Weighed Down

I've started writing this post what feels like a dozen times, but every time, I seem to push "Save" instead of "Publish," telling myself that I'll come back to it when I'm more comfortable dealing with an issue I've been struggling with for a long time.

Even before I got pregnant, I was really struggling with my weight, and how I looked.  It's even worse now that I'm seven months pregnant.

On our wedding day

 When I got married, I was at what I would call my ideal weight.  I was happy with how I looked, and even more importantly, I felt healthy.  But marriage (and the happiness that comes with it) has a way of packing on the pounds, and pack them on I did...30 of them to be exact.

It was the first time in my life that I'd gained weight like that.  I had never struggled with weight before; if anything, I had always had difficulty keeping it on.  This sudden shift and change in my body left me reeling, and I really struggled with how I looked.

About six months before I found out I was pregnant, I decided that I needed to make a change.  I changed my eating habits, started exercising, and thankfully lost about 15 of those pounds.  Right around that time, I discovered I was pregnant, and while I was overjoyed, I regret to divulge that my first thought was, "Well, there goes my weight loss!"

Throughout my pregnancy, eating healthy and walking regularly have helped me to gain weight at a steady and healthy pace, but that doesn't make seeing that growing number on the scale any easier.

At 19 weeks

About a week ago, when I stepped on the scale at my latest doctor's appointment, the number on the scale brought tears to my eyes.  While my doctor assured me that the number was still healthy, something about the number just pushed my over the edge.  After the appointment, I sat in my car and cried.

Later that evening, I began to pray hard that God would take away the feelings I was having about being unattractive.  While I know that weight gain is a part of pregnancy, and totally normal, these were feelings I knew I had been struggling with for a long time, and they needed to be dealt with.  And while I won't say I heard an audible voice, I felt like someone whispered in my ear, "Do you want your daughter to feel this way about herself?"

Suddenly I felt like 100 bricks had landed on my chest.  It had never occurred to me that some day my daughter will be old enough to recognize my struggle.  She'll see my warped view of beauty; that to be beautiful, you must be skinny or look a certain way.  The thought terrifies me.  I've always thought that women of various shapes and sizes are beautiful, but for some reason I've struggled with my own appearance.  I don't want my daughter to struggle with hers.  I want her to know that she is beautiful, that she is valuable, that she is treasured.

And then another revelation struck: God wants me to feel the same things about myself.  He wants me to know that I am beautiful, that I am valuable, that I am treasured.  For those of you struggling with the same issues, this is God's message to you too.  Let's remember this important lesson and pass it on to our daughters, so that they might live life knowing how beautiful and treasured they are.