Matthew 15

I have 3 weeks left in my 2nd trimester and I'll be honest - I'm starting to feel enormously fat.

I'd like to say that I am one of those happily expanding mamas. I would LOVE to enjoy every extra pound, knowing that it is nourishing and protecting my baby. But I'm not. Instead, I do what must be done out of love for my daughter. I stay healthy to keep her healthy.

I gained almost 60 pounds when I was pregnant with Aravis and 45 when I was pregnant with Judah. I am desperately trying to avoid the scale this time around because my body "sickness" is grappling for control.

I weigh myself when I am at my midwife appointments and not at all when I am at home. I am eating as much high protein, vegan, fresh food as I can stomach (and, as of today, Trader Joe oreos just for balance :)) I go to the gym 5 times a week for yoga, pilates and the treadmill. I KNOW I am healthy.

But, still, I look in the mirror and I see things growing. Hello! I'm PREGNANT!

Oooooooh that old evil disease of self hatred. Why am I so surprised that it is looming over the joy of my sweet, growing girl?

Yesterday I happened to read one line in the Message version of Matthew 15...

"Listen, and take this to heart. It's not what you swallow that pollutes your life, but what you vomit up."

I get this now.

It's not just what I choose to swallow - the sickness, the lies, the distorted image in my mirror - that pollutes my life. It's MORE SO what comes back up. It's what comes out of my heart, my mouth, my actions. It's the way it affects my life. And it doesn't feel too good when it's on it's way back up.

Even though I haven't, for even a moment, given in to the physical manifestation of my self rejection, I am still living under the banner of it. Waving over my entire life is a thick, dark sheet of joyless decision. I have already decided that I am completely unacceptable. I've swallowed that mindset. I've absorbed it. And it makes me sick.

We aren't designed for death and sin. Those things are foreign substances. They are toxic. But they are constantly set before us.

And it's not just what we swallow that pollutes us. It's what we vomit up.