Fat Missionary

A letter to a friend.

Dear random internet reader,

Want to hear something crazy and deeply intimate? Sure you do. Some of my first memories are of times when I was very uncomfortable with my body. It’s truly mind-boggling how early that starts with some girls. I remember at 12 years old trying to squeeze into size 8 jeans (which is a US 4) and all I felt was fat and ugly. I was always comparing myself to skinnier friends, and there were always celebrities managing to pull off completely insane poses and sizes. The result was that while growing up I never relaxed and enjoyed my body for what it was.

At age 14 I watched a fictional tv show that followed a girl working through bulimia. The show had good intentions, the girl dealt with it and recovered with the help of good parents and level-headed friends. But the seed was sown. I had seen how beautiful girls gained that envious flat stomach. By this point I was desperate, so I gave it a go, and thus began my love/hate relationship with eating disorders. The ‘love’ part was how it gave me the illusion of having self-control. All I needed to do was add in one action after eating and I would also achieve greatness. The ‘lose’ part was the damage it ultimately did to my body (bulimia actually wrecks you) and to my relationship with food.

A few years later when I finally came to the realization that I was doing more harm to my body than good, I gave up the bulimia and replaced it with a cycle of bingeing and starving. And for 16 years that’s where I stayed, desperately trying to limit my food in the hope of attaining thinness, but then getting really hungry and giving in to food again. Add on pregnancy, the convenience of fast food, and a waning desire to lug this extra weight onto a treadmill, and you’ll find me here at 33 having never achieved satisfaction with the body I have.

I’m sure this isn’t going to be a new and strange story for you. It’s a fairly common struggle for western women these days. We have our culture telling us that we’re ugly and less desirable if we can’t control ourselves and work towards the current ideal of beauty.

But this goes to a deeper level with Christian women because we also have the church telling us that if we don’t look a certain way it’s because we aren’t spiritual enough. We are the unfavoured majority (kilo for kilo) that haven’t been able to ‘exercise’ that all elusive fruit of the Spirit called self-control. We bring the same hierarchy of beauty into our churches, labeling some women as spiritually immature simply because they struggle with this one particular expression of the Spirit, in this one very visual way.

But it’s simply not true. It’s a dangerous belief that is a big part of what sends some women hurtling towards depression, eating disorders, and worst-case scenario: the loss of their faith in God. Some of the most spiritual women I have in my life exude the fruit of love, they work with patience, and they treat everyone around them with kindness. These women are women worth having around, they are women who deserve to be leaders and mentors, but sometimes we disqualify them. And we do it to ourselves as well.

We all have something we think makes us unqualified to be truly effective in our calling, whatever that calling may be. Sometimes we relegate ourselves to the bench because of long-held beliefs and misunderstandings of this great story. I’m slowly learning that it’s not my fatness that relegates me to the bench when it comes to achieving what I think I’ve been called to, but it’s the insidious belief I have that I am somehow ‘less than’ because I’m fat.

From the first writings in our oldest Christian books, we’re shown people who left their homelands, following the call of God and choosing to trust that the hardest places with God are better than the comfortable places without him. Their stories are filled with faith, perseverance, and courage, but they’re also filled with the weaknesses and doubts that these people lived with. David? Adulterer and muderer. Noah? Loved the vino a wee bit too much. Elijah. Fought with depression. Paul? Mass murderer, arrogant, and a little bit pig-headed (probably a double insult for a Jew).

But isn’t that comforting? God did not always choose people that were exceptional; people that were blameless. Most of the time he chose people that were deeply flawed, who had mindsets that needed adjusting, and He worked with them in spite of their flaws and failures. And God still does that today.

I think of my journey, and hindsight is a wonderful teacher. It teaches me that despite my large pile of bad decisions that have led to this deeply flawed character, God is going to weave me into his story if I consistently come back to him, repent for my bad choices, and then get back out there.

So, friend, grant yourself grace. Grant yourself peace. Grant yourself a little rest, knowing that God knew you before the foundations of time. He knew that you would face the challenges you’ve faced. He knew you’d make the decisions you’ve made.

And time and time again, he chose you.

He still chooses you.

Signing off for today,

The Fat Missionary