Freckles

My oldest daughter, Ava is nearly nine.  She's in that stage where she's still so much a little girl, but is inching ever closer to tweenhood.  She's sassy and moody, yet sweet and incredibly helpful at times.  She's gone from believing I know everything to being suspicious of me knowing anything at all. 

I've made a conscious effort to not talk about my physical hangups in front of her.  I don't want her to remember me hating on myself.  I want her to remember me for the way I loved her and for the way I respected myself enough to know my own worth.  I've been working so hard on loving myself, not for who I might become, or who I once was...but me, right now, imperfections and all. 

The message to be beautiful and desirable and blah, blah, blah is all around us every single day.  So recently after a session with my therapist she challenged me to focus on what is great about the thing I dislike the most on my body.  It was really like a buffet of criticisms to choose from each and every time I look in the mirror, but the thing I loathe the most is my stomach.  So I had to think something good about it every time I looked in the mirror or noticed it and started to think negatively in my head. 

Yeah, I know it sounds crazy and the fact that it seems revolutionary to love something that we are taught to find undesirable about ourselves underlines the sickness within society and ourselves.  My youngest daughter, being three and brutally honest said something to me the very next day about my fat tummy.  I said, "Fat is not a nice word.  We don't ever tell someone they are fat."  She said, "Well it's only your tummy, Mom."  I nodded and I said, "Yes, but I just love my tummy.  Isn't it so nice that when you cuddle with me that I am soft and warm..."  "You are, mommy!" she agreed as she laid her dark head on my tummy in love.  I shook my head, because I didn't quite believe it although I had just proclaimed my love for something I used to affectionately call the gelatinous mass. 

So yes, I'm not quite there yet, but it's okay and I'm learning to quiet that critical voice as I peer at myself in the cold glass at the physical shell that houses who I really am. 

Tonight Ava, the almost nine year-old, told me she didn't like her freckles, or her teeth.  I took a deep breath and I told her that our bodies are constantly changing.  She'll have braces on in January, but you know those freckles...they may always be there and I love each and every one of them.  I know this may work for now.  But in the future the viewpoint of a mother who loves you is not at the top of your list for a real life assessment of if you are beautiful and desirable and all that crap.  Before I left her room tonight I laid down next to her, rubbed her back and studied her face as her eyes fluttered sleepily open and close.  The words left my lips and as I said them to her I felt the weight and the truth of each one, "Ava, I know you may not like your freckles, but the Lord makes us in a certain way and nothing that God creates is ugly in any way.  You are beautiful to Him, and you are beautiful to me not for how you look but for the most important part of your self...your soul." 

For my part when I look in the mirror I smile, although I still may notice the things that bother me about my appearance, I also love that which God has created.  This body will break down, but the spirit...the most important part of any one of us, if nurtured and cherished, only thrives from the living and loving of this one incredible life we have been given.