Photo by Samarah Martin Photography
Six months after giving birth, I looked exactly the same as the day I came home from the hospital. Rolls of fat bulged from under my bra strap and hugged my hip bones. My stomach looked deflated, like bread dough after it’s been punched down in the bowl. Scars and stretch marks rippled through my skin. My mind hadn’t caught up with the fact that my body had gone through such a drastic situation, and I was surprised each time I looked in the mirror. Is that really me? I thought to myself.
The funny thing is that I realized I looked different, but I also didn’t. I would try to put on my pre-pregnancy clothes and was surprised that the extra 60 pounds of me wouldn’t squeeze into my XS shirts and dresses. On vacation with my family, I went jet skiing, and needed to wear the wet suit shorts they provided. I’ll never forget my inner shock when the instructor looked at me and called to an assistant to “get her a large.” **there’s nothing wrong with being a large. That’s just not the size I was used to**. This awareness on how my body had changed was difficult to compartmentalize at first, but I soon found it was just the wake-up call I needed.
My view on self-image was low as a young teen. I was overweight until I decided to change that around age 14. I actually did become a healthier person physically. I went from being a lethargic, emotional/binge eater, to an avid dieter and gym goer. I was going to the gym five days a week, eating salads every day and rarely eating junk foods. My mood improved, and my constant anxiety subsided. Yet, I still didn’t accept the way that I looked. I was healthier, more fit, and more energetic, but constantly compared myself to other bodies, wishing I was fitter and thinner still. This mindset continued into my adult life, right up until pregnancy.
After giving birth I was the larger, heavier, lumpier. So imagine my surprise when I looked in the mirror at the loose skin hanging off my lower belly, the extra flesh on my thighs, and the purplish scars and stretch marks that painted the once-blank canvas of my body and I thought: I look beautiful. I thought about each month I carried my baby, and the sickness and joint pain I went through. I thought about every moment of birth, the excruciating and the joyful. And I thought there was never a more beautiful image than this body to represent each moment so perfectly.
After giving birth, I was the larger, heavier, lumpier. So imagine my surprise when I looked in the mirror at the loose skin hanging off my lower belly, the extra flesh on my thighs, and the purplish scars and stretch marks that painted the once-blank canvas of my body and I thought: I look beautiful.
I think this mindset change happened for a couple of reasons. One was purpose. The purpose I placed on my pre-pregnancy body was to be as fit and compact and attractive as possible. While I do not think it is wrong to want to achieve a certain appearance, I was doing so out of feeling deficient. Out of a need to look a certain way in order to feel valuable. After giving birth, the purpose of my body expanded to more than just being visually acceptable. Being a safe-house, a refuge, and a laborer for a literal life was it’s purpose and function. My value no longer rested in how my body looked in the eyes of others, but in what it could give.
Second, was that I took myself out of the race. In her book, You are the Girl for the Job, Jess Connelly writes that in order for us to truly take up our calling as women of God, we first have to “take ourselves out of the running” to be the best friends, the best moms, the most beautiful, the most productive, etc. She says, speaking about loving well and stepping into the truth about our identity in Christ:
…it’s God’s job, God’s strength, God’s power, and God’s grace that actually gets the work done. To step into this truth, to take our rightful place in this narrative, we’ve got to take ourselves out of the running for His job, and take ourselves out of any race that pits us against other people or ourselves. To start, we’ve got to quit.
Jess Connolly, You Are The Girl For The Job
I realized if I was spending my time thinking about how I could look and be the prettiest, thinnest, sexiest, or whatever, I would be doing a disservice not only to myself, but to others. I can’t represent Christ well if I cannot respect my own body that he fearfully and wonderfully made. I cannot love others well if my perception of what makes a body worth loving is not aligned with what the scripture says: That our bodies have value, not in how they look, or what they do, but in how they were fashioned by God.
This is not to say that I never ever struggle with how I look. If anyone reading this is struggling to appreciate their postpartum body, please know it’s normal to feel out of touch with how you look post-birth. I still look at old photos of myself and wish I was that size again. I still wish I could fit into my own clothes sometimes. I still compare myself to other women who quickly lost their baby weight and wish I could as well.
It took going through the physically-distressing, life altering experience that birth is for me to realize that negative thoughts about my body don’t have to be the norm, and that I don’t have to accept them. While I now strive to exercise and eat nutritiously, it’s not out of chasing an unattainable idea of a “good body”, but under the assurance that my body is already called “good” by the One who made it.
