Body Image and the Warrior Princess

Since the birth of our son Kaden I’ve struggled with body image. Clearly I’m not alone in this because there are industries built around it making the indulgence of this struggle very convenient.

I got apps on my phone to help catalogue each bite I took. When that wasn’t helpful, I removed all traces of gluten, found every possible way to increase exercise (including drenching myself in my own sweat and the sweat of others in hot yoga), slashed my carb intake, guzzled water, decreased the meat I ate, crammed salad down my throat, tried new supplements, and made animal sacrifices to Dr. Oz. (Okay, I didn’t really make animal sacrifices. I just wanted to see if you were paying attention.)

The scale didn’t budge.

 

My husband is a personal trainer and works at a gym. When I went there among the other women he sees all day, it was a challenge not to compare myself with them or strive to be like them, seemingly perfect.

 

You can see where this would get slippery, where there’s the potential for a person to become very disrupted and not even realize it.

 

But no matter what tweaks I made to my diet and body, there was this internal conflict, a discomfort stronger even than the unhappiness with my slow physical progress: accepting the changes motherhood blessed me with felt like complacency while returning to the body I had before pregnancy felt overly ambitious and vain. There was no in between.

Thankfully there was a divine intervention for me – subtle, but no less divine. I laugh as I think about it, but I distinctly recall the Holy Spirit asking me one day, So, In the midst of all this self-improvement, when was the last time you painted your nails or read a book? Of course I took even that as condemnation and thought to myself, man I really am not doing enough.

 

After that doltish reaction to the sweetness of the Father, there began to be a change in my heart even though the scale was stagnant. A co-worker and I were talking one day about fitness and, again I laugh at this, but we came to a conclusion together that what we wanted wasn’t to look perfect but to be these incredibly strong “warrior princesses.” We realized in hashing out this fantasy that we actually already were.

 

A warrior princess, to us, is a woman whose goal is to be stronger, not necessarily thinner or more attractive. She pushes the boundaries of exercise further than health and wellness and uses it to shatter limitations.

She realized she was a warrior princess when she’d been hoisting enormous boxes of groceries above her head at her old job with such finesse, that people would call her over to get the boxes they

This is Briana, fellow warrior princess and friend.

couldn’t lift themselves.

 
I realized I was a warrior princess one day when I spread 15 bags of mulch over my yard. Afterward, I stepped back, marveled, and knew the treadmill wasn’t the only place to find satisfaction. 
Exercise is everywhere.

We kept talking about it day after day, and the conversation in my head started shifting from needing to be skinny to wanting to be stronger. It liberated me from pining for something out of reach to celebrating what I already.

So the question How can I get there? became the more important question: What is grace for my body today? What is grace for my body in choosing my next snack or meal? What would be celebrating the gift of having a body?

I’d love to tell you that after this penetrating revelation, all my dreams came true. That’s not really how this works. But as I prayerfully contemplated these questions, I slowly woke up the fact that a full life doesn’t have as much to do with appearance as I thought. The license to love my body the way it is, whether or not it ever changes, is a critical starting point to this realization. 

Fall retreat hikers! I'm the one with the camera around my neck.

When the Father asked whether I’d painted my nails or read lately, He was asking me if I’m ever going to decide that today I was enough for myself. I was already enough for Him and didn’t need to try so hard. That revelation was so much more valuable than my old dreams of a perfect physique.

I’m still working on grasping that concept. But what feels good is growing, going to new places I didn’t know I could go to and seeing that my body can take me there. It feels good to run faster, lift heavier, stretch deeper, and climb higher. It’s more than goals or calories burned. It’s going somewhere you’ve never been before because you want to go there. You can’t wait to get there. You’re excited because you learned something new about yourself. That’s Grace, and it’s an adventure. 

But I’m only free to enjoy the movement and growth because I also know that it’s okay not to stretch physical limits, to accept myself today as I am and live from that place ferociously and without apology. That’s a truth scandalous to the health and beauty industry.

Grace isn’t a happy medium—being “balanced” somewhere between the two extremes of self-loathing and perfectionism.  Grace is an alternative way to live. It’s a belief from which our actions emanate. That belief is this: today you’re loved and you’re enough.

I love what First Lady Michelle Obama said during National Women's Health week earlier this year:

"As women, we're used to hearing about fitness in terms of inches and dress sizes. We may know better, but we're up against near-constant reminders and pressures to look good and take shortcuts to get there. The truth is, being a healthy woman isn't about getting on a scale or measuring your waistline—and we can't afford to think that way."
 

I’m not saying throw away your fitness goals. I’m not telling you to set some if you don’t have any. But if you need to live more restfully and graciously in this area, ask yourself whether you’ve accepted that right now, as you are, you are deeply loved and complete. 

 

Wellness begins there. 

Everything begins there.

Of course there are real health concerns. Of course there are real limitations. Of course to it all! But Grace offers an alternative to making physical appearance a morality question. There is no “right” way to look. There is a free way to live. And Grace will always surprise you and give you flight to overcome both perfectionism and self-loathing.

I hope all this empowers my son Kaden to know that even though his presence dramatically altered my life and body, those changes are as much celebrated as he is. Maybe he won’t be a slave to the mirror or expect his future mate to be. Maybe he’ll be so free that if he’s around a woman trying to objectify herself, he can say to her with a very tender heart, “You know it’s really okay. Right now, as you are, you’re deeply loved and complete. My mom taught me that. And she’s a warrior princess.”

Posted by: Lauren Barnett | Becoming Writer