i should be writing my final, but...

tonight i had the privilege of having dinner with my friends kaely and delonte. we spent a lot of time talking about body image and the issues that women face. one of the things i found most helpful to talk about is the idea that we have all been sinned against by broken people. whether it is the media, an ex-boyfriend, or a parent, we have all been failed by the human capacity for love. we have not been loved well, and in return we have failed to love ourselves well. when i think about some of the reasons that i snack when i am not hungry, i know it is out of loneliness. when i think about scripture that talks about how God delights in us, i realize it is a foreign concept to me. i think i catch glimpses into what it could mean for someone to delight in me, but to really believe that God loves me so much that he takes delight in who i am seems ridiculous. i have learned through different avenues to hate myself and my body. we are taught by television, by magazines, by our mothers, our grandmothers, and all the women around us.

what i want is a revolutionized understanding of who i am. i want food to no longer be an issue because i want my focus to be on something other than food. i want to be in a place where i am naturally inclined to treat my body well and to not seek solace in food because i know what it means for the living God to delight in me. i want to no longer idolize my body (by this i do not mean worship it in that i think it is perfect, but worship it by virtue of the amount of time i spend thinking about it and worrying about it). so this makes me contemplate both the process i am using and the name of my blog. i am wondering if it is necessary to weekly weigh and measure myself. what if my goal is health in mind and body. how do we measure that? i think that weight and measurements are one other avenue to show how we do not measure up to some unknown ideal. maybe my blog should be called "terra getting healthy."

now don't get me wrong, i want to lose weight. i want to be shrinking terra. i want to get healthy and do all the things that will prolong my life and improve the quality of my life. i do think that a huge portion of healthy living is spiritual and mental health. this is the piece of the puzzle i am so often inclined to leave out. i also tend to believe that better behavior will follow better thought. i think that i will naturally make better decisions about what i eat and how i treat my body if i believe that i am delighted in by God and if i chose to stop quantifying my value by my pants size or my weight. what i long for is that this become an intuitive way of life. i want to take joy in flowers and long walks more than i take joy in a box of hot tamales. i want to comfort my pains in life with warm tea and a good cry rather than ice cream and potato chips.