A Forty Year Old Body

This body is forty years old. It is my favorite body of all the ones I've lived inside. I have had a very tiny teenager body that wore a size four which looks very cute in the photographs when I peek back in time. However, inside of that body was insecurity and immaturity. There was no wisdom in there because it was not old enough to have learned many lessons. Most of what that person had to offer was wrapped up inside of that pretty little cocoon not yet fully realized.
The body I inhabited in my twenties was as poorly cared for as the spirit and mind it housed. It was a big, fat sloppy body and inside was a mind as undisciplined as its owner's appetite. This was a woman who had been knocked around and healed from marital problems but still had a whole lot of learning and growing to do. Unfortunately, I grew physically much more than spiritually. Those were the years of making mistakes and learning the hard way. The years of deciding what I wouldn't tolerate but not knowing quite how to do that the right way.
My thirties were the transition time for the body that had known beauty and ugliness. The first half were spent still inside the fat but less willing to stay there. My mind became calmer and yet less satisfied with what was and more determined to move into what might be. In a way, my body was more of a sanctuary that it had ever been as it housed a spirit seeking God with more passion and hands that let go of my own agendas. At the half-way mark I was issued two instructions that seemed clearly to be the proverbial fork in the road. With submission to the two mandates before me I would find my way toward the next half of life. Or I could continue living inside of my head but just outside of my life.
I didn't' like the fat body or the almost-there life so I took a deep breath and leaped. I went back to school and on a diet in the same year. Both of which made the second half of my thirties really hard and really good.
All of which brings us to this forty year old body. It has been fatter and it has been skinnier. This body has to work hard to stay in a size ten but the woman in charge of it allows an occasional foray into a size twelve as long as it's temporary. This body is not attractive unclothed. It does not do well with Victoria Secrets undergarments as 100 pounds of fat stretched out skin that never went away. This body has a relatively small rib cage but wide hips and butt because that is where all the potato chips settle. It has big ankles because it just does and a freakishly skinny neck.
This body houses a peaceful heart, a joyful spirit and a confidant woman.
This body doesn't feel inadequate for looking like every one of its forty years.
I don't want the small insecure body or the fat confused body or the in-transition body. I look in the mirror and see nothing but good things now.
Because this body has eyes that see clearly.
Proverbs 14:30
A heart at peace gives life to the body...