so THIS is Love

 ^“Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.”

1 Corinthians 13:4-7

“But anyone who does not love does not know God, for God is love.”

1 John 4:8

Growing up my favorite movie was Cinderella. The year Disney gloriously released it I’d choose it almost every time my Daddy took me with him to the video rental store.  (Remember those?! I miss them!) So that year for Christmas he bought me Cinderella, it was the perfect gift! But I remember driving with him down to Video City not long after that, looking at all of the movie options and then picking Cinderella and taking it up to the register where my Daddy was waiting for me. I remember him looking down at me, confused, and saying, “But you already have this movie.” Ahahaha yes I did but it’s the one I wanted so to me it made perfect sense to pick it, never mind if I had another copy waiting for me at home.

Really?!

My favorite part of the movie was, of course, THE BALL!! Cinderella arrives in her sparkling baby blue dress, and the prince immediately leaves his throne to meet her. She curtsies, he kisses her hand, they begin to dance. And as they waltz outside, staring adoringly into one another’s eyes, the song that plays says this: “So this is love… mmmm… so this is love… so this is what makes life divine. I’m all aglow and now I know the key to heaven is mine…”

So I definitely internalized THAT message. Yes, wow. I thought that love meant every sappy thing we’ve been taught it means. Love meant a Prince Charming to sweep me off my feet, love meant breakfast in bed and kisses under the mistletoe and bouquets of daffodils just because. As a Mother love would mean running with my children through the sprinkler and colorful finger paints and bedtime stories and sweet cuddles with sweet kisses.

And yes, absolutely all of that is the red ripe fruit of love… but I had yet to learn that those sweet gestures were certainly not all there was to it, to true love.

When I was 19 I boxed up most of my clothes & books & fiestaware and moved to Mexico for the first time. I was there to do a DTS, and as part of our missionary training we were learning how to do “puppet ministry.” If you just laughed, it’s okay… so did I. I am not really a fan of puppets… but many children are, they LOVE watching stories unfold, being acted out by those little felt friends. I remember being in “puppet class” (don’t worry, I’m still laughing too) sitting in a circle with my classmates, a puppet hanging on each of our arms, and our teacher told us we were going to go around and practice speaking in our “puppet voices.” Oh heck no. Kill. Me. Now. That was the internal reaction going on in me, PUPPET VOICES?! ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME?! I really didn’t want to have anything to do with those puppets and I was starting to think the whole missions thing wasn’t for me after all. But then… a song started playing in my head. GOD started playing a song in my head, and it went like this:

to be fair, I loved these guys when I was little.

“So this is love..mmmm… so this is love….”

Oh. Oooooohhh.

I finally began to understand that love was so much more than a waltz with Prince Charming. It’s been five years of learning that truth now… and this love thing has been HARD WORK.

What I’ve discovered is that true Love is doing something you absolutely don’t want to do… because it will bring joy to another person. Love is saying goodbye when God says “go” even though you want to stay, Love is waking up at every hour of the night, keeping your child’s fever in check. Love is scrubbing a floor that will be filthy again tomorrow, because your babies need a clean place to play, Love is buying a plastic rose that you don’t need or want because you see how hard the man is working who’s selling them on bus after bus of apathetic passengers. Love is explaining for the thousandth time to your boy that he hurts your feelings when he screams at you. Love is rubbing your girls back as she vomits all over that blanket you just washed. Love is letting her have the bigger half of the cookie, even though it’s your favorite kind. Love is giving away the soap who’s sweet fragrance made you cry, because she needs it more than you do. Love is sharing your expensive peanut butter, Love is leaving out the mushrooms even though you like them. Love is holding screaming children & saying “I’m sorry” & accepting apologies & watching his favorite movie again & getting out of bed to get that glass of water for her & staying up way past bedtime to help her with that school project she didn’t bother to tell you about until after dinner & searching high and low for his favorite shoe, even when he has so many others he could wear and we’re already running late & killing that spider even though it’s scaring you just as much as it’s scaring her & letting them help you with dinner even though it’ll take twice as long to make.

Love is the hardest thing I’ve ever done, and yes.. the most beautiful thing I’ve ever experienced.

That’s why I call this space, “So this is Love.” So THIS is Love… hard, often-seemingly-unimportant, monotonous, beautiful, joyful, heartbreaking, heart-filling, work.

& I’d have it no other way.

Because sometimes Love looks like complete & utter exhaustion.

this little light

“Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted” (Matthew 5:4)

“In this Beatitude, Jesus praises the weeping class, those who can enter into solidarity with the pain of the world and not try to extract themselves from it.”
–Richard Rohr

 

It’s just so heavy.  The weight of so much tragedy, so much division, so much brokenness.  The past few months have been especially full of it, haven’t they?  Or perhaps I’ve simply had my eyes open wider. 

 

I feel helpless.  I look around the world and I see the gaping wide wounds of injustice all over it.  I see the way people are suffering, the way people are dying, the way people are killing, and I have no idea what to do about it. 

 

Yes I am here, laboring for redemption in my own little corner, with my own little beloveds… but it doesn’t feel like enough.  Surely there is more that I can do.

 

Here I am in my little room, heavy with the weight of it all, heavy with the weight of caring.  I don’t know how to help but I feel the need to simply sit with it, to grieve for what is grieving the heart of God, to mourn with those who mourn.

 

I gather all the candles I can find-there are sixteen of them-and I leave them unlit, cold glass jars on the floor.  I turn off the lights and that’s what sparks the crying: the room is so dark, mirroring what I see in the world.  Oh God this is not how you intended for it to be.

 

The match’s flame slices through the darkness as I light the first candle.  I pray for Gaza, I pray for Israel, and I am weeping as I beg God for redemption and for peace.  I light another candle and wrap my hands around it.  I pray for the immigrant children seeking safety & refuge among us.  I pray for the communities they’ve fled from, communities ravaged by violence.  I hold another candle and pray for Ferguson.  I am crying harder now, my heart is broken open for the Momma’s who’ve lost their babies.  I am lighting candles, praying for chains of injustice to be loosed, praying for the scales to fall off of our eyes.  I light candle after candle after candle, cupping them one by one, praying miracles for women still dying in childbirth, praying healing for those being annihilated by ebola, praying God’s presence for the Christians being killed in Iraq, praying comfort for the loved ones left behind when that plane was shot down, praying freedom & justice for those still trapped in Guantanamo, praying wisdom for our President, praying love for my faraway daughters, and on and on and on and on.  I run out of candles before I run out of reasons to light them.

 

As the light flickers brighter with every candle lit I see hope dancing away the darkness.  I am inviting God into our mess, and I see that God is already here.  Always here.  His is the heart that breaks wide open first.  She is the One inviting me to carry this burden of caring, this burden of Love.

 

I carry on crying, believing that somehow my tears matter just as much as anything else I can do.  I am all out of prayers, and all I hear myself saying now is Jesus Jesus Jesus . . .  You are our only Hope.  Jesus Jesus Jesus . . . You are the Light of the world.  

 

But You say it right back to me… you, Darling, are the light of the world.  And I know You mean it because You’ve already told us so, in Matthew, in Isaiah, in Acts.  You’ve given us Your Light, and oh Jesus I have so much to learn about how to carry it into these ruins of Eden, but maybe this is as good a place as any to start.  Here on the floor, here with these candles, here with a heart grieved for what grieves Yours, here praying for Your Kingdom come.

The Kiwi Story.

I’ve been calling Casa Kiwi my Colombian home for the past nineteen months, but the story started awhile before that. Living here has been.. shall we say.. challenging for me, yet I know that I know that I know that it was God who led me here, and so I’ve stayed. Through fire & waves & valleys of the shadow of death, I’ve stayed in obedience to a God whose Fierce Love has won my heart & my trust. The practice of remembering how God called me here has served as a way for me to remind myself that my presence here is no accident, even when it really feels like a train wreck. Kind of like the Israelites building alters to God in the desert, or celebrating the passover… marking & remembering times when God has been faithful helps to keep on remembering it.

So here we go.

I was twenty years old, it was Springtime 2010 when I first ever saw the words “Casa Kiwi.” I read them on facebook, in something an acquaintance had written. She was a girl I’d met in Mexico who was somewhere in Colombia, and when I saw those words “Casa Kiwi” they STUCK with me. Ever since I was a little girl I’d dreamed of having an orphanage in Mexico, and I’d played around with lots of ideas of what I’d want it to be called. So I remember telling my friend Vince, “Wouldn’t Casa Kiwi be such a good name for an orphanage?!” It was such a fun, silly name, and I so I tucked it into my memory.

It was 2011, a year later, when I attended a YWAM school to be trained in things pertaining to “Children At Risk.” One of our first teachers was a Colombian man, Steve Bartel, who came to share with us about the ministry he was leading in Bogota: Formando Vidas. What stuck with me about the ministry was their vision to restore children back into their First Families, and also the “family style” way of raising the children in their care. The ministry had several houses, which would typically hold between 8-12 kids at a time, in order to give them a family, and not just a place to live where their emotional & spiritual needs would go unnoticed amongst the masses.

Later that year there would be times that were very difficult for me in Mexico, when me & a leader didn’t see some important things in the same way, and those differences were very hard for me to live with. They were deal breakers for me, really. I remember being really upset one day, praying and thinking, “It wouldn’t be like this in Colombia” ( yeah. WOW. ) I wanted to visit Formando Vidas in Colombia, to see & learn how they did things. I was certain it was the *perfect* ministry.

After that, later on in 2011, I was in Chile, doing another YWAM school. On one of the first days after I arrived I was chatting with a Colombian classmate, and she told me that she had grown up in the Formando Vidas ministry. Wow, I thought, that’s such a beautiful coincidence. Soon after that I met a guy who had spent time working in Formando Vidas, who’s sister was a foster Mama in one of the houses there. After all of that I was really sure I wanted to visit Colombia!

While I was in Chile I knew God was asking me to stay in missions, even though I had different plans. It was something I just knew, something I could feel in my spirit. At that point I wasn’t willing to go back to Mexico. I missed my girls so much but I just couldn’t go back to those same deal-breaker issues, I knew I wouldn’t be able to last. So I started researching ministries. I looked into ministries doing aftercare for victims of human trafficking, ministries in Asia, ministries in Africa, ministries in Latin America, but ultimately… ministries doing orphan care. I ended up at the Formando Vidas website, and as I looked deeper there I was shocked when I saw the name of one of their foster homes:

Casa Kiwi.

Whaaa??!!?!! I didn’t see that one coming! I held it prayerfully, in open hands, not knowing where God desired for me to be but being so willing to go anywhere, do anything, for Him. One morning before breakfast I was sitting on a swing, asking God “Is it Formando Vidas??” I went into the dining hall and as I was walking through the maze of tables & chairs & Latinos I heard someone say “…Formando Vidas.” I whirled around, shocked, and there was that guy I’d met who had worked in Formando Vidas. He caught me staring at him, my eyes all wide & scared, and I told him that I’d just been praying about that ministry. Later he found me to give me some more information about Formando Vidas, and one of the things he handed me was his sister’s prayer card. It was a picture of two women & six children on a swing set, and it said:

Casa Kiwi.

You would think it would have been obvious to me by then, but it wasn’t, ahaha. I decided I wasn’t going to think about it anymore, I wasn’t going to look at the website anymore, I was just going to chill out and wait and see if God kept speaking. One day I went to the base’s coffee shop to get online but the internet was being fixed so I sat down at a table to wait. There was a lone magazine laying on the table, so I picked it up and started reading. It was a story about a little girl who lived on the streets of Bogota, Colombia. Interesting, I thought, but it wasn’t until I began reading things that sounded very familiar that I realized the article was all about Formando Vidas.

“Oh my goodness. Oh my goodness. Oh my goodness.” I was freaking out, but I still thought it could all just be strange coincidences, so I just kept trying to keep calm. But a few days later, I walked into my counseling school classroom to find that same Formando Vidas guy there instead of our teacher. He was there to give a presentation on Formando Vidas. He shared a video of one of the areas of the ministry. There are LOTS of different areas in the ministry, but the video? It was about..

Casa Kiwi.

That’s when I knew. That’s when I knew that Formando Vidas was definitely where God was calling me. That’s when the “Oh my goodness” ‘s started again, along with an out of control heartbeat and some crazy tears. God was speaking, I knew it, so I listened.

A whole year went by before I packed up my things to move to Colombia, and I honestly had no idea where God wanted me to be during my time here. I could have become a teacher in our school, or worked in the more evangelistic areas of the ministry, or work in one of the foster homes. I had no idea. During my first weeks here I decorated my prayer journal, collage style, with a mish-mash of colors I’d been collecting from catalogs. I just wanted it colorful, I didn’t really pay attention to the images I was pasting on. I visited all the areas of the ministry, but not really hearing anything from God about where I was to be working. I had a meeting with the leadership team and told them that I just wanted to work where it would be most helpful for me to be, but they didn’t let me know where that would be. I got on a plane to spend Christmas in Mexico and it was while I was up in the air, flying away from Colombia, that God told me where I was going to be working. He spoke to me through my collage, actually. I looked down at my prayer journal, and for the first time I realized what it was that I had pasted right there on it’s cover:

a kiwi.

And I knew. When I got back to Colombia I never even shared with my leaders what God had spoken to me on that plane, I didn’t need to. They had been praying and they sent me to live in Kiwi House before I even had a chance to tell them that it’s where I was supposed to be.

The past nineteen months have been so painful, so difficult. I’ve been missing my daughters something fierce, that’s been the most of it. But also I’ve learned the hard way that no ministry is perfect. Formando Vidas is beautiful, the ministry seeks to honor God in every decision that is made.. but we are humans, and we make mistakes, and we hurt each other and offend each other and often don’t know how to make things right. It’s just the way it is. There have been no deal-breakers here (& the ones in Mexico have since been resolved) but it’s still been very painful.. Good, but painful. God has refined me, sent me through a blazing hot fire, but I’m so thankful for the ways in which I’ve been changed & strengthened.

Nine days ago I sat down with my beloved Casa Kiwi children to let them know that I will soon be leaving. They were shocked, I just cried and cried and cried because as hard as these years have been and as ready as I am to leave… they are my children, whom I love so much, and whom I will forever carry close to my heart. There is a time for everything, Evi said to them that night. There is a time for everything, and what I find myself saying to God these days is, Thank you God, for this time that has been…

Casa Kiwi.

worth it.

It’s just you & me today.

 

You, Little Boy who has dedicated a good chunk of the past year to scream at me, to let me know how much you can’t stand me, to tell me “EVERYTHING WOULD BE BETTER IF YOU DIDN’T EXIST” and “I WISH YOU’D NEVER COME HERE” and “GO BACK TO YOUR COUNTRY” and my personal favorite “YOU’RE SO FAT AND YOUR BREATH STINKS.”

 

You, Little Boy who has pulled out pieces of my hair, bitten me, bruised  me, made me bleed.

 

You’d never guess the truth, My Dear Boy.  I am so patient with you, patient on the outside at least.  But the truth is… a lot of the time I can’t stand being around you.  The truth is… a lot of the time your behavior makes me feel miserable.  The truth is… every single day I make a choice to stay, instead of throwing my things into a suitcase and taking off like I want to.

 

It’s Katy Perry who I feel understands this about me best: “Days like this I want to drive away.  Pack my bags and watch your shadow fade.  You chewed me up and spit me out like I was poison in your mouth.  You took my light, you drained me down…”  I know that sounds dramatic, but that’s how I so often feel.

 

I hate the way you treat me, My Boy.

 

I hate the way your words & actions strike me like shrapnel.  Digging in deep, crippling.

 

I hate how often I struggle to crawl out of bed in the morning, how much I dread discovering what kind of chaos another day with you will contain.

 

But most of all, I hate how life has treated you.  I hate the trauma, the neglect, the abandonment you lived through during those first four years of your life.  I hate how deeply those experiences have wounded you, carved scars into your spirit.

 

“Out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks”  God has told us.  So I know.  I know, My Dear, that every nasty word you hurl at me, every violent action you attack me with, is simply the pain inside your own heart.  You are hurting, you are devastated, you are brokenhearted.  I know.

 

Sometimes I slip into your room while you’re sleeping.  I sit down on your Lightning McQueen bed and I listen to you breathe and I watch your little ribcage rise & fall.  It’s when you’re asleep that I remember best the truth that you are just a little boy, whose eight years have held an entire ocean of pain & heartbreak.

 

Still though it’s so easy for me to forget.  I get so sick of the same old same old we repeat each day.  This rhythm of forgiveness.  Over and over and over again.  Loving you has worn me out, My Boy.  I am exhausted. 

 

So it’s just you & me here today.

 

You are riding your bicycle around the park as fast as you can.  I am sitting in the tower, drinking coffee & watching you race around and around and around.  I watch you, and I see you, I really see you.  I look past the atrocious behavior, I look past the scars you’ve carved into me, I look past all the wretched moments that so often cloud my memory and I see you.  I see my Beautiful Boy.  I see my Silly, Generous, Joyful, Confident, Hilarious, Sensitive, Kind & Brave Son.  My Little George of the Jungle, as you so love to call yourself. = )

 

And I am only thinking one thing, as I sit here and watch you on your bicycle, smiling at me while my tears roll down my face and into my coffee.

 

 

It’s so worth it. 

 

 

Loving you is worth it.  Mothering you is worth it.  Staying is worth it. 

 

 

You are worth it, My Beautiful Boy.

 

Crazy house, Haven house.

“He said, Come in, you who are blessed by the LORD.  Why are you standing out here?”

Genesis 24:31

“For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.”

Matthew 25:34-36

 

There’s a house here in Colombia that’s been a Haven for me over the past (almost!) two years, a house that’s been a Haven for many people over the past many years, actually.  It’s a house that’s held over 14 children as they’ve grown from tiny to tall, a house that’s hosted parties & gatherings & get-togethers galore.

I say house but we all know it’s those dear ones within the walls that build it into a Home, a Haven.

Chamos House is currently home to three girls, sisters, and two boys, brothers.  They are fun, fun, fun girls & boys, young ladies & young men.  The youngest boy is 15, and his skateboard is the great love of his life.  Every time we play picture telephone he draws himself on his skateboard.  Every. Single. Time.  Ahahaha.  Always doing different moves, but always on his skateboard.  It is incredibly endearing to me.  I’ve told him that I think Jesus has an awesome skateboard awaiting him in heaven.  = )  The youngest girl is 17, and she’s a silly goose.  Today she had a permanent marker so I asked her to draw a tattoo on my arm.  She drew her name, graffiti style, and a turtle.  Because why not, ahaha.  The “Chamo” of Chamos House is a man who’s intention in coming to Colombia was to stay for 3 months as a volunteer.  But.. after spending time in a slum of Bogota and getting to know some of it’s children… he felt that those children needed a safe place to call home, but he also knew he couldn’t say the ministry needed to do something for them without he himself staying to be a part of it.  So he stayed, taking in 14 little children to Father at the age of 20.  That was 16 years ago.  Beautiful, right?

There have been many days like today that I’ve walked into this Haven of a House to laugh & play & cook, and there have been plenty of other days that I’ve walked in just to lay on the couch all day and hide from the world.  That’s what makes it a Haven, it’s a place where I am welcome, welcome to be myself, welcome to be silly or sad, crazy or quiet, joyful or upset.

The other night I made my way through the chaos of the city to arrive Home there, it was the kind of evening I knew I would be spending laying on the couch, wrapped tight in blankets, hiding.  I tap tap tapped on the door, and as I waited for Chamo to open all I could think of were those words of Jesus, and how strong & beautiful Chamo has lived those words for me the past few years, simply by opening up his home as a place of rest & refuge for me:

“Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.”

& I am so thankful.

Celebrating Colombia’s first win in the World Cup this year, Crazy style, Crazy Chamos House style = )

Gelatina

“If we can share our story with someone who responds with empathy and understanding, shame can’t survive.”

“Shame, for women, is this web of unobtainable, conflicting, competing expectations about who we’re supposed to be.  And it’s a straight-jacket.”

-Brene Brown

 

I was ten years old, MAXIMUM, when I first started feeling ashamed of my body. Maybe it was all the spandex figure-skating dresses that did me in, making it so easy to compare the softness of my own tummy to the firm ones of other girls I skated with. The comparison would have come soon enough though, whether or not I had been wearing those little dresses. We all know how our culture is saturated heavy with images of “perfect” bodies… images that validate some while simultaneously shaming others.

It was my tummy that always got to me, protruding a little bit more than I was sure was acceptable. I was eleven when I discovered the magic of sucking it in. I remember walking through the cafeteria in a striped purple shirt, feeling oh-so-skinny, oh-so-beautiful, sucking in that little bit of belly fat I was so ashamed of.

I remember once during those awkward teen years my Mom telling me a story about how much I loved milkshakes when I was a toddler. She told me that story and I got mad at her. I said, “WHY DID YOU LET ME DRINK MILKSHAKES?!!?!!” I was sure I wouldn’t have become so fat if she hadn’t allowed me to consume so much sugar. “You’re not fat!!” She would reassure me, but the thing is.. the way we perceive our bodies is so often absolutely skewed. While others described my body as slender, I was disgusted by what I saw in the mirror.

Somewhere around the age of 18 I discovered the magic of calorie counting. I know how many calories are in an egg, in a slice of bread, in an apple, an orange, a banana, a carrot, spinach, raisins, a glass of milk, a glass of soy milk, a glass of rice milk, a glass of almond milk. That’s why I used to go with almond: only 60 calories. I know how many in a slice of cheese, oatmeal, popcorn, cashews, ice cream, peanut butter, honey, pasta noodles, pizza sauce, coffee. Pretty much everything I would consume. I learned that the minimum amount of calories our bodies need each day to function properly is 1,200. So I started counting everything I put into my mouth in an attempt to stop each day at that magic number (although 2,000 was a healthy amount for the lifestyle I was living.) The problem is I often failed, consuming as many as 1,500 calories a day and then absolutely LOATHING myself because of it. Every morning was a fresh start, one I would begin with two oranges (good girl!) but inevitably end with a handful of chocolate kisses or a spoonful too many of peanut butter (nasty, disgusting, horrible fat girl!) Lots of people were noticing how I was slimming down, but nobody knew about the battle going on in my head for me to achieve that skinniness.

I had put a quote on my bathroom mirror: “Women are always beautiful.” -Ville Valo. Claire saw it, looked at me skeptically, and asked, “But do you actually believe that??” I didn’t answer her, because no, I didn’t actually believe it at all. At 132 pounds Claire told me I was “scary skinny” but I was intent on lowering those numbers on the scale even more. But then the interruption came. Missions.

There are people who move to other countries and lose all kinds of weight. I started gaining. I no longer had control over what kinds of foods I was consuming and I didn’t know how many calories were in pig skin soup or lentil hot dog soup or cactus salad. More than I estimated, that’s for sure! Over the past 6 years I’ve been dealing with these fickle 30 pounds, on and off and on and off and on, fluctuating depending on where I’m living despite my desperate attempts to control calories.

On one visit to the States I remembering having a sleepover with one of my cousins. I remember we were lying there in the dark and she started telling me about a friend of hers whom she was worried about. She was so concerned about that friend, “She counts the calories of everything she eats and then she hates herself for eating too many. Every. Single. Day. I don’t know how to help her with this eating disorder.”

Wait.

What?!

Did she just say EATING DISORDER?!!?! I was quiet, laying there in the dark, laying there in my shock. My cousin was describing my own behavior, my own ordinary, as an eating disorder.

I went back to Mexico where my weight went down at the orphanage and then I moved to Chile and my weight climbed quickly back up, thank you Chile for your obsession love of bread. I remember having a little breakdown in a bathroom in Pichilemu, after another starchy meal, crying and begging God, “Pleaaaaasseee God, I JUST WANT SOME SPINAAAAAACH!!!”

My calorie controlling and the hatred & shame I felt about my body became CONSUMING. So when I moved to Colombia I knew I had to make a choice. I had to choose to either keep focusing on trying to fit back into my skinny clothes or I had to give it up, and instead focus on caring for the children in front of me. I chose the kids, deciding to put my weight loss desires on the back-burner, to return to later.

 

But then something changed.

 

I stopped hating my body.

 

It is a miracle.

 

It’s a miracle that I know has everything to do with all the talk that’s been going on about body image over the past several years… like this synchroblog of women writing love letters to their bodies, and Taryn Brumfitt’s beautiful before & after pictures, and these other famous before & after pictures, and Dove’s Campaign for ‘Real Beauty‘, and Glennon being honest about recovering from her eating disorder, and Sarah Bessey sharing her scared/sacred, and this Mom writing about “staying in the picture”,  and these beautiful pictures of these Momma’s bodies, and these celebrity quotes on body image, and Kate Winslet getting upset about being photoshopped skinnier, and Brittany Gibbons stripping down to her swimsuit during her Ted Talk, and this Mom in her swimsuit, and Lily Myer’s poem “Shrinking Women”, and even Colbie Caillat taking off her makeup.

It’s like… the shame can only survive in secret. The shame can only thrive in darkness.  But once we let the light in, and start being honest about our insecurities… we realize we’re not alone.  And we realize we don’t have to be ashamed anymore.

That’s why I’m writing this, it’s my “Me too!” to join this tidal wave of women being honest about our struggles with beauty & weight & self-hatred, because it’s a tidal wave with the power to crash down upon all this shame we’ve allowed to become a part of us, and carry it off to sea.

My tummy is still squishy, but I’m not disgusted by it anymore. Baby Boy likes to use my tummy as a pillow, because it’s warm and soft and round. J likes to use my tummy as a race-track for his cars, because it jiggles around like jello.  He actually exclaims “GELATINAAAA!!!” (JELLOOOOO!!!) whenever he wraps his arms around my waist and feels the squishiness.

And I just smile.
& I agree that YES my belly feels like jello,
because I don’t want my children to think my body, their bodies, anyone’s body, is something to be ashamed of.

 
Crazy ( skinny ) dancing in Mexico & Crazy ( squishier ) colors in Colombia.
There’s at least a 20 pound difference there… maybe that doesn’t seem like a big deal, but to me it is… & the fact that I’m okay with it, really is a miracle.