Dear Lydia,
I want to try to put into words what I see when I look at you. I see big blue eyes and golden hair that curls perfectly at the ends. I see a sweetheart who shares everything with everyone. Always worried about others. I see two perfect little dimples and a big perfect smile that I just can't help but return. Joy. I see parts of people I have loved my whole life. I see parts of the one person I chose to dedicate my life to. Lovs. I see light and joy and happiness that just seeps out of you. I see the most beautiful little two year old I have ever seen, I don't even know how that combination came out of me. I had a dream when I was 13, I was rather terrified, that I was having a baby. When the baby came out it had blonde curly hair and blue eyes... That's how I knew it wasn't real. And yet here you are, real. Everything I ever dreamed and believed improbable. Every little girl that's your age I compare to you. You are my ideal, my version of perfect.
As you grow you may find it hard to see that in the mirror. With all the propaganda in our coulture it can be hard to keep the image of yourself untainted. You may think that my option of you is tainted because I'm just your mom. I have to feel that way. But the truth is I know a little something about beauty. Beauty is not always Symetrical. Asymmetrical can catch and keep the eye as well. If every part of a person is perfect then there is no realness to it, it becomes unnatural in apperarece. Natural is beautiful. Heathy is beautiful. Heavenly Father knows what he is doing.
Please know that my option of you is that you are stunningly gorgeous. I literally just stare at you sometimes without meaning to. I could not have selected your DNA better myself. I will always feel that way.
Someday you may see the struggle that I have with my own beauty. You may not understand why shopping or simply getting ready for the day puts me in a bad mood. I really hope I can get better with this so that it won't effect you. I have issues. I have had issues all my life because of things my mother has said to me. I have struggled with eating disorders and I have never really been able to see good enough when I look at myself. I pray you never understand that side of me. Heaven knows your daddy does not. I definatly have some sort of body dismorphia. So please, don't even let my option of myself ever be something you need to consider within yourself. I am the example of what not to be in that regard. I don't ever want you to feel the way I have felt about myself.
Hopefully by the time you read this it won't be so much as an issue, but if it is you will at least have my admonishment to recognize the wrongness that it is.
You are stunning. Looking at you right now, you are the most beautiful girl I have ever seen. You always will be. Know that when you look in the mirror. When you walk into a room. I love you.
The Gift of Our Physical Bodies
BY VICTORIA WEBB RUTHERFORD
I can honor my Heavenly Father
by caring for my body and using it for wise purposes.
Years ago as an early
teen, I began to be aware that my body, the precious tabernacle I had likely
yearned for in the pre-earth life, was much bigger than might be physically or
socially healthy for me, and I wondered what that would mean for my life. It
was a confusing time as I struggled to reconcile the contradictory views being
thrown at me: God looked on the heart, but it seemed His children, both old and
young, cared a great deal about what size I was and what clothes I wore. I did
not then understand the relationships between healthful eating, physical
exercise, and my appearance, but I did know that God loved me and that He had a
plan for me.
My Identity as a Daughter of God
I once confided to my
Young Women leader that I was afraid that the boys might not be interested in
me because I was overweight. She wisely told me to concentrate on being a
friend to all, both boys and girls, and assured me that a person who was a
friend to all would be very attractive to the right kind of person. She told me
that what we find attractive is a type of mirror into our own souls: “For
intelligence cleaveth unto intelligence; wisdom receiveth wisdom; truth
embraceth truth; virtue loveth virtue; light cleaveth unto light” (D&C 88:40).
I tucked her message into my heart and prayed to Heavenly Father to know if it
was true.
I remember praying often
to Heavenly Father about the struggle with my weight. In my prayers I attempted
to strike a bargain with Him, suggesting that if I read my scriptures every day
and prayed to Him day and night, He might respond by making me thin. For days
and weeks I kept my end of the so-called deal, yet my body altered little. Even
after years of praying, I still found myself bowing on plump knees.
Fortunately, beneficial change is not only physical, and in my effort to pour
out my heart to Him and keep His commandments, He was working a miracle in my
heart. In those days and years of drawing close to Him, I came to feel the
sweet companionship of His Spirit testifying that I was His daughter.
Choices concerning My Body
As I learned more about my
identity as God’s daughter, I experimented with ways that I could use my agency
to affect change in my physical body. Through the foods I chose to eat and the
activities in which I participated, I worked very hard to achieve and later
maintain a healthy body weight. I discovered that I could honor my Heavenly Father
through caring for the gift of my physical body and using it for wise purposes.
However, I also realized
that if I wasn’t careful, I could easily become distracted and fashion my body
after a worldly image or even reject the gift of my body because it did not
measure up to impossible worldly standards. Worse yet, I became tempted to
believe Korihor’s philosophy that we “[fare] in this life according to the
management of the creature” (Alma 30:17)—that
my value would somehow increase or diminish depending upon my ability to
achieve a certain size or number on a scale. I learned that improved body
management may be an outcome as God helps us make weak things
strong, but as an end in itself, “fixation on the physical … is spiritually
destructive.”1
The Role of Challenges
In order to avoid these
traps, I found it helpful to ponder deeply what God wanted me to learn from an
experience in thisparticular body and why a physical body is
indispensable in the process of becoming more like Him. I began to see
similarities between my struggles and other people’s seemingly unrelated
challenges. I discovered that often their problems, like mine, followed the
pattern God set for Adam and Eve when he said to them, “Cursed is the ground
for thy sake; … thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; … in the
sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground” (Genesis 3:17–19).
In other words, Adam and Eve had to consistently and recurrently work very hard
to tame things that spontaneously grew out of control in their lives, but in a
sense, God cursed the ground and caused the thorns to grow for their
sakes. This insight helped me to recognize the numerous blessings I
had experienced in my life by working through my challenges.
Additionally, as I learned
more about the Savior’s life and more closely observed struggles in the lives
of others, my ability to perceive and recognize beauty grew. The promise of my
Young Women leader—that being a friend to all would attract the right kind of
person, that “light cleaveth unto light”—was fulfilled in an external way; a
truly great-hearted man came into my life and we eventually married. But it was
also fulfilledwithin my own heart. Jesus, of whom Isaiah wrote, “He
hath no form nor comeliness; and … there is no beauty that we should desire
him” (Isaiah 53:2),
was a friend to all, and the more I learned about the remarkable ways He coped
with challenges in the flesh, the more I wanted to know Him. He mastered His
body though fasting, prayer, and self-discipline—not so that He could become an
admired physical specimen but so that his body could become a living testament
of God’s love for the human family. He used His flesh in a unique, profoundly
selfless way to bring about the salvation of all mankind, and He did so in a
way that could be called nothing less than beautiful.
A Tool for Service and Learning
Today, I too desire that
my body might be a testament of God’s love. Like many people, I work hard every
day to reign in my body’s natural predispositions as well as combat worldly
“vain imaginations” (1 Nephi
12:18),2but because of Christ’s
example, when I keep His perspective, my body becomes a tool to bless the lives
of God’s children, and proper maintenance and care of that tool demonstrates my
recognition of His noble purposes.
My body also continues to
be a vehicle through which I can learn more about Heavenly Father and the
Savior. I experience the wonders of nature and creation to a greater degree
because of my body, and I find that hiking and running are specific ways I can
commune with heaven. My heart echoes the sentiment expressed by a runner in the
film Chariots of Fire: “When I run I feel [God’s] pleasure.” I
love to feel my pulsing heart provide cleansing, sustaining blood to my inner
vessel, and it reminds me of the life-giving blood of the Lamb. It assures me I
am a living thing—and indeed it is great to be alive! Similarly, when I truly
nourish my physical body through good food and clean water, I feel my very
cells respond to revitalization and life, and I see clearer connections with
the bread and water He offers us. Even when I am ill, injured, or not as well
conditioned as I might like to be, I appreciate what these situations teach me
about opposition in all things, faith, line-upon-line growth, and gratitude for
any small capacity I may possess.
I feel like Louise Lake,
polio victim, who once said, “I love my body … because I have disciplined this
flesh, and in times when normally it would have said, ‘Oh I can’t, this is too
much, too difficult,’ I have said to my flesh, ‘Arise, you will get
out of bed, you willprepare this, you will do
that, you will attend this.’”3 Though it may seem
ordinary or unremarkable to the eyes of the world, my corporeal collection of
cells is a miraculous testament of His grace and love.
May the God of heaven and
earth be praised for the flesh—for the bodies that give us opportunities for
both physical and spiritual growth. Although the flesh may be weak and can
sometimes be the source of trials in this life (see Matthew 26:41),
it is also a sweet gift that our wise Father in Heaven has bestowed upon us,
His children—a gift through which we can be made strong and become more like
Him.
