Death of Purpose

Do you know what happens when you attach your value on your appearance? On your body? On a number on a scale?

I do.

If you’re a woman, probably most of you know exactly what I am talking about. If you’re a man, maybe a slightly lower number.

I have spent my life from kindergarten until now, a thirty-five-year-old woman, wrestling this beast of an issue.

I remember the first comments on my size, telling me I jiggle too much. Or sticking “wide load” on the back of my shirt without my knowledge. Or making comments about what a waste of air I was because I was so fat. Or repeatedly trying to trip me because “the bigger they are, the harder they fall.” I remember these and more. They are burnt in my memory. Severely burnt.

From a young age, I experienced a culture that very much hated fat people (still does). I was morbidly obese most of my life and when you are told, subtly or not, that this one factor was to measure your worthiness, it does something to you.

It’s hard to rise up from this pit. It’s hard to dare to stare these faces down and vocalize your right for life because these people (these voices) just. don’t. care. And if they ever stop speaking these lies to you, your own mind will remember or Satan is all too proud to oblige.

I signed up for a weight loss bet last summer. It was right before the holiday of swimsuits, the Fourth of July. I have fluctuated between 160 and 300 most my life; really only in the last decade has it settled below 200. Well, I was approaching OVER 200 and I had a freak moment.

I heard about this bet from a friend and I was willing to shovel out money to force myself to lose weight. I had 6 months to lose 40 pounds. It would bring me to the lowest weight I have ever been as an adult. In fact, the last time I would have been my betting weight was 5th grade. In my desperation, it seemed very doable. I was so deranged, it seemed more possible than anything.

I signed up.

It took me 3 out of the 6 months to get to the point again that I thought I could do it. And the last 3 months were an everyday battle to think I could get remotely close to my goal.

Self-sabotage, anyone?

I fought. Inwardly and outwardly. I was hangry, frustrated, and I had to encounter bitter emotions and buried memories that I just didn’t want to face.

I weighed in: it was the morning of December 21st and the day of our first Christmas party. I made my goal and I really didn’t feel much different. Slightly, but not as drastic as I was hoping.

I FEASTED at Christmas. I ate whatever I wanted and however much could fit in my stomach (and then much more). I gained 20 pounds back. 20.

I woke up one Sunday morning, almost three weeks after my important weigh in, and I looked in the mirror and desperately tried not to obsess about my chubbier body. So many voices were whispering, attacking, destroying my confidence and it was so bad, I didn’t want to go to church. I didn’t want to face anyone.

I had many reasons to be at church that day and I am a stickler to commitments. If I commit, I COMMIT. I piled the kids in the car and we started our trek to church.

After arguing with myself in the car, like the demon on one shoulder and the angel on the other, I put each of my hands out. “Lord, here are my loaves and here are my fish. I am not sure if I even have a morsel of these left, but you can have it and you can have me. Please do anything you want with me. Anything. I am willing.”

And that’s when the fog cleared and the grand picture opened up.

Do you know what happens when you attach your value on your appearance? On your body? On a number on a scale?

Defeat.

Distraction.

Death of purpose.

What are we created for? Are we mere bodies that are meant to hold a certain shape or to merely look pleasing to the eye?

How much do we lose when we gather our purpose from others? When we calculate our worth based on a flashing number on a plastic platform?

I am ashamed that such a notion would even dwell in my mind and make me think for a moment, a Sunday morning, a large part of my life, that my mere shell holds my importance.

Luke 8 says, “And what do you benefit if you gain the whole world but lose your own soul?”

A part of me wonders if we, as creations of God Most High, have lost our connection with Him so much that we have nothing left but to look at ourselves? What a shame. What a shallow life. What an empty and unfulfilled existence.

I think it’s a little ironic that after my weight loss adventure these last months, I am not too far off from where I began. Still lighter, but no where near I was at my lowest. But something else changed, too. Embarrassment has an interesting way of humbling you a bit. With some humble pie, I realize maybe that’s the best state God can use me in.

Broken. Unfixed. Real.

After all, what can God do with a Manda that can do it all and then some?

Sixty years down the road, what is going to matter? At the end of my life, when my body is even more pulled and sagged as it is now, what is going to truly count?

This body is merely a vessel of something much more valuable than mere shape and body organs. Good health is important, but it was never meant to become my god or an excuse for perfecting my shell to impress others. Afterall, it’s going to all rot anyway.

When I reach 95, I want to be a spry, rosy-faced, wrinkly, real-hearted woman that glows life not because of a diet regimen or the five miles I walked daily, but because of the decades I have spent with the Creator of the universe by my side! That’s more than enough for me.

Chase your desires and chase your scale if you want, but know that true purpose dies when our focus in life goes no further than the end of our noses.