My whole life I have struggled to accept and love my body. It has been a source of deep pain since I was a little girl and grew out of a number of abuses that don’t need explication here.
In particular, I have struggled to accept my bum. God was fairly generous with me in this area.
In high school, a boy took a ruler and measured it while I was sitting down and then went down the hall yelling out the measurements. Frat boys in college gave that part of my body a cruel name—and so on. These episodes only fueled my outright hatred for this part of me. In response, I put my bum through rigorous regimens to try to minimize it. I hurled every kind of mean thought at it and wished hopelessly for a different body.
But the Lord has a way of bringing us patiently through such disordered relationships and eventually, I made more and more peace with my body.
The real coup de grâce of healing came when I got married. My husband delights in my body exactly as it is. And he is especially fond of—you guessed it—my bum. Loving it in the most playful, tender, and affectionate kind of way has become almost a daily occurrence leaving us both laughing. When I gained a lot of weight with MS and thyroid disease, his response was, “There’s more of you to love!”
I think there’s something of this kind of love in our readings today that strikes at the heart of the rigid taskmaster in me that wanted a “perfect” body. Jesus comes, He says, not to abolish but to fulfill the law. He is speaking of a love that integrates and makes whole, that perfects and elevates and orders every law—through His law of love.
My body is a part of this fulfillment and elevation—so is yours, sister—and that’s something joyous to ponder.
Jesus, help me first and foremost to honor the law of love You established on the Cross and to allow that love to order every other law that operates in my life.
[bctt tweet="The Lord has a way. // Liz Kelly " username="blessedisshe__"]
listen to today’s devotion
What about your life would you like to be made whole by Jesus? Bring it to Him in prayer.
