a day for green pastures

down in the green grass, canon 40d
photo by kirsten.michelle

The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not be in want.

He makes me lie down in green pastures,
he leads me beside quiet waters,

he restores my soul.
He guides me in paths of righteousness
for his name's sake.

Psalm 23:1-3



Today is my first day of four weeks off of work. I get married in just less than two weeks and will be returning to my job just two weeks after. As the countdown ticks away the time and the days remaining of my unmarried life diminish, there are a lot of things to do. The list is long. We have to find an apartment. We have to apply for a marriage license. We have to drive back and forth, north and south up the one hundred mile stretch between my current home and my hometown for countless appointments that will prepare us for the day. We still have to find a soloist, a sound person, someone to cut the cake, and another to tote away the gifts. Anyone who has taken part in planning a wedding understands that in the days just prior, there is a lot to do.

So I've intentionally set aside today for the purpose of rest.

This doesn't mean my backside has taken up permanent fixture on the couch. This doesn't mean I won't leave my house or even that I won't accomplish a productive thing or two.

When I consider the Psalmist's words, I'm struck by the fact that the very first way in which he describes the lord as a shepherd is this: he makes me lie down. He makes me. It would be so easy to get caught up in the chaos that necessarily attends a life-changing event like this. It would be easy and perhaps even make more sense to spend today ticking things off a to-do list that, despite how much I am getting done, is increasing in length. But I've already noticed how the busyness has worn on me, how it's worn me down and depleted me. Not typically a napper, I took three last week, a 2-1/2 hour nap on Saturday, and an hour nap yesterday. And I'm still exhausted, still fighting the feeling that a little gremlin is inside my head tugging backward on my eye sockets. Everything is telling me: lie down.

The second part that strikes me is that this lying down precedes the words, he restores my soul. While I doubt highly that the good Lord needs my help in the work of restoration, it is interesting to note that to some extent, it requires my participation, my willingness to lie still for a time and be restored. And I will affirm for you that after weeks of work and wedding planning and many consecutive late nights on the phone, I need to be restored. To be sure I was understanding the words correctly, I examined the definition and found the following:

re⋅store
1. to bring back into existence, use, or the like; reestablish: to restore order.
2. to bring back to a former, original, or normal condition, as a building, statue, or painting.
3. to bring back to a state of health, soundness, or vigor.
4. to put back to a former place, or to a former position, rank, etc.: to restore the king to his throne.
5. to give back; make return or restitution of (anything taken away or lost).
6. to reproduce or reconstruct (an ancient building, extinct animal, etc.) in the original state.

I need Him to bring me back to myself, to bring me back, to dust in the corners and seal the cracks and bring vividness and color and life and vitality back. I do not pretend to possess a ordered, rested, healthy soul right now. But of all the days in my life, I think today is the day where He makes me lie down. Today is the day in which I invite Him: restore my soul.

And so I move meditatively and with intention through my day, breathing in and out deliberately, mindfully inviting Him to provide rest in every aspect. I invite Him: restore my soul.

body talk: part 7

read previous body talk posts:
part 1
part 2
part 3
part 4
part 5
part 6



I think a lot about that day at the gym a couple of years ago. I think about how easy it is to get so fixated in thinking that achieving the lithe and too-lean body shape that typifies the current paradigm of beauty is worth even the most extreme cost. I talked to these women briefly but frankly about the pain I had been through, about lengthy and pointless doctor's visits, about too many prescriptions, about pain and emergency room visits and not being listened to, and about being unable to engage in my own life because of all these things. I told them about my low iron, low calcium, low adrenal gland function, low red blood cell count, and watched their lips part in mild shock. This is not the answer they were expecting.

But even after all this, I still "looked fantastic", apparently.

I went and lay down in the sauna after that and cried, for them as much as for me. After subjecting my own flesh to the starvation and torture that I did, I could not judge them. I knew what it was to examine myself closely from the side in any flat object that offered even the dullest reflection. I knew what it was to obsess over calories and garment labels and to be on the eternal quest for the next five pounds. I knew what it was never to be satisfied with what I saw, to be convinced that my personal happiness and fulfillment would be found when I couldn't find an ounce of fat on my body to pinch.

There was a time at which I would have given anything, subjected myself to any regimen to achieve the ability to fit into a size 2 pair of pants like I could on that day. Anything. There was a point at which nothing was off limits. But as I looked again in the mirror and saw empty eyes staring back at me, it was hard to imagine how I ever thought that a number on a label was worth the anything I was, at one time, so ready and willing to offer. I gladly would have taken ten or fifteen pounds from anyone if it meant I could look in the mirror and really see myself again. This time it had been an illness that had consumed me, something not wholly within my control. Before that, it had been a desire for performance, for control, for perfection according to the standards of the world around me. I wanted to hear from the voices around me: you look fantastic.

And so I knew for sure now: it did not matter to me what the world reflected back to me about my body, even if it was to shower me with accolades. I was learning to attune an ear to the voice with which my own body spoke. I learned quickly because the voice had been raised to shouting: This is not right. That is out of balance. You need more of this. You need to eliminate that. You need to stretch. You need to rest. You need help. You need to be gentle with me.

As I've shared bits of this journey with people around me throughout my life, many have asked how to help someone who is starving themselves or throwing up their meals or obsessed with achieving a size that is entirely unnatural for them. And the truth is, I don't really know. I doubt there is any one approach that would work, since any number of circumstances and wounds can bring a person to alter her lifestyle habits because depriving herself to extremes seems to be the only solution.

For me, I was ripe for the damage to which I subjected myself long before I was handed a calorie content printout in my high school biology class. Thanks in part to the splashy media images, the taunts of some junior high and high school boys, my controlling and perfectionist tendencies, and living in an environment in which I received the message that it was my performance and my achievement that gave me value, I don't know how much of a chance I stood. I had been wounded and damaged by so many things around me; I had internalized the message that I was not good enough as I was, that I was not thin enough to be considered attractive, that my value as a human being was impacted directly by my ability to measure up to the predetermined standards of performance and beauty. If I hadn't started starving myself, what else might I have done? If not an eating disorder, in all likelihood I would have found other self-destructive habits to which to subject myself.

Whatever the answer is in helping her, it is not necessarily in getting her to eat more. It is not in pointing out how you recognize how little she eats, how much she exercises, or how you've noticed she has mastered the art of moving food around on her plate to make it look like she has eaten more than she actually has. I am not sure that it is even in telling her that she is beautiful just the way she is. I am no expert in this area, but as I consider what that starving girl who was me needed, the only way I can phrase it, the only thing in the way of advice I can offer is this: love her into the truth of herself. She is bombarded with lying voices. Love her to drown out all the voices around her. She thinks she is not good enough or pretty enough unless she strives, achieves, and bends herself to the standard she sees. Love her to show her performance or size is not what speaks to or determines her worth. She sees a fat girl in the mirror when she sees herself and she hates it. Love her so as to be her mirror. Love her into the truth of herself so that she is shielded from the lies that come at her. Love her so she will love herself.

I am continuing on this journey and in so many ways, am still healing from it. I'm still in the process of discovering and internalizing the truth of who I am and what it means to love myself in a right and healthy way, to love the body I have instead of longing for one that I don't. In the course of assessing my body's changing needs, I recently returned after more than a year's absence to the practice of Bikram yoga. As I lay on the floor in savasana (corpse or resting pose) yesterday, the instructor encouraged us in our practice and in our rest. How many people are sitting at home on the couch right now, smoking a cigarette, drinking a Coke, and neglecting and even abusing themselves? You're doing so much good for your body right now. So many people hate their bodies. But you're here, you're working to your absolute best for you, and now you're engaged in total rest. It's like you're telling your body, thank you. I haven't always been good to you. But you're doing so much good for yourself right now, working to your absolute limit and then engaging in one hundred percent relaxation. It's as if you're saying, thank you, Body. You've done so much for me. Thank you for carrying me through my life.

Sweat dripping out of every pore in my body and on to the towel underneath me, it might not have been noticeable to anyone else. But I was crying. In a few seconds, the instructor had encapsulated for me what I have wanted not just to say to myself, but to say to myself and know with every fiber of my being that it was true: Thank you, Body. I haven't always been good to you. You've done so much for me. Thank you for carrying me through my life.


Postscript
Part of the reason I wanted to write this series is that I've been re-examining my relationship to my body as I prepare for marriage and for sharing it with another. In one conversation, I described recent frustrations with my health and how desperately I longed to get an advance on my resurrection body, how much for I longed for a new one that worked as it was meant to work. I felt a lump rise in my throat when he said to me, "I'll help you love the one you have."

And that's what this is about for me: learning to love the body I have -- listening, accepting, adapting, and letting go of my ideas of what "should" be. Breathing into it, engaging with it, challenging it, being gracious and kind toward it. This is all a part of loving myself in a right and healthy way, in a way no one else can do for me.

Thank you for joining me for the journey. Namaste.

body talk: part 6

read previous body talk posts:
part 1
part 2
part 3
part 4
part 5


Simply put, I was spent. After spending twelve weeks in a neck brace, of spending my senior year of high school not participating, but observing, of not engaging in life, but surviving it, I felt completely broken and lost.

The rug I once stood on so securely had been pulled out from under me. I mourned the loss of my enviable first-chair viola position in the orchestra. I remember sitting in my typing class, eyes glazing over in front of the computer screen, behavior that was atypical for me. I was escaping; I was doing my best to escape the persistent and profound physical pain in my body. The numbness that resulted from overloaded nerve pathways extended from my face and limbs and eventually captured my heart, too.

My post-school hours were no better. Every day, I went to the chiropractor for an adjustment, and every day he made me wince. Two days a week, I saw a massage therapist in his office. Those sessions were helpful, but not at all pleasant given the throbbing pain that pulsated through my body. Three days a week were spent in physical therapy using big blue exercise balls and traction devices that would stretch my neck for me. My favorite part was when the PT put ultrasound goo on my neck and lightly run a smooth heated wand over it. I had only periodic visits with the neurologist, who was paid thousands of dollars to tell me things I had already heard.

When after this protracted period of time I realized that I was not healing quickly, that the pattern of my days had changed and would remain changed for some time, I felt like I was losing my identity. I could no longer perform and produce at the levels I once did. I could only exist, warming chairs and consuming oxygen. The things according to which I found my worth -- things I had wrapped myself around -- were gone. I felt stripped and confused, disoriented by my circumstances. Sensing how worn down I was and how in need I was of someone to talk to, my chiropractor referred me to a friend of his who practiced psychotherapy.

We discussed a lot of things. I told her that I didn't know who I was anymore and that those who were once my friends no longer cared to be. I told her that my conversations with God circled like a hamster on a wheel, with me the hamster. I ran and struggled and strived and tried, but didn't get anywhere. I lamented my new routine, and I mourned the loss of those things that provided enjoyment: being able to move freely, being able to play music, preparing for a solo piano recital. I told her how worthless this made me feel. She asked why.

I'm not doing anything, I said with disdain, landing heavily on the words "doing" and "anything."

Why do you need to be doing something? she asked.

I sat in uncomfortable silence for a few seconds, not understanding the question. What did she mean, why do I need to be doing something? We all need to be doing something. I remember wondering, what if nobody did anything, what if we just all sat around and consumed oxygen and stared at each other? Is that really what she's getting at? How will anything that needs to get done, get done?

After a few minutes of silence, I told her, I don't know what to say. I don't understand.

Why do you need to say anything? she asked.

First, she's asking me a question that may or may not imply I don't need to do anything and now here I sit on this couch across from her, my therapist, who is telling me I don't need to talk? What in the world is going on here?

The confusion must have been evident on my face. Kirsten, she said. Do you believe that just sitting here on this couch, not playing an instrument and not talking to me, that your worth hasn't changed one bit? Do you think perhaps that just sitting here, "taking up oxygen" as you've said, that you are every bit as valuable as when you are producing and performing at your peak?

I was utterly stunned.

I was in tears, weeping for the rest of the session.

I began to realize that I had defined myself according to what I did, to how well I performed, to how much I produced. Rest meant a loss of worth. Mistakes meant to me that I lost my value to others, and if I lost my value to others, what good was I as a person, what good could I possibly do in the world? I could not control the expectations of those around me, and my response was to bend myself to meet them, as ridiculous as those expectations might have been or however skewed my perception of them had been. I learned quickly in the world that pretty = thin and so I bent myself to that expectation. I realized how out-of-control I had felt and how my body felt the self-imposed wrath I had against God and the universe and the people around me.

No longer able to define myself according to how I could perform or what I could produce, I had taken on by necessity a lifestyle of rest and self-care. I resented it utterly. I felt weak and worthless. I defined myself according to the loss of my ability to execute on any of these things.

And now I was forced to acknowledge: I had built my worth around a vacuum.

The paradigm around which I had centered my life was crumbling. The rug beneath me was gone and the world around me was spinning.