God's Plan

It was sophomore year in high school I distinctly recall going into the girls bathroom down the hall from the cafeteria with my best friend and having her explain to make myself throw up and get rid of all of the (high calorie/fattening) pasta that I'd consumed at the annual high school spaghetti supper fundraising dinner.

And so began a lifetime battle against the insidious eating disorder: Bulimia.

I spent all of my teenage and most of my adult years obsessing about my weight and torturing myself.

I stopped growing at the towering height of 5'3 & 3/4" and am fairly big boned for someone of my height. According the evil height and weight chart at 157 lbs I am roughly 27 lbs overweight.

Yeah, well, that chart has had me puking my guts up for years.

Not everyone is built the same.

I am not tall, lanky, skinny, slender. I do not have a tiny frame. I am big boned and years of athletics has given me a fantastic muscle base.

I have dieted, exercised, starved myself and body shamed myself for years because designers, the media, mean girls in high school and society in general have lead me to believe that a size 8 or (gasp) a 10 is much too large and that if I am not a size 2 or less then I am not worthy...of anything.

Guess what? They were wrong.

And so was I.

Jeremiah 1:5 says, ""Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations."

God created me and loves me as I am. 

Why then, do I pressure myself to be something other than what I was meant to be? 

Because I have been pressured by "societal norms" for so long that I have allowed them to dictate my worth.  And most importantly, because I did not have the faith to trust in God's plan. 

I could be a size 4 or 6 if I wanted to starve myself and live on protein bars but, quite honestly, I love food too much. 

I have needlessly battled the same 15 pounds for the past two years. I can take it off but it slowly creeps back on until I get to where I am now. 

So here I am.

At 157 lbs I can eat whatever I want and my blood pressure is 112/72. 

I go to the gym a couple of times a week, run around with my twin three-year-old boys and can garden all day without feeling as if I am going to keel over. 

My body is where it wants to be. 

I'm done torturing the beautiful creature that the Lord saw fit to bring into this world. I will no longer treat myself as a lesser person because my weight doesn't fall into the right block on that stupid chart. My worth is no longer going to be dictated by a number on the inside of my jeans or the number on the scale.

God loves me, my husband loves me and my children love me. 

I am choosing to trust God.

The body shaming ends now!