Pleased To Meet You

Have you heard an introduction of two people lately? Names are exchanged, smiles are smiled and then... "What do you do?"

We, as amazing and beautiful individuals, have been reduced to what we spend 40 (or in so many lives, many more than 40) hours a week accomplishing.

But I am so much more than what I do.

I wish I could answer the question of "what do you do" in a way that was honest and thought provoking.

But so many people are uncomfortable with those who get out of pretty little boxes with labels tidily put on them.

Imagine with me...

"What do you do?"

"I laugh... and I make people laugh."

"Oh, you're a comedian?"

"No... I am actually a corporate trainer for an insurance company."

Silence.

"Oh."

I am so much more than I do! I reject being defined by what earns my paycheck.

I am a princess, in both the eyes of my dad, and my Father.

I am a daughter, a sister, an aunt and a friend.

I have the heart of a mother, though I have not birthed a child.

I am one who walks with face forward, slightly upturned, to accept sun or rain on my face.

I feel music running through my body most of my waking hours.

I play with words in my head, molding them to do my will.

I am physically small, but spiritually tall.

I laugh. I cry. I dance. I make music.

I am mesmerized by fire, calmed by the ocean, invigorated by wind.

I am loved and I love with abandon.

I am... so much more than what I do.

And you?

My Epiphany

As I get further into my studies, I am amazed by how much I have fallen in love with the body. It is a thing of beauty. And I am fascinated by it.

Beyond the flippant "our bodies are amazing things", bodies are not generally talked about. And when they are, it's often in a negative light. Thanks to Hollywood and tabloids, the body is looked at as something that is too ugly or too fat... until it crosses that line into too much surgery or too skinny. Nothing is ever perfect. The media has no happy medium between the "fat" size 4 and the "too skinny" size -0. Though some see those in the spotlight as a constant beacon of what to emulate, others cry that "normal" should be the exact opposite.

Yet even less talked about is body image. It's something that's whispered about in the dark, and I think if people were being honest, thought about constantly, but never spoken of out loud. And I'm tired of it. I want to say the words. I want to open dialogue. I want to love what God has made me.

I have struggled in this area for years. I've cried countless tears, looked with envy at thousands of other women, and the list of things I would choose to change about myself is long and varied. I've not believed what others have said, and I've chosen instead to internally berate who I am and how I look.

But through this last year and a half, and especially through my classes, I'm learning lessons that are not taught in the text books.

I've learned that the people I look at as perfect, have their own demons that they fight. And that they have just as long a list as I do, filled with things that they'd like to change about their bodies.

When I have a person on my massage table, I become completely absorbed in my work. My entire focus is to nurture that person as a whole, to build them up, to help them feel safe, and to let Jesus heal with my hands.

I see beauty. Each person is so different, and it is truly awe inspiring.. .

And I had an epiphany. In thinking of how much I instill into the person I'm working on, and how much I love what I am doing, I put it into a small scale of what God did when He created me.

Massage is what I'm good at. It's what I'm happiest doing. And if, after all that I put into the body I'm working on, the person were to say that they cringed every time I touched them, that they felt unsafe, unloved, or unlovely, I would be devastated.

Creating is what God is good at. And I wonder if it's what He's happiest doing. And I realized that each time I look with scorn at my body, I'm doing the very thing that would devastate me as a therapist, to the One who created me. I am taking something He loved making, and telling Him that I think it's worthless.

In the months since this epiphany, I've realized that it does not give me license to let myself go. I have made countless changes in the past six months to stop disrespecting my body, not ignore it just because I'd accepted the fact that I'll never be a size 4. I am learning to embrace the fact that I am who I am. And if the One who knows what He's doing looked at me and declared it good, who am I to say otherwise?

There are still going to be pictures of myself that I don't like. There will be angles that I appreciate more than others, but I will choose to no longer despise what God created in love.

I'm learning to live with abandon, knowing that He thinks I'm full of worth... and that's all that matters.

The Motions

This might hurt, it's not safe
But I know that I've gotta make a change
I don't care if I break,
At least I'll be feeling something
'Cause just okay is not enough
Help me fight through the nothingness of life

I don't wanna go through the motions
I don't wanna go one more day
without Your all consuming passion inside of me
I don't wanna spend my whole life asking,
"What if I had given everything,
instead of going through the motions?"

No regrets, not this time
I'm gonna let my heart defeat my mind
Let Your love make me whole
I think I'm finally feeling something
'Cause just okay is not enough
Help me fight through the nothingness of this life

I don't wanna go one more day
without Your all consuming passion inside of me
I don't wanna spend my whole life asking,
"What if I had given everything,
instead of going through the motions?"

I don't wanna go through the motions

- Matthew West