It's funny (or sad) how lessons we have learned cycle right back around again. I have always struggled with weight, body image, finding security in the One Who knit me together and calls me His Own. And here I am again, snuggling the precious little gift of joy God gave me after two years of sorrow and loss, worried about my weight, every pound of which was gained the nurturing of this precious life. I still find myself crying in my closet when not a single. pair. of. shorts fit me anymore.
So, if you are pregnant or still striving for that elusive pre-pregnancy number on the scale, I declare my solidarity with you by re-posting this post from almost 4 years ago when I was pregnant with my second. It is still a battle for me to this day. May we enter the trenches together and come out more secure than before...
This past January [of 2012], God miraculously granted the gift of life within me. I could not have been more thrilled, and, until the first appointment, was practically euphoric. So many months of waiting, riding the agonizing waves of anxiety and fear, now culminated in life.
Life.
So, if you are pregnant or still striving for that elusive pre-pregnancy number on the scale, I declare my solidarity with you by re-posting this post from almost 4 years ago when I was pregnant with my second. It is still a battle for me to this day. May we enter the trenches together and come out more secure than before...
This past January [of 2012], God miraculously granted the gift of life within me. I could not have been more thrilled, and, until the first appointment, was practically euphoric. So many months of waiting, riding the agonizing waves of anxiety and fear, now culminated in life.
Life.
But it didn't take long after my first appointment, my first peek at a fluttering heart and tiny limbs, for my euphoria to recede into my old foe--except this time he had morphed into a new fixation: fear of gaining weight.
Now I'm going to be real honest with you here (and what else have you come to expect from me?), in my rational, sensible brain, I knew women are supposed to gain weight in pregnancy. But after a year of losing weight gradually, I had unknowingly become a little attached to the weight bracket in which I had landed...and I was terrified to see the numbers return to the higher stratosphere.
And being who I am, fear took hold in the form of a barrage of questions. What if it doesn't come back off? What if you fall back into over-eating? What if pregnancy and breastfeeding somehow take over your body like some outside force acting against your will? Looking back, I can see that hormones definitely played a role in these fears, but I truly believe most of them are the natural anxieties of anyone who loses weight and then finds themselves in a situation where weight gain is either probable or inevitable. It's monumental to re-train one's mind to temporarily view weight gain as a good thing.
Not just monumental. Supernatural.
I spent my whole first trimester weighing myself every single day. Every. Day. Ridiculous, I know, but I did it. And I share this detail to show the extent of my fixation. I was so scared to look pregnant.
And now that we're here, we may as well sit on this awhile. I am so disturbed by our culture's bend to conceal or even avoid signs of inevitable life stages: puberty, pregnancy, age, illness, etc. I feel women are especially victimized in this frenzy to stagnate our bodies in the svelte, fit, tidy package of a twenty-something, no matter how old, pregnant, or ill we become. We attempt to plastinate perfection, to be living-yet-unchangeable beings.
Just listen to the women who are praised on TV, magazines, and even in our own social circles: women who have had several children, keep an immaculate home, are successful employees, and also somehow manage to find time to volunteer...all in high heels. And a size 4 pencil skirt.
How does she do it?
And while we secretly despise this woman, we also stand in wonder of her apparent immunity to wrinkles, stretch marks, and spider veins.
And while I clearly disdain erecting this impossible, and even undesirable, standard of perfection for all women to attain, I was subconsciously falling into the never-aging, never-changing image trap just a few short months ago in my absolute terror to gain a pound, to gain an inch, to alter in any way for this new miracle. This new life.
I think it's time that we as women mutiny against this trend. Motherhood is a life of great personal sacrifice, and it starts with pregnancy. There are things that occur to our bodies during pregnancy that will never "go back" to how they were before. But instead of celebrating the signs of pregnancy, we pine for the days when we weren't bloated, our pelvises weren't stretched to their limit, and our bellies didn't look like they'd been mauled by a tiger...otherwise known as stretch marks.
We all respond differently to these undesirable changes--some of us find our inner-Olympian and work out to an insane level to make sure our weight gain is "all belly." Others, who only run if they're being chased (like me), simply give up in despair, eating away their woes in sugar binges and salty sprees.
But no matter how we respond, the root attitude is still the same: we are despising the natural processes of our God-knit bodies to grow and sustain life. Life. God-ordained life. In the face of life, we should be awed into complete surrender of any personal pain, discomfort, or defect in order to be the sacred vessels of it. I mean, is there anything much holier than the womb? It's where our Savior was first rocked and nurtured, where life is knit together in all its complexity and wonder, where the greatest miracle we experience, that science still ceases to fully comprehend, begins.
And yet we despise it. We despise its sacred role in God's plan when we despairingly binge because we mourn the body we once had. We despise it when we exercise in unhealthy, obsessive lengths to rid ourselves of any signs, however natural, of carrying or having carried a baby. We despise it in our commentary of other women, in our complaints of ourselves, in our fundamentally degrading view of Image-bearers who, very much like Jesus, now bear the scars of their sacrifice.
I so long that we become a culture that celebrates the signs of bearing children. We may or may not be in the physical prime of our twenties, but our stretch marks, saggy bellies, broadened pelvises, and thicker thighs are the channel through which God works to raise up the next generation. Isn't that worth a little sacrifice?
Each pound gained or retained is a sign of Life. Each added number on the scale is one more assurance of a healthy, growing little girl who I pray--pray so diligently!--will grow up to embrace her body in a world that will seek to stagnate it. I pray that she will "set [her] face like flint" and "know that [she] will not be put to shame" (Isaiah 50:7).
The Apostle Paul, the man with his own "thorn in the flesh," said, "God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ" (Galatians 6:14). Think about that. He gloried in one of the most excruciating, gruesome, and terrifying experiences ever devised by mankind. The Cross is a place of the most extreme personal sacrifice: death. Death to self. Death to the flesh. Death to our selfish desires. So instead of disdaining the stretch marks and weight gain, let's glory in them, knowing that, just like the Cross, they lead to Life.
****
Let's be healthy. If you're pregnant, move, eat, and take your prenatals. Don't over-eat, but don't over-compensate with extreme exercise. Let's stop pursuing futile paths and focus more on reasonable healthfulness and preparing to mother. And the latter should take up far more of our pregnant days than hours at the gym. Let's usher in this next generation secure in our bodies, secure in Christ, secure in the shadow of the Cross.
