My Body as Home, an Ode to Fat

The body is a funny thing: so many cells doing their various jobs nonstop, regenerating, and making us who we are. I am slowly coming into my body and welcoming the idea that the Liturgists Podcast touched on this season: “embodiment”. My body is not just a holder of my soul. It is me. My selfhood is in my body and my body is so gracious and good to find clever ways of continuing to do its job even when I don’t treat it well, when I lack boundaries, when I shame myself at the sight of more body. How good and wonderful my body is. How good and wonderful I am.

And this claim of goodness has to include the extra fat that wasn’t there one year ago and that I could have never imagined two years ago. Those cells carry the very existence of a whole season of my life and I firmly believe I need to process that season and be grateful for the way that fat has helped me. It feels strange to talk about, but let’s consider this an ode to fat, one in which I hope to express no self-pity nor attract sentiments of about my outward beauty.

This year held a season where many days after 10 hours of work I’d drive away from school, defeated and with a string of swear words coming off my tongue. I’d make it home to flop on my bed, with no psychological capacity to even imagine the possibility of getting up. The mental capacity needed to get up and decide what to eat was too much for me many days and left me not eating or making my favorite instant noodles (Mama Oriental Kitchen Mi Goreng). Or, on a better day, I’d self medicate with Reese's peanut butter cups and all the liberal comedians I could get my hands on to counterbalance my exhaustingly conservative work environment. The lack of movement, hours on my ass in meetings and responding to emails, the Reese's cups and MSG-filled noodles make the fat that is now along my thighs, newfound lovehandles, and easily disguised double chin. This fat on my body holds the hours, days, and months of a hard season of life that I not only survived, but that I think I did my best in and that I see as being instrumental in growth and understanding that I now have.

By no means do I hope to face challenges in the same way next time and I think this season has given me the understanding I need to make different choices in the future and to ask for help in better ways. I have learned more about food and its impact on cellular regeneration, psychological health, and mental capacity. I have also learned about the unnecessary stress I put on myself and the places I hustle in to find my worth, two things which will surely lead to my demise if I don’t uproot these weeds of lies in my heart.

But the fact that I gained weight in this process of learning and growing and being challenged is embarrassing to me. While I’m sure any friends would roll their eyes and remark on how “you’re not fat!”, my old uncle neighbor knows the truth and even commented to me the other day as I walked by, “Wow, you’ve gotten so fat. Aren’t you exercising anymore?!” I can no longer button the slacks I wore in August and am at the point where I am tired of elastic skirts and wondering whether it is worth the finances to buy new clothes that fit. And if it is, then what do I do with my clothes in the smaller size? Honestly, I fear that buying clothes that fit me comfortably will make me complacent to stay this size.

But what is wrong with this size? What is wrong with having extra fat?

Somewhere deep in me is the belief that fat equals bad equals not caring for one’s body equals not taking care of the temple of God. And when a transcendent God who holds the keys for life and everlasting death gets involved, things quickly become more serious and carry more shame for me.

I feel deeply bad for having extra fat on my body. Somewhere in my psyche, my size connects to my self-worth. But there’s this internal battle going on in my mind, because at the same time, I am learning such beautiful self-love and freeing embodiment. While I want to take care of my body, I know if I set myself mainly on losing fat, then I set myself on losing and denying a part of myself. I’ll lose the acceptance of where I’ve been and the reality of what that has looked like. If I make it a goal to only lose this fat, I miss the bigger picture of health.

So while I am continuing on the journey in healthful being and I long to be healthy, I see this as being so much more than a size of clothing or making my silhouette an hourglass again. My health is in my mind, my heart, my schedules, my toes, my dinner plate, and my relationships. My health is finding my very self to be home.

On Beginning to Unpolarise Myself

I am almost fully convinced that it is only through relationships that sustainable change is going to happen. Even the big, systemic, kind of change. I understand that this realisation was simply the lived reality up until the dawn of this increasingly lonely internet era. Thanks to the world wide web, data plans, and cell phone towers, within the course of an hour after an event happens, media has 7-word headlines, 20-second clips, and 140-character tweets circulating for everyone to share, make instant opinions about, polarise, and re-share. For me to post or discuss an event from seven days ago is “so last week”, a phrase which is an insult in this ever quickening world. It is only in this world that we have to remind ourselves that relationships and connection are at the core of being human, intangibles that facebook “likes” and reshares won’t feed. And so, as we are in this world, I seek to remind myself and my readers that relationships and connection are at the core of being human. And this is where change happens. And change is needed.

I shook my head as I listened to Senator Marco Rubio talk about guns at the CNN Town Hall, but I think he was right in his observations of the true state of our polarised nation in his opening address:

“We are a nation of people who have isolated ourselves to only watch channels that tell us that we’re right. We’re a nation of people that have isolated ourselves politically and to a point where discussions like this have become very difficult.”

When disagreement is present, we -- myself included-- suddenly becomes experts, polarisation is established, and we don’t move forward. The loudest voices and the most sensationalized stories are heard and shared, and while we make rage remarks on facebook and judge either those biggots or those godless (pick your appropriate insult), meanwhile the rich continue turning their money into laws.

I can make clever facebook posts and snide quips in conversation, but it is too much work and vulnerability to let my guard down and keep both myself and ‘the other’ human (we have emotion, we desire to belong, we are worthy of love, we want to be known).

To use Christian lingo, I was convicted of this sin last year. When Trump first won, I seethed. I mourned. During one school chapel, I left to sit in the bathroom and cry, amazed at how little the missionary community seemed to care about systemic issues, feeling betrayed that 81% of white evangelicals -- what I considered “home” growing up-- would vote for Trump. By the time he became president and enacted the first Muslim ban, I had closed myself to conversations with others in real life, partially due to my workload and introversion, but a lot due to fear and anger. That night of the Muslim ban, I stayed up all night, reading, learning, and also chatting with my soon-to-be boyfriend. In fact, I can't even give myself credit for the conviction of sin, as he was the one who pointed out my ways. After patiently listening to (er, reading) me complain and question Trump and White Christians, he called me out: “How ironic," he said, "it seems to me that you're asking questions but not talking about it with people.”

That was when I knew that a relationship with him would be good for me.

That was also when I realised that though all my heart wanted to return to America and join marches and church conversations, I needed to present right where I was. If I cannot be present and engaged with the very people in front of me, why would I think I can do that very same thing somewhere else?

I haven't done too well in being present to others beyond my work responsibilities in this last year. But this last year has contained a lot of growth for me in regards to my perfectionism. I’ve learned to show so much grace to myself while repeating the mantra “I am already loved; there are no points to be earned.” With life-threatening gun laws now being discussed and solutions such as arming teachers being tossed around as solutions, I am finally ready to start planning coffee dates, engaging in relational dialogue around important issues, and opening myself up to understanding the stories of how people have come to where they are. All the while repeating to myself my new mantra: “they are already loved; they have no points to be earned.”

Write Something

I haven’t written in a while. And by “written”, I mean “written publicly”.

Because I’m waiting for the right atmosphere when the cup of coffee is still cooling down enough to drink and the candle’s scent is the exact one I wanted from Target. When inspiration has come in so gracefully and yet insistent that I use that exact moment to write and publish because I have the confidence in the inspiration being beyond myself and of worth to share with others.

Because if I do any writing in my free time it should be to update my supporters and remind them that I am, in fact, quite grateful for their prayers and finances and care across the globe as I live in a missionary world on the other side of the ocean.

And similarly, because my work contract is combined with a belief statement and so much of my ponderings and queries directly confront colonialism, the purpose of scripture, and sexual morals beyond what I’ve seen my evangelical community able to handle.

Because it is too easy to publish words and the new president of the my country posts words so frequently, with such little care, and with such immediate and ebbing responses that I, more often than not, don’t see the purpose in putting more words into the world wide web. And with click bait and numbered lists littering the internet, why would anyone want to sit and read paragraphs that include words in which a dictionary is required?

While a part of me argues that not posting my writing for these reasons and others have immense benefits, I know that when I weight the pros and cons of my excuses and the benefits, I need to just write something. And post it. Because I claim a love of words and sharing and growing. Yet I don't do the everyday hard work of the 2 shitty pages a day; the hard work of showing up even when I feel a lack of inspiration. So here’s to doing away with my common excuses and challenging myself to write more, even if it is just something.

2017 was about “presence”, for me, and 2018 is about “presence + enoughness”. So while I am working to take down the high expectations I have of myself and others, and instead being welcoming and accepting of who I am (and hopefully extending that to others), I think I need to keep a high bar to practice the discipline of regularly writing something. Even when there is no coffee in my hand or inspiration that has followed me around all day.

Maybe my “write something” will lead to someone else who needs to “read something”, but if not, that will still be enough. So this year I am going to try and just write little somethings, write what’s on my mind, not trying to analyze neither my voice nor purpose, with this blog and its few readers as my witness.

For Year 24 (Olivia)

[A birthday poem, to a friend I admire and cherish.]


For 23 years
I imagine God has been smiling
And nodding Her head
As She remembers the pieces
She had delicately arranged
To come alive at just these
Right times
Within you. 

She remembers that day 
With your parents: 
Christ tending the garden, 
Father watching the door, 
And Holy Spirit dancing twirls
And dabs around mom and dad, 
All Three choosing
The gifts
To give the world only 
Through you. 

And we, 
Without the cosmic view on all things, 
But who find themselves 
In the daily intersection
Of life with you, 
We thank God for these gifts
And for these years
Of you. 

For you, 
Asking questions until
You uncover hope in
Parts of your own story
And in our world. 

For you, 
Choosing courage until 
It spreads its wings 
And provides spaces of rest
Over us, too. 

For you, 
Offering hospitality to the 
All of who you are
That you may welcome us
And welcome God
To also be the all of who
We are. 

on poetry and hospitality

When I left my born-and-raised religious community, I found comfort in poetry. Words that rose and fell to the rhythms of all that life is. Words that softened places of shame and obligation, allowing hope to enter. Mary Oliver and Rumi still speak to my heart in ways for which I am forever grateful.

Now, though, I realize maybe it is the space between the letters and punctuation that hold more of the power. Space in which questions, despair, hope, and laughter are invited to come, rest, and be.

It is in this act of hospitality that both I and the paradoxes of life can fully show up without anyone needing to be lesser than the true beauty and mystery we’ve been created to live with. No need to hide.

To think that all of a person, an experience, or a god can be captured in mere words is foolishness. But maybe wisdom is the combined understanding of words, mystery, and ambiguity all in the same place.

When I search through my whole lexicon and find that truly no words can be put together to form the fullness of any one experience, I know I am fully human. And when I put the pen to the paper anyway, I know I’m living fully. Living into the transformative power of the paradoxes that are packaged into this life of both mourning and laughter.

These days, I’m leaving more off-white (coffee-stained) space in my poetry and in my life. Hospitality beyond just the margins. Places where there’s room for the all of life, the all of you, and the all of me.