House of a Saint

102.5 pounds.

That's how much I weighed when I was a senior in high school.

I remember that number because I was proud of it, and because I never hit it again after I went off to college.

At that time I was playing field hockey, eating a bowl of ice cream almost every night, and in a terrible, toxic relationship. Looking back at pictures of me from that time period, I looked slender and toned, by skin tan from practices and games spent outside. My teeth were straight and picture-perfect thanks to braces. My hair had a cute, natural flounce to it that I've mysteriously never been able to replicate. 

But, boy, was I miserable in that body. 

Fake it 'til you make it, baby.

This time of year, when beaches and social media feeds are filled with images of half-naked bodies, it's hard to not feel less-than. Even knowing that people edit their pictures with filters and Photoshop, that they contort their bodies and hold their breath long enough to snap that perfect shot, it can still be hard to escape those pesky voices that have plagued many of us, myself included, since a young age. 

I scroll through those pictures and feel my body shrink into itself in shame and despair. The fitness moms with thighs that could crush walnuts, the accounts that promote self-love while displaying their rolls and dimples, the sun-kissed lithe bodies on full display in revealing bikinis, the mothers of 6+ that keep slim by doing heavy farm work. So many places to look, so many people to be 'influenced' and inspired by. But it does nothing. After carrying five children, birthing four, breastfeeding for a culmination of five-and-a-half years and counting, and gaining the crow's feet and white hairs that come with age, I don't feel particularly body-positive; I just feel deflated.

About a week ago, at 3 o'clock in the morning or so, I sat in an equally deflated and sagging chair and nursed my teething one-year-old. I thought of those bodies I had seen on Instagram, and about the body I once had. I thought of the dresses I had recently decided to get rid of, the ones I used to love but that will never fit me again. I thought of that 102.5 pound girl and how shocked she would be by the 2021 version of herself. As my daughter nursed I thought of my body, of how it has stretched and depressed so many times to carry, birth, and nourish these little souls.

And then it dawned on me: this body had housed a saint.

This body, my body, had once held another body, one that never grew any bigger than a raspberry. That tiny body had held a soul, and that soul is now in heaven. That soul is a saint. 

Tears pricked my eyes at this sudden realization. It flooded over me in a way that no mantra or caption ever has. My body had been a monstrance for five precious and unique souls and those stretch marks, dimples, and rolls are all physical evidence of something divine. 

Extra fat, but extra joy, too.

So much of my focus has been on the weight I've gained in the last fifteen years that I nearly lost sight of what else I've gained: my children. And I wouldn't trade anything for them; I wouldn't sacrifice their existence for a chance to have a 'gramable body. Because my body is worthy of celebration and of love, not through the lens of the internet, or even my own eyes, but through the lens of the only one who matters.