Eve

    This morning I was talking to my children about Adam and Eve the first people ever to be created. I don't know what your beliefs are but for me I find it beautiful to believe that we have a design and a purpose ~ a great destiny if we should so choose to follow. I was telling them about how Adam and Eve did not wear clothes and how they were perfect. There were no carcinogens in their world, nothing poisonous or scary...just peace, harmony and beauty. It made me wonder and wish I could see what Eve looked like. I think in every woman on this earth there is a piece of Eve and inside of every woman there is a similar heart. I imagine Eve as she arose from the breathe of life being breathed into her being and just the dazzling beauty that would have surrounded her. The earth is its' purity and newness is not something I can fully imagine although I feel like at some points in time I have caught glimpses. She gets up and sees all this but then sees Adam. What was it like? She was perfect. She had the perfect body because God Himself had fashioned her with his very hands and she had been made just for Adam to be his other half. A part of him had been sacrificed for her. How powerfully symbolic.

  I wondered was her hair curly or straight? Was it long and flowing or maybe short and wild. Did she have blue eyes or were they brown or green? Then I wonder, I really wonder...what size was she? If I was God what would I have made her look like? If I look at nature and think of it in terms of God's enjoyment it seems to be very colorful and shapely, strong, elegant the list is endless. Was Eve size two? Was she size eight? Was she size 15? Did she have size nine feet or size six or maybe size twelve? Really though does it matter? NO. This morning as I was thinking I thought it did because I wanted to know what God thought was the perfect body. I wished to know what He thought was 'right.'

  As has many women I have struggled with even liking my body. I have loathed many things about it. As time goes on I realize more and more what I 'had' and what I still have and that exterior beauty often is quite fleeting. There are some older woman who the world would still deem 'beautiful and stunning' but most often age strips us of things in our youth we think is important and the bare bones of who we are inside is what really matters. Our hair color is grey or white, our eyes have faded, our skin is wrinkled and our spirit has to be what bring out our beauty. It has to sparkle and shine and be light.

  I am so sick of caring about how my body looks. Right now my hair is reaaaaly long. It touches the top of my hip bones and it is frizzy and so dead at the ends but who has time to schedule child care and pay the blood money for a hair cut where I wont be butchered. I try to take the time to style it but I hit the ground running every morning and I just can't seem to find the time. Everyone needs me and when they don't I need to clean like a psycho (at least that is how it feels). There are so many other things I could grouch about. My teeth are shifting. My parents spent so much on braces and I have so appreciated that fact. I have tried to take care of my teeth but they are shifting so they are not as straight and I have been told I will lose them eventually because of bone loss and receding gums. Lately it has been getting worse fast. My skin...scarred by acne, thousands of black heads, my arms ~ always too big. I have never had those thin graceful arms. You get the point.

  And I am so sick of caring about this. I am so sick of wondering how Eve looked.
We ALL are perfect. Your too straight hair...too thin hair....too thick hair...the too tiny chest, the too big chest, the legs, the stomach.... but in reality at this moment just for now let all the negative words just slide away and be beautiful in your skin.

  We ALL deserve to be beautiful in our skin. It is ours alone. We alone can dictate how we feel about ourselves we don't have to give anyone else the power.

  So as I look at myself...and I want to just tear myself down for multiple reasons tonight I just wont. I'll brush my teeth, cleanse my face, stretch and sigh. Wait and wait for the children to finally succumb to sleep and just tell myself that how I am, how I look, my body, is mine and it is perfect for me. I could have been Eve. One more step towards some peace and victory.

                                                      Here I am in all my Evely beauty.

                                                Baby number four coming out the next day.

                                                         A couple weeks after the birth.

                                                             Two years after his birth.

This picture is from a couple days ago. I wanted a picture of this sweater which I loved but I hated the picture and why...oh so many body loathing reasons. So here it is.