we are overweight. If I don't talk about it, maybe it will disappear. No one will know how disgusted with myself I really am. They'll believe I am happy being this overweight. We punish ourselves by trying to become a number on a scale, when we've been treated as "just a number" far too often. We punish ourselves by making food our God, instead of feeding our spiritual hunger to feel loved by our Creator. God-in-us literally lies in our Center, our mid-section, and we often gain a lot of stomach weight trying to feel "full" there, when we really long and ache for feeling the fullness of God.
Our bodies hold our feelings. Our bodies absorb the shame, the fear, the hatred, and the blame about why our bodies look the way they do. Something I read once really hit home. The things we say to ourselves about our bodies we would never dream of saying to a child. So why would we say them to ourselves? We are so focused on the physical appearance that we forget the blessing our bodies really are. We forget that our bodies have brought children into the world. Our arms hold those children. Our hands hold their hands and our fingers stroke their hair. Our bodies express love through the ability to smile, kiss, and dance. Our bodies allow us to see the beauty around us and hear the birds chirping, hear our children playing, and hear our favorite songs on the radio. Our hearts beat without our even noticing most days. Our ability to ride a bike makes for the perfect afternoon in the spring. Our brains communicate to our body parts without us ever being aware of the commands that get us through a day's activities. It isn't often that you see a magazine cover with the title: Thank Your Body For All Of the Many Things It Allows you To Be and Accomplish. Instead, we're most likely to see a title that looks something like this: Lose 10 pounds in 10 days Eating Everything You Love.
Our self-talk about our bodies, not only is held in our cells, it separates us from being one with God. God created us with this body. Our Spirit has manifested itself in this body in order to live as one with God. When we cover our bodies in shame, we are worshiping our physical selves, and not God. When we speak badly of our bodies, we are speaking badly of our Creator. Our thoughts and our feelings about our bodies are prayers. Will they be prayers of praise and thanksgiving, or prayers of desperation and lack? Because God thinks through us, every time we have a negative thought about our body, we are only serving darkness, and we cause even further separation from God. Because our minds our joined with everyone else's minds, when we think a negative thought about our body or someone else's, we have strengthened darkness in ourselves. Comparing your body with someone else's body is of darkness. Labeling your body as imperfect and unattractive is not living in light. The thoughts and beliefs we hold about our body sends forth energy to the rest of the world. The thoughts and beliefs that we hold in our minds radiates either love or fear. If you hate your body, you are fearful no one will love you, and that you are not worthy of receiving love. You have built an altar around this fear, that you are "less than" because of your thighs, your hips, your hair, or your arms. Instead, we must build altars around gratitude, acceptance, and compassion for our bodies. They are miraculous and amazing, and we forget that. We need to change the radio station to another frequency whenever we catch ourselves thinking otherwise.
You don't have to speak these thoughts aloud in order to pass them on to our children. Children absorb the body language of shame, guilt, and lack. They are as attentive to the energy of the unspoken as well as the words we speak. They can sense very quickly, and with great ease, your lack of love for yourself. If you feel disgust about your body, they will feel that disgust too. If you talk about your appearance a lot, they will absorb your unease and your doubt about your worth, and they will start to talk the same way about their bodies. If you spend a lot of time in front of the mirror, your children will too.Children also absorb the power of denial about your health, mentally, physically, and spiritually.
Yes, we need to exercise, eat healthy, and get enough rest. Yes, we need to try and look our very best, but we also need to practice compassion, acceptance, and forgiveness toward our physical selves. I have two girls who are going to inherit society's legacy of facelifts, botox, and obsession with plastic surgery, the "right" makeup, the "right" handbag and shoes, the "right" length of skirt, tattoos and nose rings. As mothers, it is critical to take the opportunities to talk about their bodies and tell them how beautiful they are, just as they are. It is critical that we give them the right tools, vocabulary, and mindset about loving our bodies, and the difference between taking care of them and obsessing about what they "perceive" to be imperfections. It is vital that our children understand that they are spiritual by nature, first and foremost, "mind" next, and "body" last. That's right - body last. When you can walk in the direction of that compass - Spirit, Mind, Body, and help them "work" on the inside first, the outside beauty will follow. For years we have lived in the opposite, and now is the time to start bringing this new belief into your conversations.
Our culture has a long way to go in healing our minds of the things we say about our bodies, and what we do to them, in order to achieve someone else's definition of beauty that seems to change daily. We are fearfully, wonderfully made. Fearfully in this case means reverently. We were knit together perfectly in our mother's wombs. Turn to Psalm 139 when you doubt how beautiful you really are. Ask God to make you aware of the stories you are telling yourself about your body, the fairy tales about our body that society would have us fall for, and the words that you are using to describe your body. I think we would all be shocked to know what we are doing to ourselves just in our thinking. It is definitely time to awaken from our slumbering when it comes to our physical selves.
Next Week: Sexuality and Its Saintly, Sacramental Nature
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