Beauty Paradigm
I have felt prompted to continue this little online space after about 5 years of neglect. Reading back on my older posts has been a great tool in helping me see how far I've come and where I still need to work.
7 months ago I had a baby boy, Jameson Wayne Lindsey.
Pretty dang cute, right??
What an amazing experience his birth was. I opted to have an un-medicated birth. There were many reasons for this, but one of them being my love for my body and the many amazing things that it can do. This was a huge step forward in trusting my body, God's perfect process, and my Savior's grace.
With pregnancy, birth, and postpartum healing, comes the "dreaded" body changes. This was my first time giving birth and my body has done a great job healing. I remember looking at other women before having a baby and wondering how they are the same? Ha! Well, our bodies are amazing and after taking care of a growing human and me, it is pretty easy for it to take care of just me.
Recently, to help lose a little weight I signed up for a month long challenge. It has been great to get back into exercising and focus more on my overall health. It has been fun to feel a little athletic again. With this challenge comes a nutrition plan. The purpose of the nutrition plan is to basically manipulate my body to look a certain way. Talk about screwing with my head! I have been doing a lot of research before this challenge on nutrition and trying to figure out what would be best for me. I signed up for this challenge with the intent to try out the nutrition part of it and see what I thought. Health for me includes my mental health. I have never found peace or joy in trying to manipulate my body to fit someone else's idea of what it should look like, including my own ideas.
I was feeling a little overwhelmed, confused, and frustrated. I turned to a talk that I have read before and I think I have even referenced on this blog. "The Sanctity of the Body" by Susan W. Tanner. I love this quote.
One last quote before I sign off, from Tuesday's With Morrie.
xoxo,
Joanie
7 months ago I had a baby boy, Jameson Wayne Lindsey.
What an amazing experience his birth was. I opted to have an un-medicated birth. There were many reasons for this, but one of them being my love for my body and the many amazing things that it can do. This was a huge step forward in trusting my body, God's perfect process, and my Savior's grace.
With pregnancy, birth, and postpartum healing, comes the "dreaded" body changes. This was my first time giving birth and my body has done a great job healing. I remember looking at other women before having a baby and wondering how they are the same? Ha! Well, our bodies are amazing and after taking care of a growing human and me, it is pretty easy for it to take care of just me.
Recently, to help lose a little weight I signed up for a month long challenge. It has been great to get back into exercising and focus more on my overall health. It has been fun to feel a little athletic again. With this challenge comes a nutrition plan. The purpose of the nutrition plan is to basically manipulate my body to look a certain way. Talk about screwing with my head! I have been doing a lot of research before this challenge on nutrition and trying to figure out what would be best for me. I signed up for this challenge with the intent to try out the nutrition part of it and see what I thought. Health for me includes my mental health. I have never found peace or joy in trying to manipulate my body to fit someone else's idea of what it should look like, including my own ideas.
I was feeling a little overwhelmed, confused, and frustrated. I turned to a talk that I have read before and I think I have even referenced on this blog. "The Sanctity of the Body" by Susan W. Tanner. I love this quote.
"Happiness comes from accepting the bodies we have been given as divine gifts and enhancing our natural attributes, not from remaking our bodies after the image of the world. The Lord wants us to be made over - but in His image, not in the image of the world, by receiving His image in our countenances."One of my very favorite scriptures that pertains to beauty that I consistently fall back to whenever I am tempted to care more about my looks than my spiritual beauty is Isaiah 53:2.
"For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground: he hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him."This is a constant reminder that our looks have nothing to do with what we can accomplish in this life with our hands in God's. No amount of manipulating my body will give me the joy of being pure and clean before the Lord. He cares about my health, my overall health, not so much about if my body is fitting in with the latest physical trends.
One last quote before I sign off, from Tuesday's With Morrie.
"We spend so much time sculpting our bodies and nature takes it anyway."Our bodies were not meant to be put on display. God did not create these incredible tabernacles for us to use them as trophies, but to be used to bless lives, to serve, and to worship. What a beautiful, soul-filling truth.
xoxo,
Joanie
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