We sat there on the couch. The apartment was a mess, a physical display of the chaos going on in Katie's life. We were there because she hadn't been to church in who knew how long, and we just happened to find her because there was an investigator we were trying to teach who lived in the same complex.
At first, we were there because she wasn't active, and it was our job to find her, a lost sheep, and bring her back into the fold.
Within a few days, a few visits, we were there because we wanted to be her friends. And, as her friends, we were worried about what she was doing to herself.
Pretty soon, getting her to come to church was the last thing we cared about.
"I ate some soup for lunch," she told us, motioning to the Lipton packet and still half-full bowl of soup on the kitchen table. "But it was too many calories, so I had to stop."
To look at her, you wouldn't know she was so broken because she was so beautiful. She was tall, blonde, and had what seemed to me to be the perfect body. But it wasn't enough, not in her mind anyway. She was killing herself slowly, starving herself on purpose just to get to that ideal weight. Each day she could function less and less. She was two inches taller than me and a good 80 pounds lighter. Every time we went over, we worried about how we would find her. Alive? Conscious? Breathing? This wasn't her first anorexic rodeo. It was getting so bad, in fact, that her mom was demanding that she move home, just so somebody could keep a constant eye on her.
And we were relieved about that, because we had learned to love her.
A week after Katie moved, I finally got brave enough to admit that my body was broken. Something was wrong and had been for two or three months. I knew what was going on, but I didn't want to hear the words. And when the diagnosis officially came, I wasn't surprised. I was angry, hurt, terrified, yes, but not surprised.
We went grocery shopping the next day. Every item I put in the cart was taken out by my companion, who then analyzed the nutrition facts and then put most of it back on the shelf.
"I have to eat something!" I told her, putting my animal crackers back in. I was desperate for food. I craved it. She was taking it away, and it was hard not to be mad about that.
What my companion didn't know, what she couldn't understand, was that my body had been literally starving for weeks. I could eat like a Samoan football player and it didn't matter, I was still hungry. I could drink three gallons of water every day (you think I am joking) and I was still thirsty. It wasn't until a nurse drew it out on paper for me that I understood--the food I was eating was making it into my blood stream, but my dysfunctional pancreas meant that none of the food was getting to where it needed to go. The doors on my cells were locked, and I didn't have enough insulin keys to open them. So even though I had been hoarding food and eating like crazy, it made sense that I was still hungry. My body wasn't really eating at all.
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Katie and I had more in common than I thought. "How could you hate food?" I wondered when we first met her and learned about her problems. I had been raised in a family with a love of food. Every achievement, every concert and recital and ball game and birthday was followed by a treat of some sort. Every holiday memory smelled like a certain kind of food--homemade pizza at Valentine's Day, Leprechaun cake for St. Patrick's day, and molasses cookies at Christmas. Food was just how we celebrated. How we socialized. How we comforted ourselves and others (funeral potatoes anyone?). Even as a missionary, if we wanted to do something "fun" or "different" it meant trying out a new restaurant, getting a Blizzard at the local Dairy Queen, or making cookies for our mission leaders.
Food was now my enemy. My body had turned traitor.
The easy thing to do would have been to learn to hate food, and in turn, to hate my body.
Thanks to Katie, however, I had seen what that looked like and I had, from her, gotten a sense of what that felt like. I didn't like it. I didn't want to be in that position.
So I decided that I would take a different approach.
For my whole life up to that point, I felt that something was wrong with my body. I was too tall, too big for my age. I'd even heard my mom call me big-boned, multiple times. My brother said I had man hands and no boy would ever want to hold my hand because they were too big (hence one of the reasons why I wore gloves to my Junior prom). I had been told by numerous beauticians that I had a very round face and certain haircuts just wouldn't look good on me. The eye doctor said that my astigmatism meant that I couldn't get colored contacts, so even to make my eyes equal would take wearing glasses. My list of "what is wrong with me" was extensive, and now I had an old-person disease on top of that.
I had every reason to hate my body.
My diabetes taught me how to love it.
I started to understand that there were many miraculous things that my body could do on the inside, and that changed how I viewed my outside. Even though certain parts of me were broken, other organs picked up the slack to make up for it. A few months and the right medication (and love from my parents, dear friends, and bestest best-friend-not-boyfriend) and my body was suddenly a miracle. I was broken, but I could function normally. I should have had a host of problems, but I was okay. I could see. I could walk. My feet didn't hurt (that bad) even though I walked `10-12 miles a day. My brain still worked, and my talent for remembering names and addresses had never been sharper. And through it all, my smile never changed.
Suddenly it was easier to find the beauty in my appearance instead of focusing on my negative aspects. I started zeroing in on the things I could do instead of just the things I saw in the mirror. I was tall enough to reach anything I wanted. My big bones made me sturdy and strong instead of delicate and flimsy. My hands could write, play the piano, and give comfort (and, contrary to what my brother had always told me, I knew there was at least one boy that wanted to hold them). Even though I had lost half my hair and it was taking on a different texture because my medication was sucking the nutrients out of it, it could suddenly hold a curl for longer than an hour and I could style it much more quickly (I remember a meeting in the bathroom at a mission conference when I overheard a new missionary ask her trainer how I possibly had the time to curl my hair--if she only knew!). My eyesight, which had been constantly blurry before treatment, could suddenly make out objects more than 50 feet away.
Heavenly Father had created a miracle in my body when he gave me diabetes. He taught me to appreciate the good as well as the bad. I learned that I was beautiful to him, even if I was broken. So I no longer obsessed about my weight or my rolls or my complexion. I was a miracle, and I was healthy, and that was the important thing.
When my mission ended and my marriage began, I learned to appreciate what my body could do in new ways. I got pregnant. My body was creating a whole new human being. I was still broken, and I had never felt sicker in my life, but there was a miracle taking place. Inside me.
And then, suddenly, something went wrong again. I started to swell. My water broke. She came too early. But I recovered, and so did she. And all of the sudden, my body was the main source of nutrients for this little person. I was still broken, but I was doing things I never truly thought I'd be capable of. And although it hurt to know that my disease hurt her, I marvelled at how quickly she healed and became her own person, a person whose body came from mine but wasn't diseased.
This month marks five years since I was diagnosed as a diabetic. The way has been rough and not at all easy. But it also hasn't been the hardest thing I've ever faced in my life. There are good things that have come along because of my diabetes, and I am a better, more peaceful person because of it. I can't say that I feel beautiful all the time or that I don't get frustrated because of the things I can't do or that food is never my enemy. There is a reality to living with this disease, you know. But somehow that reality becomes easier to take when I focus on what I can do instead of what I can't.
And even though I am NOT one of those women who loves being pregnant (in any way, shape, or form), I can truly say that I have never felt more beautiful--because with each appointment that tells me what can go wrong, I hear that my body is still doing something right. With every prick of my finger, I am aware that if I lived 50 years ago this baby would not make it and neither would I. Every time I have to think about what I am eating, I marvel that my body can digest food at all and that I can still be full. I remember what it felt like to be starving. I might be constantly hungry right now, but I am not starving.
For me, body image isn't about being beautiful and it isn't about being ugly. It isn't about the things that are wrong with me, but focusing on the things that are right. It is about confidence and ability, about flexibility and positivity. I can be broken and I can be beautiful. Those two things don't have to be separate.
I don't know what happened to Katie. I honestly don't know if she is alive or dead. I don't know if she is still fighting with her body or if she has learned to be healed. I am grateful, however, that Heavenly Father let us be friends for three short weeks when I needed her most.
When we sat on her couch and listened to her talk, there were many times I had to hold my tongue to keep from shouting, "But God loves you! No matter what! He created you, and you are beautiful!" Over and over and over again. "God loves you! God loves you! God loves you!"
Maybe He wanted me to repeat those words to her over and over and over again so that a short time later, when I had to repeat them to myself, I would believe that they were true.
God loves you. No matter what. He created you, and you are beautiful!
You are broken, but you are beautiful!
You can be both.
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