Body Strong
When you're a teenager, you start to notice your physical appearance more. You finally clamber over the hurdle you face from age nine to about twelve where you look back at pictures of yourself and think, "Did I even own a hairbrush?"
After you start brushing your hair and maybe experimenting with makeup, you begin to also notice things you like and you don't like about the way you look.
From teen-hood and into our twenties, women often strive for a goal with their physical shape. A lot of women strive for that "perfect" size and for the first time, many of us understand the concept of "skinny jeans".
We purchase these jeans in our twenties and never get rid of them. We keep them either as a memento of how thin we once were, for some the jeans are a goal to achieve again someday.
And for others, on a very sad Saturday night they are just a pair of jeans you end up burying your face into while you cry about the boy who broke your heart and how it truly is the end of the world because not only is your heart broken, but you will never fit into these jeans again!!!
I was definitely a "size-achiever" kind of girl until I had my second baby. The first one didn't really do any awesome damage to my body. My bellybutton was always one of my favorite features (don't ask me why, it's strange I know) probably because it went well with my once flat stomach. Anyway, my bellybutton popped like a turkey timer on Thanksgiving around week 25 with my first pregnancy and will NEVER look the same again. But other than that, I didn't come out with too many scary differences other than gaining a significant amount of weight the first time around.
The second pregnancy made my body look like I had fought a battle with the stretch-mark beast and he won.
After giving birth to this lovely peach that assisted in my new, "you'll never wear even a tankini again" look, I did the unthinkable and started looking at myself in a mirror.
I didn't go all conservative either, I stood in front of a full length mirror without a stitch of clothes on and decided to take it all in.
I asked myself what I was proud of.
I was proud of my strong hips that had carried two babies almost back-to-back.
I was proud of my arms which are able to hold my children and care for my family.
I was even proud of my belly, although scarred and completely different than what I was given BK (Before Kids).
I began to realize that a woman's body is so amazing! We have an amazing designer who decided to allow birth and life and nourishment to come directly from us.
Women who have children or don't are designed to display strength and beauty, and I felt so much pride to be one of those women.
As I stood there in front of the mirror, I decided to do something about my post-post-baby-weight (I felt I needed to count it twice since I didn't loose the baby-weight from the first pregnancy). But ultimately I decided to leave behind my "perfect size" goals.
I've decided to be more interested in what my body is capable of, and less interested in what it looks like.
After kids, on this side of surgery, my body will never be the same. But I'm okay with that. Why would I want to completely take away the evidence that I've had children?
These are the scars I bear, this is the size I am and this is where I'm at. So for now, I've decided to be proud of where God has me.
