There. I Fixed It. {Found Poetry}

I'm working on my final paper this semester. It's on the damage done by diet devotionals and why they are dangerous to individual Christians and the church as the Body of Christ.

This means that for research I am reading a few diet devotionals.

One that I picked up at a thrift store is Gwen Shamblin's Rise Above, the follow-up to her best-selling Weigh Down Diet.  

Rise Above is a horrid book and spiritually abusive. It was emotionally draining to read. So, I decided to redeem it a little bit and complete a "found poetry" activity I've been wanting to do for a while. I opened to a random page, made sure I had any notes I needed from it for my paper, and then got to work trying to use her own words to offer an opposite message. A message that critiques the fat-shaming that is found all throughout the book and celebrates the way that God made us diverse bodies - and part of the beauty of our bodies is that multiple times a day, if we are so blessed, we get to eat, and we get to do it with friends and family. Throwing on food and weight and body judgments ruins that community and ruins that chance we have to find communion with the incarnated triune God.

The final art project isn't perfects, it's the first one I've ever done. But I'm happy with it. And when I'm flipping through the book over the next few weeks as I finish up this paper, it will be a nice reminder of what God really thinks about my body.

Before

And, After

Struggle

You think Obesity consumes light.

your heart

your desire

cycles to God

appetite gives back to you - Christ.

digest

learning to love

Ten years into learning to love

my body someone asked,

What don't you like?

What don't you like
about your body?

My mind traced the curves I know
from lotion slathered on, slowly,
and looking into mirrors until
I saw beauty. Nothing there in the
curves and sags not to love.

I once fell backwards
into a bank of snow with a laugh.
cheeks flushed from two hours
of clearing fluffy white from sidewalks.
Heart and arms strong for the task.

When I run, I feel like I"m gliding -
my feet above the track my body soars,
less swiftly than it feels for sure,
but I soar on these  legs that resemble trunks
with their muscles toned from years of carrying this
well curved body of mine across the face of the earth

My eyes have earned me long gazes
from admirers who could not seem to pull
their eyes away from mine. They are my vain pride,
but I allow them that for they are the part of me
I've never hated.

Genetics, a propensity to have my nose
buried in a book or a computer screen.
My eyes need help. Fifteen years of contacts.
They beg for a break. The budget agrees.
I switch to glasses.The cheap kind.

I perch them atop my nose and cringe
a little at their prominence with their dark
black frames and the way they seem to cast
shadows over and into  my eyes.

And here I must learn to love my eyes
as they are - deep blue (but sometimes green),
flawed and imperfect like the rest of me.
I have spent a decade learning to listen to my body
and to give her what she needs.

So, here too, I listen to the cherished
voice of my body, I listen to the voice that says
she's more, that her flaws do not deem her
unworthy, that there is something to still
to love in these eyes that see this world.

One of Those Doors: A Very Short Story

A Memory On a Sunny Day {a very short story}