Body Image
“You’ve got fat legs.”
Until that moment, aged five, waiting my turn to balance on a beam in PE, I’d never thought about my body or how it looked at all. Those four words, casually thrown in my direction by the boy behind me in the line, landed with such force my whole world shifted.
Untold and uncountable factors fed into my eventual experiences with disordered eating and struggles with body image. But that was the moment I realised and recognised three life-changing facts.
My body was a thing. Other people could pass judgment on it. And I felt ashamed of it.
Over forty years later, with the memory of that day still pin-sharp, I was asked by my Baptist college tutor to write a poem about body image for a chapel service.
He didn’t know my history: the two decade-long battle I’d fought with my mirror-dwelling bully of an eating disorder and the daily struggles I continued to have with body image.
I told him I thought I’d find it a hard one to write and he gave me full permission not to write it at all. But it felt important, for me and for anyone who would read it, so I set aside a couple of days to think, pray and write.
In the end, though, all it took was a single afternoon spent with God.
Being a Christian doesn’t mean life suddenly turns into a soft-focus, trouble-free Hallmark card of an existence. I’ve been a Christian since I was six, and have experienced low self-esteem, anxiety and depression throughout most of my life. And all the while I have genuinely felt the love of God and known deep-down joy in his presence. Humans are complicated!
But the shame I felt about my body as a child, and the shame I’ve felt since because of my struggles, has no place in my life. Jesus died on the cross and rose again, defeating death, sin and shame.
Galatians 5:1 tells us “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.”
Freedom from shame means not only accepting myself as I am now, but also accepting the life I’ve lived to get here. It’s not all been squeaky clean, and I’ve said sorry to God for the part I’ve played in that. And I know he loves me, forgives me and accepts me.
The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (and Deborah, Ruth and Rahab!) loves, forgives and accepts each of us as we turn to him. Even now I find this incredible, and still get goosebumps reading the pure praise of Psalm 8, or David’s prayer of praise in 1 Chronicles 29:10–13, or John’s vision of Jesus in Revelation 1: 9–18 and knowing that this same great, powerful glorious Lord was with me during my lowest, hidden moments, and is with me now.
The bully still lives in the mirror, and she sometimes manages to put a dent in my day. But her voice is weaker now and her lies ring hollower.
Instead I listen to the one who made me, who knows me and who loves me. I read and re-read Psalm 139. I turn up the volume and sing Who you say I am so loud I make myself laugh. I turn my eyes – and my ears – towards Jesus, and I let his words sink deeper than skin.
