The Big Issue

I have never been small.  When I was born, the scales tipped at a heavy 8lbs. 13oz.  Big newborn babies are greeted with joy, and growth is celebrated.  Before long, the message changes.  The culture of the world inundates us with images of what makes one beautiful and it convinces us that it is this beauty, not love, that covers a multitude of sins.

I can remember feeling insecure about being fat as early as elementary school.  For me, beauty was all about weight and I would go back and forth with feeling negative about myself and then combating the feelings by "proving" that I could be valued for things other than beauty - strength, for example, or intelligence.  I could do many things and as I grew older, I would pursue all of them to prove I was talented and yet I still always felt like a mediocre version of the friends around me who excelled at those things and were beautiful on top of that.  In all those Nancy Drew books I loved to read, I was just the pudgy friend Bess. 

It bothered me, because I knew who I was on the inside.  I had in fact, been a Christian longer than I had the insecurity, and I knew I had purpose, vision and gifts.  But those things only made me seem even more like an oddball and I longed for social acceptance.  My insecurity about my body helped serve as a strong foundation on which to pile wounds of rejection.  I would come to blame it for my singleness and awkwardness in groups among other things, especially when even other Christians would encourage mere aesthetic remedies to those "problems."

Looking back now at pictures of my youth, I can see without the filter of insecurity; I actually was normal sized.  I certainly wasn't small and thin, but that had more to do with this broad German frame than any extra padding.  Having been born five weeks early and deathly ill, I sometimes wonder if my large birth weight was part of God's saving grace in the fight for survival.  But the very thing that may have been a blessing, I abused and called a curse.  I struggled with unhealthy habits and became probably the first girl who, through skipping meals, actually gained weight.  I damaged my metabolism and have spent the last fifteen years working to restore it.

Yet here, now, at what the ladies from my mum's church would call my "fluffiest," I feel more beautiful than I ever did.  I may not be a good weight, but I am working on that, and my blood tests reveal that all my counts are actually better than normal.  That's not why I feel this way.  I feel beautiful because I know who I am in Him.   That girl hidden inside of me; she wasn't made to fit in with the world.  She was made to be set apart, as each of us are, for a purpose that glorifies Him.  

Of course I still get those panicky moments when I go to my closet before a special occasion, or that little cringe of disappointment when I see a photograph that shows my reality a little too well.  Yes, I still struggle with deep wounds related to all this.  I am human after all, tied to earth with this bag of bones, big bag that it is.  But God is a healer and through all this, He continuously speaks to me about my identity in Him.  He says I am beautiful.  I am fearfully and wonderfully made.  I am the apple of His eye.  I am a woman of value.  I am His daughter.   
He delights in me...  and none of it is because of my body size.  


This post was inspired today after reading a post at Beta Christian that was talking about the importance beauty plays in our society.  I was instantly flooded with loads of memories, but in them, I felt a breath of God's encouragement as they came.  To narrow down my feelings and find focus was difficult and I feel like there might be a few more posts lingering in me with which I can dive deeper into this topic.  Since I already gave the rawest of raw in my February post about relationships, I should have no fear in bringing this to the surface.  In the meantime, I pray you might be encouraged to take a look at who God says you are, as there is so much freedom there.

The Secret of Catch

When I was young, we had one of those standard family station wagons that marked the suburban landscape of the early 80's, even though ours stayed out in the country with us.  It was powder blue and on long trips, my sister and I would put the backseat down and use the stretch of the hatchback as our fort.  It was there we played games, read books and eventually fell asleep under blankets like our own moving hotel while dad and mom sat in the front.  We called it the Blue Bomber.

I mention it today because as I was remembering my father, and though there is so much to tell about this man some other time, I was struck by one memory of game dad often played with us while he drove that vehicle.  When mom wasn't occupying the passenger seat, my sister and I would pile in that space and whoever sat next to daddy would inevitably end up playing "catch the hand."  In essence, my father would put out his non-driving hand palm-up and we would try to tap the center and pull back without him catching our hand.  Then we'd switch.  He might have said it was some speed challenge from some Bruce Lee flick, but for me it was a chance to just have fun with dad.  The thing was, he always seemed to catch my hand and yet when we switched I couldn't seem to catch him.  I just assumed I was too small, too slow.  I didn't know his secret.

As the Bomber got older, the fabric covering the ceiling panel began to sag, making large upside down bubbles of baby blue felt that fell perfectly onto my tall father's head.  One day he was so frustrated, he pulled the whole thing off in one complete sheet.  The secret behind the puffy blue interior that had been my sister's and my sky when we lay back on those long journeys was revealed.  The newly exposed moss colored foam coating was a real tangible thing.  No longer a secret, it marked our hair with small bits of fuzz every time we got in or out of the car.  Some bits were so small, they stuck like dust to our foreheads and arms, a visible reminder of where we had been.

As I got older, I learned that there was no speed magic in my father's hand either.  His secret was just as tangible.  I remember the day I saw the action for how it really was.  I went to tap my father's palm, and I noticed that his hand was already reaching up toward mine, shortening the distance and assuring the capture and the giggles. 

Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you.  

--James 4:8a

Despite my father's human failings, as a child I simply knew him to be someone I wanted to be around.  I felt safe when I was with him.  It was in that security that I knew I was loved.  

God the Father loves without failing and in Him we find ultimate security.  It is out of this love and mercy that God is constantly drawing us toward Himself.  So whether confident or nervous, when we take that step toward Him, we can be assured  He has already closed the gap to receive us.

The story of the prodigal son tells us that while the son was still a long way off,  the father saw him and came running, embracing him (Luke 15:11-32).  Isn't this the nature of our God!  Instead of a hand, He captures our heart; instead of giggles, He gives us a wellspring of joy.  We become marked with the dust of His grace, evidence to those around us of where we have been.  We have been with our Father.

Some Joy in OK!

Some of ye may have noticed that things here in my corner have been quiet lately.  Well, I think the two recent book reviews have sufficiently dusted out any cobwebs and this girl is ready to get typing again!

I wanted however to share the joyous news that was the reason for my absence...

Yes.  This is my beautiful mum and her cowboy.  I was so blessed to be able to fly across the Atlantic to be there for the wedding.  I got to spend three weeks with my family and all my friends back in T-Town.  It has been ages since I have seen my mother so at peace and happy and she couldn't have found a better gentleman.  I was so thrilled to be able to be there for it all, especially since I hadn't been Stateside or seen any of my family in a year.

It was truly an occasion that God brought together.  At one point the wedding coordinator pulled me aside and said she and both the photographer had been talking.  She said that this is the kind of thing they see every day, given their line of business.  However she said there was something about it all that gave them pause.  She said simply, "This is REAL."  The love, the joy and the sense of family.  She said she was leaving feeling as if her purpose there was not simply to work, but rather to receive a blessing herself, full of hope for her own family members' lives.

This something special was simply God.  Folks, we may be involved in all our own stuff, absorbed in our moments.  But the Spirit of the Lord is with us everywhere we go and people do notice.  May we never disregard that. 

Let your light so shine before men, 

that they may see your good works, 

and glorify your Father which is in heaven.

--Matt 5:16

Book Review: The FIne Art of Insincerity, Angela Hunt

This is the story of three Southern sisters with ten marriages between them and more looming on the horizon. It takes a "girls only" weekend spent closing up Grandma's treasured beach house for the sisters to really unpack their family baggage, examine their relationship DNA, and discover the true legacy their much-marrying grandmother left behind.

This novel is by best-selling author Angela Hunt.  The Fine Art of Insincerity is simpy the newest in a string of successes, including The Note, which was featured as a Hallmark Channel Film Original.  This new release is a character driven novel focusing on a single weekend in the lives of three sisters, having been raised mostly by their grandmother,  and all with hidden wounds that have shaped their perceptions of the world around them and each other. 

The dysfunction begins right from the start, as the reader gets a first person glimpse into the minds of each sister.  I don't always enjoy reading first person and present tense narrative, but in this case, it is a necessary past of the storytelling.  Hunt has also done a very good job of not just making the characters different in personality, but even in their way of thinking and speaking.  It is very easy to distinguish the voice of each sister from the very beginning.  Should the reader still need a visual reminder of the change, the author has chosen to use different fonts for each sister's segments. 

Despite being just over 300 pages, I found myself reading the whole book in just two sittings.  The tricky thing about character driven narrative is that it can often come out dry and uneventful.  However this book starts with one sister confronting her husband's infidelity, another sister considering infidelity herself, and the most secret of them all, the third sister planning her imminent suicide at the end of the weekend.  The sisters have obviously not remained close in their adult years and the weekend plays out with each casting judgments on each other.  This is so perfectly executed, without any dilution of the emotions and yet still subtle, just as we are in life.  I must applaud Hunt in this respect as the mechanics of this is a sensitive and complicated business.  

As in reality, the characters' perceptions of each other are shaded by their own misinterpretations of each others' intentions and thoughts.  As the reader with a view of them all, we can see how self-absorbed each has become because of their pain.  They are all so certain about what they think they know about life and each other, and yet we can see how none of them know each other at all.  It is painful to read most of the time, because as readers, we just want to slap the selfishness out of them all.  But even if we could, we probably wouldn't, as Hunt has been successful at also making the reader extremely compassionate towards each of them.  

My heart was breaking through this novel, even more so because it was so extremely plausible.  Hunt's novel proves the saying true, that wounded people wound people.   The novel is a call to honesty at all costs for the sake of healing, redemption, and restoration.  I imagine this book will do very well, and I hope the direct and confrontational look at these sisters will help expose issues within the reader that may have been left festering from an old wound.  In some ways it might hit too close to home for some folk, but Hunt doesn't leave the reader hanging, as there is light at the end.  It is not some too clean and easy to believe cliche, but it is a beginning for the characters, a beginning filled with hope.  

It is not however for every person, as it is a very estrogen packed novel.  Although it deals with issues primarily related to marriage and children, it id not limited to a married audience.  I would expect most adult women of any background would enjoy this.  There are some elements of faith, but they are minimal, but in one moment, the inclusion of the love chapter from I Corinthians is quite profound.

I rate this book 4 out of 5 inkspots.

I received this book free from the publisher through the Glass Road PR book review for bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255 : “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”