"Sometimes it is necessary to reteach a thing its loveliness." ~Galway Kinnell

"I owe my body an apology. Technically, I owe my body thousands of apologies, for the thousands of times I've accused it, pushed it, pulled it, starved it, stuffed it, made fun of it, lied about it, hid it, hated it... I'm sorry for taking you for granted, for wishing you were different, and for abusing you because you looked different than i wanted you to. I'm sorry. And thank you. Thank you for, despite my persecution, being strong and able in the most important way."

our bodies truly are amazing.

i've not really taken the time to stop and notice it until the past 

couple of years but when i look at what i am able to do, yes, i AM so lucky!

i guess what i'm saying is this-

for so long my sense of who i was, what i was worth, what i was able to accomplish 

was completely and totally defined by my relationship to my body.

part of what i have been learning over the past 6 months is to not have a "relationship" with my body but rather to be one with it.

while reading the best selling book titled "Women, Food and God", i became

aware how much of my issue has been self-hate which was quite a surprise because I thought i was just a perfectionist, haha.

here's some excerpts that i've been meditating on the past few hours:

"We treat ourselves and the rest of the world as if deprivation, punishment and shame lead to change... The shape of your body obeys the shape of your beliefs about love, value and possibility. To change your body, you must first understand that which is shaping it. Not fight it. Not force it. Not deprive it. Not shame it. Not do anything but accept [and understand it]. Because if you force and deprive and shame yourself into being thin you end up a deprived, shamed, fearful person who will also be thin for ten minutes."

so you see, deprivation is simply a means of survival in the end 

(in that there is hope for change) and i don't want to just survive. 

so i am abolishing deprivation in my life and rather changing 

those things that i really WANT to- not the things the 

world tells me i OUGHT to. and not on any sort of time schedule.

i'll admit, life is not always filled with loveliness. sometimes it's rather bleak and dark. 

but here's the catch:

"There are things that happen to us, and when they happen, they give us two options. Either way, we will never be the same, and we shouldn't. These things can either strip us down to the bone and allow us to become strong and honest, or they can be the reasons we use to behave poorly indefinitely, the justification for all manner of broken relationships and broken ideals. 

It could be the thing that allows everything else to turn, that allows the lock of our lives to finally spring open and our pent-up selves to blossom like preening flowers. Or it can be the reason we use to justify our anger and the sharp tones in our voices for the rest of our lives."

so i suppose in the past, insecurity in my job, my marriage, 

my abilities, my leadership roles, anything really 

could on any given day lead me to a refuge in food. 

but no more.

God is really teaching me to see the blessings in the curses.

to take each opportunity and hardship and struggle to grow as 

a person and to continue becoming a truer version of myself.

"There are things that explode into our lives and we call them curses, and then one day, a year later or ten years later, we realize that they are actually something else. They are the very most precious kinds of blessings."

which is exactly why finding my peace and my solace in HIM and believing in His faithfulness to bring beauty from ashes is all i really need in this life. i'm finding a truer contentment in my relationship with Him and in what He is showing and teaching me through all the muck and the slime. life really has nothing to do with my job, my marriage, my abilities, my leadership roles, or anything that i can touch- it has everything to do with what i make of all those circumstances. how i face the insecurities. how i dance to the lack of rhythm and still somehow end up on my toes as opposed to my back.

living life in this way makes it seem so much less of a 

"day to day, crossing my fingers til the weekend" sort of existence.

"When you can invest yourself deeply and unremittingly in the life that surrounds you instead of declaring yourself out of the game once and for all, because what's happened to you is too bad, too deep, too ugly for anyone to expect you to move on from, that's that good, rich place. That's the place where the things that looked for all intents and purposes like curses start to stand up and shimmer and dance, and you realize with a gasp that they may have been blessings all along. Or maybe not. Maybe they were curses, in fact, but the force of your belief and your hope and your desperate love for life as it is actually unfolding, has brought a blessing from a curse, like water from a stone, like life from a tomb, like the actual story of God over and over."

yet,

"Nothing good comes easily. You have to lose things you thought you loved, give up things you thought you needed. You have to get over yourself, beyond your past, out from under the weight of your future. The good stuff never comes when things are easy. It comes when things are all heavily weighted down like moving trucks. It comes just when you think it never will..."

and

so that

is how i live 

life 

in a way that i welcome

whatever life throws at me.

AND AM HAPPY.

(QUOTES FROM "COLD TANGERINES" BY SHAUNA NIEQUIST)