new year, new self-control

{source}

A new year is upon us, and unless this one is much different from others, our conversations will be laden with talk of fitness goals and holiday diet missteps. The New Year is traditionally a time for resurrecting our self-control, so this is no surprise. But this New Years' I have a different form of self-discipline in view - one with potentially longer-lasting impact than dropping a dress size.

I recently came across an article showing ads from the 1930’s and 40’s selling products to help people gain weight. The ads made claims that sounded completely comical to our 2012 ears: “Add 5lb of solid flesh in a week!” “Since I gained 10lb…I have all the dates I want!” I showed the ads to my daughters, whose response was “Mom, I don’t think those are real. Have you checked that on Snopes?”

But they’re real alright, despite how preposterous they seem. My first reaction, I am ashamed to admit, was that I was born too late. How great would it be to live during a time when well-padded women held the glamour-girl title? (As long as I’m being honest, I had a similar reaction to learning that in South America women get implants in their bottoms to achieve their culture’s ideal shape. By some cruel twist of fate, had I been born on the wrong continent? Why couldn’t I live where hips were hip?)

But of course, to seriously entertain these thoughts is to drink a Kool-aid that has been served up to women since the dawn of time: the belief that ideal physical beauty exists and should be pursued at all costs. For much of human history, the curvy beauty has prevailed. Statues of women from ancient Greece and Rome celebrate a body type we would call “plus-size” today, as does Renaissance art. Historically, padded women were considered beautiful because only the rich and idle could achieve such a figure, and because curviness indicated fertility. For women of past generations curviness was extremely hard to achieve unless you had the money to eat well and work little. Thanks to trans fats and high-fructose corn syrup, this is no longer the case. Ironically, the rich and idle of today strive to look undernourished and overworked. And the rest of us rush to follow suit.

So, would it have been better to live during a time when well-fed women were hailed as beauties? I doubt it. Because the issue is not “fat versus thin” – it is “perfect versus imperfect”. There has never been a time when women have not defined themselves by (enslaved themselves to?) some ideal of physical beauty. Though its definition may change across the centuries, one element remains constant: it is always a definition of beauty that is just beyond our reach. We want what we cannot have. If curvy is hard, we want curvy. If thin is hard, we want thin.

The expectation of physical perfection hits modern females early and often.  In middle school, girls cut themselves to deal with the pressures of conforming to the ideal. In middle age, women do, too – but allow the surgeon to hold the knife. We carve the record of our self-loathing into the very flesh of our bodies – a self-marring, a literal carving of an idol. Increasingly, physical perfection is the legacy of womanhood in our culture, handed down with meticulous care from mother to daughter, with more faithful instruction in word and deed than we can trouble to devote to the cultivation of kindness, peacemaking and acceptance that characterize unfading, inner beauty.

In this as in all things, there is hope and good news for the believer: one day we will be free of our self-loathings and will live in harmony with our physical appearance. We will be given new, incorruptible bodies – bodies that are no longer on a collision course with the grave. We dare not reduce this future hope to that of an eternity with thinner thighs or a smaller nose. We must celebrate it as the day when vanity itself is dealt a fatal and final blow.

But how should we live in the meantime? By all means, we should steward the gift of our physical bodies – but for the sake of wellness, not beauty. Two women can step onto two treadmills with identical fitness goals and widely different motives. Only they will know the real reason they are there.

January is typically a time when we talk a great deal about calories, work-outs and weight loss. What if we didn’t? What if we didn’t talk about body sizes at all? What if we made it a point not to mention our own calorie sins or victories in front of our girlfriends and daughters? What if we started living in right relation to our bodies now, instead of at the resurrection? What if every time we looked in the mirror and were tempted to complain we said “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven”, laying claim to the future hope that our bodies will one day celebrate function in right relation to form, living in the glorious truth of that future hope now?

What if this New Years’ we decided to fast not from food but from body-talk? Sure - hit the gym, eat the Paleo diet, run six miles a day, wear Spanx from neck to knee  - just stop talking about it. Stop telling your friend she looks skinny – instead tell her you love her sweet spirit. Choose compliments that spur her to pursue that which lasts instead of that which certainly does not.  If someone comments on your own shape, say thanks and change the subject. Banish body-talk to the same list of off-limits topics as salaries, name-dropping, and colonoscopies. Apply the discipline you use to work out to controlling your tongue. Do this for your sisters, and by the grace of God, we could begin a legacy of womanhood that celebrates character over carb-avoidance, godliness over glamour.

Sister in Christ, physical perfection is not within our grasp, but, astonishingly, holiness is. Where will you devote your energy in the New Year? Go on a diet from discussing shape and size.  Feast on the Word of Truth. Ask this of yourself for your sake, for the sake of your friends and daughters, for the sake of the King and His Kingdom. On earth as it is in Heaven.

“Hear and understand: it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but what comes out of the mouth; this defiles a person.” Matthew 15:10-11

the hope of advent

We crowd into the room, shuffling songsheets so everyone can see, children in front. I turn so Jeff can read the chords, the neck of the guitar jutting awkwardly in front of me. We have an audience of two.

He lies next to her on the bed, on her left. He is neatly dressed, his white hair carefully combed. She lies slack-jawed, eyes staring up to the ceiling. Purple blotches cover her arm. Her right hand rests loosely on a baby doll placed on her chest. He is holding her left.

He smiles and wishes us a Merry Christmas. He has a request: could we sing “O Holy Night”?

We find it on our songsheets and begin to sing. The key is a bit high, and we search for the top notes of the chorus.

He closes his eyes as we sing.

They have been married for fifty years. She has been in this room for three. When the dementia blossomed, she forgot his name and began asking for the man who left her a widow in her twenties. He requested a larger bed be brought into the room so they could lie next to each other. So he could hold her hand. Some would say he belongs outside this building, but he does not agree.

We marry ‘til death do us part, but we do not choose the manner of our parting. We speak with longing of the desire to grow old together, but we do not picture this. And yet he stays, and he waits for what is next, and he holds her hand.

“Chains shall he break, for the slave is our brother. And in his name all oppression shall cease.”

Oppression ceasing. No more slack jaw, no more vacant stare. No more hours of airless waiting, marked off by the whir of the blood pressure monitor. The death of death at the birth of Christ. O Holy night.

My eyes are pulled to the hand strumming the guitar.

I will hold that hand. I will hold it. Or it will hold mine. I do not know what the years will bring, but I know this with increasing certainty: that hand will stay in my hand. And we will wait together, for as long as we are given, for the end of oppression.  He has come. He is coming.

“Thank you, that was beautiful.”

He is being kind – we are not great singers. I am the one who should speak those words. Thank you. Thank you for the hope in your hand.

the ministry of mary

December means Advent, and at the Wilkin house that means reading nightly from our traditional Advent book. Each page contains a door that opens onto a scene from the Christmas story - twenty five doors, twenty five days to Christmas. Behind the first three doors of this beautiful book lies the retelling of the Annunciation, and immediately I am drawn into the story. A teen-aged Hebrew girl learns from an angel that she will miraculously give birth to God in the flesh. Mary's response? “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.” Nothing about this story is typical.

The record of what unfolds next for Mary is mind-boggling in its own right – we open the doors of our Advent book to see Elizabeth’s confirmation of the angel’s words, Joseph’s response, the actual birth of the child – but ever since the birth of my own children the quieter details of Mary’s maternal role have stirred my curiosity. The gospels do not tell us much about Jesus’ earliest years, those years during which any mother is consumed with the care of her child. Surely Mary encountered all of the typical weariness, worry, work and wonderment of raising a little one. The doors to these everyday scenes are closed to us.

Was raising the Christ-child a typical experience of motherhood? It's hard to imagine that it was. Even the ordinary would have touched the extraordinary. Think about this: Mary was charged with caring for the very body that would one day be broken for her. Her hands bathed and clothed him, her breasts satisfied his hunger, her lips kissed his skinned elbows, her arms embraced him, her voice soothed him to sleep. In the simple everyday tasks of motherhood, Mary ministered to the very body of the long-expected Savior. Even her most basic acts of mothering were sacred.

That's not a normal experience of motherhood. Or is it?

In Matthew 25:31-45 Jesus speaks of the day in which the righteous will be separated from the unrighteous according to their deeds. The righteous act selflessly to minister to those in need: shelter for the shelterless, food for the hungry, drink for the thirsty, clothing for the naked, help for the sick, compassion for the friendless. Jesus indicates that when we meet the most basic needs of those around us we show forth the reality of our changed hearts. But He says we do more than that. He tells us that when we do these things for others, it is as though we have done them directly for him. This is a pivotal realization for us: when a love for our Savior motivates us to serve others, our most basic acts become sacred acts - as if we had done them for Christ himself.

I am in the process of raising four children. Weariness, worry, work, wonderment. If you opened a door on our lives, you'd find typical scenes: disorder barely confined to the closets and second floor, daily trips to the grocery store (bananas, bread, milk), dirty clothes draping every surface of the laundry room. It feels like someone is always hungry, sick, cranky, or out of clean socks. It is my job as the mom to address these conditions, and I may not always show up to work with a smile on my face.

But if what Jesus says is true, these basic mothering acts are some of the most sacred of all - shelter for the shelterless, food for the hungry, clothing for the naked. As if I have done them for Christ himself.

I don’t share much in common with Mary.  I have great kids, but I can say with some confidence that none of them is a sinless Son of God.  But by meeting their everyday needs out of a love for that Son, I share in some indirect way in the profound mystery Mary knew of ministering to the physical body of her Savior. Even my most basic acts of mothering become sacred.

 “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord.” Such an insightful response to the calling of motherhood. A teen-aged girl could see it. Oh, that I might see it as well - that I might recognize the object of my service as Christ himself, that I might reckon the tasks of mothering not as work but as worship, not as an aggravation but as an altar, not as drudgery but as my dearest delight in service to my Savior. Oh, that sacred service might dwell continually and joyfully behind the door of my home.

Matthew 25:37-40 Then the righteous will answer him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?’And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.’