Ad Imaginem Dei

OK, I admit it.  One of the reasons I love taking Grace out with me, especially to comfortable places where my family is well known, is the attention.  Church is one of those comfortable places, and there’s a hundred surrogate grandmothers eager to dote on “their” new baby.

One thing that happens whenever we go out- whether it be among friends or strangers, is that there are a few standard questions that get asked.  The answers, in no particular order, include:
- almost 3 weeks.
- very easy- it’s raising them that’s hard.
- 7lb 12oz (and the corollary answer: just over 8lbs).
- yes, she does look just like her sister at this age.
- sleep deprived, but this won’t last forever.
- Ruth adores her, and is being very gentle with her, we’ll see how long that lasts.

There’s one question, though, that I’m never sure how to answer. “Is she a good baby?”

And maybe I only notice it now, because I’ve been reading FA blogs, but that use of the language of morality attached to a 2 week old is just… jarring. What’s the alternative to a “good” baby?

“Nope. She’s a bad baby. I wish I could trade her in for a better one.”

Because the question is usually asked by well-intentioned Church ladies, I try to stick with a neutral answer. “Is there any other kind?”

Often, they’ll sort of splutter back, “Well, I mean, is she a quiet baby / is she easy to take care of / does she cry alot / is she letting you get any sleep?” I know what they meant. I just really hate the question. It comes down to “Is she convenient?”

“Nope. She’s an evil baby. She sleeps in the afternoon and is hungry at night just to screw with my head.”

She’s 3 freakin’ weeks old. She isn’t supposed to be convenient. And somehow, attaching moral language to that, calling it ‘good’ nor some vague ‘not good’ is… irritating to say the least.

And I wonder, too, where this came from. Grace happens to be breastfed on demand. That’s my choice, we’re able to make it work. Not everybody makes the same choice or has the same options. Different strokes and all that. Even knowing that, my family asks questions such as “are you putting her on some kind of schedule?” (um, no. “on demand” means she eats when she wants to, and she’ll settle into a schedule that works for her soon enough. At which point, I’m fortunate enough to be on leave so I have time to fit my life into her schedule, not the other way ’round.) “Are you thinking about supplementing her?” (um, no. Formula isn’t any more filling. Her stomach is tiny, changing the food we put into it isn’t going to change that.)

Whatever. This really didn’t start out as a merits-of-breast-feeding rant.

The thing is- the whole thing about sleeping and eating and ‘being good’ comes back to this idea that somehow “good” is all tied up with the ability to fit into someone else’s idea of what she should be eating. A “good” baby is one that eats as much as, and when, it’s convenient for someone else. And I wonder, too, about the application of this “good baby” crap to formula-fed babies. A “good baby” is one that wants to eat the externally imposed amount. A baby who is content with less is an endless source of worry, and the one who cries for more is something other than “good”. Sound familiar?

Nice to know that by the age of 2 weeks, a good girl knows how to restrict her eating to keep someone else happy.

Good Baby? Don’t know about that. She’s an awesome baby, a delightful, wonderful, beautiful, crazy-making, loud, inconvenient, shaved-howler-monkey of a baby. And awake now. And hungry.

So I haven’t posted in a long, long time.

I’ve been busy doing this:

When I talk about her here, I’ll be calling this one “Grace”.

I keep thinking of things I want to write about, but I needed to get this post out of the way.  For now, I’m sleep deprived, constantly hungry, and very very pleased with my accomplishment.

So its been a while since I had any coherent thought in my head that wasn’t directly baby-or-toddler related. Which probably means its a good thing that tomorrow is my last day of trying to pretend like I care about my work. (I love my job, I do, I just… don’t care about it so much right now, and caring is a fairly key element of what I do at work).

But many of my scattered, fleeting non-baby thoughts seem to be coalescing these days around a point.

The human body is a pretty amazing, wonderful creation.

Saturday night, I went to hear a top-notch community choir performance. The fact that one of the tenors comes home to my bed and makes babies with me is icing on the cake. (I’m not the only one who likes to hear him sing.) But throughout this amazing performance of J.S. Bach’s St. Matthew’s Passion I kept being amazed at what the human body could do:

• the sound coming out of the soprano soloist and just hanging there in midair.
• the force of 100+ combined voices
• the sheer genius of having invented the violin or flute, and the skill to give them such voices

• the creativity to have composed such a piece.

According to the conductor, the first public performance of this music was generations after it was written, directed by a man who had been given the score as a boy. To have devised a way not only to conceive that music, but to record it, so that another mind, generations later, could hear the same music “in his mind’s eye” and find a choir and orchestra to bring it into being… the imagination involved in that, for composer and conductor and choir and even listener… that sometimes seems to me to be very close to the heart of what it is to be created in the image of God. Bach may well have been an exemplary one of us, but everybody who makes something, be it a recipe, or a sock pattern, or a paper tulip, or a well-crafted sentence, is participating in this great work of creation. And I just think that’s pretty amazing.

On an only slightly related note, last night was bath night. I love watching my daughter move, as she grows and discovers new things she can do for herself. She can do things I don’t ever remember being able to do, including this awesome, natural flat-footed crouch when playing with something near her feet. If I’m on the floor my options are sit, or kneel, or sprawl. I suspect we are all* born with this sort of natural grace. The trivia-collecting portion of my brain remembers hearing some Quirks and Quarks story about how westerners lose that ability by retraining our bodies to sit on chairs. But for her, for now, her body serves her curiosity, her determination, it is how she experiences the world and how she affects the world around her. Except for the squatting thing, my body does much the same for me. I just think that’s pretty amazing.

*Reading the fatosphere has forced me to be aware of at least some of the many privileges I enjoy- control over the movement of my body being one of them. I’m also thinking about time I spent recently with a woman after a devastating stroke.  To point to any one thing in a human body and say “that is what it means to be human” will necessarily mean drawing a circle that leaves someone out.

Some minds do not imagine. Some bodies don’t move according to will.
As we approach Trinity Sunday, perhaps this, too, is what it is to be made in the image of God. When God himself has three persons to contain the wholeness of God, no one of us is enough to contain the wholeness of the image of God. God is bigger than that- big enough that every variation on the theme of ‘human being’ reflects the image of God. God is found not in the common traits of humanity, but in all our variations.  We don’t pay enough attention to the Divinity revealed in variations our culture perceives as faults or flaws. Special Delivery from the Duh truck for Mrs. Millur…

… Scuse me, I have to go reread some Jean Vanier

As predicted, the OB had a comment about my weight gain over the last two weeks. It came shortly after the “so how are you feeling” question. He did not get the long answer to that question:

I’ve been thinking about that one alot. I’m feeling really, really fantastic, thanks for asking, doc!

Compared to this point in my last pregnancy I have:
*no gestational diabetes
*no back pain
*no problems with blood pressure
*very little anxiety about my ability to handle parenting
*slightly more fatigue (due in part to the midnight-wakeups with my darling toddler).

But you have a form, and I know that ‘weight’ is a big blank category, so I’ll play this game along with you. Why is it, exactly, that “we” need to keep close tabs on my weight gain?

While it’s very easy to find charts and calculators online to tell me how much weight I’m “supposed” to gain, and even lots that warn of the dangers of dieting during pregnancy, it was harder to find anyone who could outline the reasons why too much weight gain is a problem. I found one paragraph about it here.

The following are potential problems with gaining too much weight:

Gestational diabetes
Backaches
Leg pain
Increased fatigue
Varicose veins
Increased risk of Cesarean delivery
Hight blood pressure

Other than that, the big threat seems to be that if I gain too much weight during pregnancy, and don’t manage to take it all off again, I run the risk of being obese.

Maybe you noticed this when I first came in, doc… but I’m already obese. I’m just as obese as I was before I got pregnant with my first daughter. You may not remember it as well as I do. I had gestational diabetes, and high blood pressure, and symptoms of pre-eclampsia there at the end. You may not recall how much you praised me, in the months after that GD diagnosis, for how well I was controlling my weight. It wasn’t that hard- all it took was measuring and recording every morsel that went in my mouth, and working out at the gym three days a week (with a heart rate monitor, to make sure I wasn’t working out too hard), and pricking myself to check blood sugars 4 times a day. Funny thing was, after the diabetes, when I started eating when I was hungry, and working out because having own body back just felt soooo good… I very quickly got back to my pre-baby weight, and maintained it until that other pregnancy we don’t talk about. I was lucky- I didn’t have time to lose those 5 extra first-trimester pounds after the miscarriage before this current miracle happened.

You are the specialist who is caring for me during this pregnancy- my weight loss after is not your problem or concern. I appreciate your input about what might affect my health during this pregnancy.

Thanks for the warning that she hasn’t turned yet- not that I can do anything about it. I’ll talk to her, but her sister doesn’t listen to me, I don’t imagine she will either. Still, it’s cool to know what’s going on in there.

But last time, I tightly controlled my weight gain, and still had many of the complications that was supposed to help me avoid. This time, I don’t weigh myself. I don’t care. I eat when I’m hungry and move when I can, when I have the energy, and when my daughter wants to dance. And I feel really, really fantastic.

I know there’s no convenient space for that on your chart, and that you have other patients you need to see, and you get overbooked and overworked and really, I’m just here because I love, love, LOVE your little microphone that lets us listen to the amazing miracle that is her teeny, tiny beating heart. So I’m not going to waste your time.

But… I’m just saying.

[edited to remove a word (twice) that my husband says makes me sound angrier about this than I really am]

I have another weigh-in with the OB today. I’ve been rehearsing my answer when he tells me I’ve gained: “That’s not surprising, I’m very hungry, and its getting harder to move around”.

However, I have decided that it is time to take control, and do something about my weight. I have chosen a plan, and I’m going to stick to it for a month and see where it gets me.

I’m going to leave my weight in the hands of Saint Bartholomew.

The Patron Saint of bookbinders and Florentine cheese merchants.

From the Wikipedia page linked above:
Of the many miracles performed by St. Bartholomew before and after his death, two very popular ones are known by the town-folk of the small island of Lipari. When St. Bartholomew’s body was found off the shore, the Bishop of St. Christopher’s Church of Lipari ordered many men to get the body. When this failed due to its extreme weight, the Bishop then sent out the children. The children easily brought the body ashore even though the older men couldn’t.

St. Bartholomew is credited with many other miracles having to do with the weight of objects.

So St. Bart- do your thing.

My health I’ll keep tabs on myself. I’ll take responsibility for what I eat. I’ll own the fact that I don’t move this body around any more than I have to, these days. I’ll beat myself up a little for the fact that I don’t get into bed as early as I know I need to. I’ll even take the hit for the puffy ankles that indicate I haven’t found enough time in a day to elevate my feet above my heart.

My weight, St. Bartholomew, is up to you now.

I figure it’s at least as reliable a plan as “calories in/calories out”. It’s as simple as that. I may look for research funding to determine if my plan can ever be as effective, in the long term, as dieting.

I know that envy is a sin.

But… as someone who keeps trying to use words to say something meaningful about hope, I am in awe of this video (via Elizabeth at Creamy Nougat Layer).

This last Sunday, I was sort of hit over the head with one of the readings. That happens, every so often. It’s part of what makes scripture so dynamic. “WHAT? What did he just say?”

And I’ve been batting some kind of response around in my head for a while now, with no time to try and get anything out. That happens too, every so often.

Anyway, the passage in question was from John- the beginning of a long exchange about sheep and shepherds..

“I came that they might have life, and have it abundantly.”

Well. Umm. Damned if that ain’t the whole freakin’ point right there. Forget John 3:16, here’s the answer to the great question of life the universe and everything: “Jesus? Just what are you hoping to accomplish here?”

“I came that they might have life, and have it abundantly.”

Here is exactly why I can’t get enthused about any “faith based diet”, ever. Good foods, bad foods, restricting fat or calories or whatever… it’s all utterly and completely antithetical to the whole idea of “abundant life”.

It just isn’t good enough to say that Christian faith is all about what happens next. Pie in the Sky when you Die just isn’t enough. The whole Easter message is about everlasting life, which (don’t get me wrong!) is pretty great. I wouldn’t have the first idea of what to say at funerals if it weren’t for the Easter message.

But this life matters, too

So I’ve been thinking, a lot, about the things that make my life seem… well… abundant.

The people who love me, my beautiful daughter, the squirming, wriggling energy-sucking entity within me, the satisfaction of eating good food when I am hungry, the memory of challenging my body to swim, bike, and run further than I thought I could, the hope of doing so again, the smell and colour and warmth and taste of fresh coffee in the morning, a long drink and short rest at the end of a portage, the smell of soil in springtime, (hell, the smell of cow manure in springtime!) swings, about a zillion other things…

Erin’s post here is connected in with that, too. An abundance of compassion seems somehow profoundly connected to an abundant life, too. Perhaps because approaching the world with a mindset of judgment leads inevitably to approaching your onw life with a mindset of constantly needing to live up to the judgments of others. Frankly that seems exhausting to me, your mileage may vary. But compassion, love, joy, peace, hope, patience, kindness… that’s all good stuff. As much as I deplore Paul’s dichotomy between fruits of the “flesh” and fruits of the “spirit”, it does seem as if some of those things might lead to more abundance of life, and some might lead to less.

I’m starting to feel as if, maybe, this is a yardstick that could be useful, though. More useful, anyway, than, say, for example, “healthy lifestyle”

This choice, this action? Will this lead to a more abundant life? For me, or for someone else?
There’s a moral component to food, activity, and other choices that I might be able to get behind. Provided, of course, that I’m ever brave enough to be honest about the answers to that question.

Clearly, sometimes I make choices where the answer is “no”. And I know that, and I make those choices anyway. (If I didn’t, what would I have to say at confession?) But the question isn’t “is this cookie bad” or “will I be good if I go to the gym”. The question is “will this lead to more abundant life”. The way I fuel my body, and the ways I move my body, and the time I give my body to rest… these are legitimately part of that.

It’s easy to say that how I eat, and move, and sleep, has nothing to do with my faith. But it does. Because God does want specific things for me, in this body, right now, in this life.

He came that I might have life, and have it abundantly.

I just across the most lovely little bit from Isaiah 7:14-15.

Normally, I’m not a big fan of cherry-picking individual verses.  Scriptural study is all about location, location, location.  Context matters.  But:

Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel. Butter and honey shall he eat, that he may know to refuse the evil, and choose the good.

Butter and honey, baby.

Of course, the newer translations aren’t as food-positive:
“He shall eat curds and honey by the time he knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good.”

All the same, I’m making Ruth and I some butter and honey on toast when we get home tonight. Because it was good enough for Jesus*. The bible tells me so. (Maybe with some curds on the side. Mmm… curds)

*The passage came up in the context of the Feast of the Annunciation- set up as a prophecy of the birth of Jesus.  I mean no offense to anyone who reads Isaiah and doesn’t approach it with Christian-centric assumptions that it has anything to do with Jesus at all. 

[deleted blatant affirmation-seeking paragraph, with thanks to those who gave it]

Easter II, or the 2nd Sunday of Easter, or “Low Sunday” is when Churches (that follow the Revised Common Lectionary, anyway) remember the post-Resurrection exchange between Jesus and Thomas. This story is the origin of a nickname that has always seemed unfair to such a faithful disciple- the first to proclaim Jesus as “My Lord, and my God!”

And perhaps Pontius Pilate isn’t the greatest role model for the Easter Season, but, “what I have written, I have written”.

I watched a pretty amazing video this week, featuring Neuro-anatomist Jill Bolte Taylor, describing a view of the human brain that few brain scientists ever get to witness, or share: watching the deterioration of her own brain function while she was in the process of having a stroke.

In speaking about her experience, she teaches about the human brain, and its amazing, beautiful design- two hemispheres that process information in entirely different ways, and as she says, care about different things, and have different personalities.

And I found it interesting, in part, because this Harvard-trained brain anatomist gives a rational, scientific, biological explanation for what people of faith have known for years.

Quoting from a transcript of her talk:
“Our right hemisphere is all about this present moment. It’s all about right here right now. Our right hemisphere, it thinks in pictures and it learns kinesthetically through the movement of our bodies. Information in the form of energy streams in simultaneously through all of our sensory systems. And then it explodes into this enormous collage of what this present moment looks like. What this present moment smells like and tastes like, what it feels like and what it sounds like… We are energy beings connected to one another through the consciousness of our right hemispheres as one human family. And right here, right now, all we are brothers and sisters on this planet, here to make the world a better place. And in this moment we are perfect. We are whole. And we are beautiful.

The left hemisphere is a very different place. Our left hemisphere thinks linearly and methodically. Our left hemisphere is all about the past, and it’s all about the future. Our left hemisphere is designed to take that enormous collage of the present moment. And start picking details and more details and more details about those details. It then categorizes and organizes all that information. Associates it with everything in the past we’ve ever learned and projects into the future all of our possibilities. And our left hemisphere thinks in language. It’s that ongoing brain chatter that connects me and my internal world to my external world. It’s that little voice that says to me, “Hey, you gotta remember to pick up bananas on your way home, you need’em in the morning.” It’s that calculating intelligence that reminds me when I have to do my laundry. But perhaps most important, it’s that little voice that says to me, “I am. I am.” And as soon as my left hemisphere says to me “I am,” I become separate. I become a single solid individual separate from the energy flow around me and separate from you.”

I seemed to me like Harvard is a bit behind. People of faith have always known this separation, this divide. The great mystics have always had this ability to, as she describes it, “step to the right of their left hemisphere”, and as faith describes it, experience profound connectedness, energy, peace, or unity with creation, and with the creator.

We struggle sometimes, I think, with the division we have inherited from our Greek ancestors. In the time and the place that our New Testament was written, there was no such thing as neuro anatomy. There was a clear division, instead, between the things of the body and the things of the spirit.

And so we inherit this Greek division in passages such as Romans 8: “For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.”

This divide places our ongoing Easter celebration into the realm of the Spirit. This is the work of God, a triumph of life over death, this is joy itself, and life, and peace. In today’s passage from John, this is breath- the breath of life- and the giving and receiving of the Holy Spirit. Spirit stuff.

Until Thomas returns. And Thomas, not having been there when Jesus breathed on the other 10, wasn’t interested in spiritual matters.

Thomas, who was called the twin, and (one might assume) familiar with the idea of mistaken identity, wasn’t interested in breath. Thomas has his mind firmly set on the body. “When I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails, and my hand in his side, I will believe”.

Blessed Thomas. Thanks be to God for Thomas, who was the first to see, and to follow the path to the cross before Lazarus was raised from the dead, who was the first to declare, “my Lord, and my God”. Who took the Good News of Christ to India.

Blessed Thomas, whose story reminds us that this faith of ours is not a solely spiritual matter.

Christians, in general, are far more likely to talk about “incarnation” at Christmas. Christmas is a very body-oriented feast.
But even then, with their strange shower gifts, the wise men point to the spiritual nature of this birth. So it is only fitting that at Easter, another voice should point back to the very carnal- bodied- nature of this Word that became flesh and dwelt among us.

Jesus had a human body- with all its lumps, wrinkles, weakness and funny dangly bits. His human body, and its mortality, was what made it possible for Jesus to be crucified, to die, and to open for us all the way to eternal life. This body was not a coat that Jesus put on over top of his true, Divine self in order to take it off at Golgotha. Jesus lived and died as one of us. And that human body, changed somehow so that Mary did not recognize him, stood before his disciples in a locked room and said, “Peace be with you”. And those human lungs breathed upon the disciples. And those human hands, and their scars, stood before Thomas and said, “put your finger here… and believe”

In life and in resurrection, Jesus was an incarnate, embodied, fleshy human being.

As we are.

On Ash Wednesday we mark the central fact of human existence: we are dust, and to dust we shall return.

These bodies are where we, in the words of the collect, “read, mark, learn and inwardly digest” the words of scripture.

These are the bodies whose feet are beautiful when they bring good news, and on whose heads even the hairs are counted.

These are the bodies that Jesus meant when he said, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you”.

These are the bodies that Jesus left here to get things done, when, 40 days after the resurrection, he ascended into heaven.

And yet, so many of us are unhappy in the bodies we inhabit. If only these bodies were thinner, or curvier. Taller, or shorter. If only it had more hair, or less. If only these bodies were were younger, or more able. If only…

If only this base, carnal, unimportant earthly part of me were different, then I could get on with the Spiritual things that really matter.

“Put your fingers here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt, but believe”.

These bodies carry the genetic legacy of our ancestors. They bear the scars of things that have happened to us, or of choices we have made. They bear the mark, invisible but not, we hope, imperceptible, of the moment when they were bathed in water, marked with the cross, and claimed as God’s own forever. These bodies consume and integrate the bread and the wine that is, for us, the body and blood of Jesus.

“Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.”

These bodies are where heart, and soul, and mind, and strength meet and dwell.
“And here we offer and present onto thee, O Lord, our selves, our souls and bodies as a reasonable, holy, and living sacrifice unto thee.”

These are the hands that Jesus sends in to the world, to act with justice.

These are the lips that Jesus sends in to the world, to proclaim Good News.

These are the heads that Jesus sends into the world, every hair counted, to bow in prayer.

I am. You Are.
Yes, we are united in one great Spiritual union, with the whole communion of saints, joining our voices with an unending chorus across all space and all time: “Holy, holy holy!”. But that is not all we are. And each of us makes a unique offering of our whole self, when we offer all that we are in service to God.

You are you, inside that body- that body that is aware of how long you’ve been sitting in an uncomfortable pew, and how long it’s been since breakfast, and that you never seem to get to wear your most comfortable clothes to Church… that body, whatever its shape, its size, its age. Whatever the things it can’t do- that is the body that Jesus breathes upon- that Jesus enters in this Eucharist- that Jesus sends out into the world.

And in that body of yours, you are beautiful.
Thanks be to God. Amen. Alleluia.

One of my great pleasures over the Easter Weekend (I mean, besides the joy of the Resurrection; he is risen indeed! Alleluia!) was watching Ruth play. We did puzzles together in the church nursery during Daddy’s choir rehearsal, and then we got NEW puzzles for home on Easter Morning. (That Bunny, he’s right on top of things!)

She is awesome and hilarious and a little bit scary to watch (I suspect I’ll lose the ability to outsmart my kid sometime next month). She methodically picks up each puzzle piece, looks for a likely empty space, tries it in a few orientations, and if she can’t make it fit easily she puts it aside and tries another piece. It doesn’t take long until everything is sorted and she’s crowing , “I did it!” and moving on to the next puzzle. (Which was also the last puzzle, I may need to donate some new puzzles to the Church nursery).

Not a bad problem-solving strategy, all in all. Try something, see if it works. If it doesn’t, set it aside for reconsideration later. If it does, celebrate a little.

In some ways, I can see myself doing the same thing. But not so effectively. My husband thinks that I’m trying to hard with this Fat Acceptance piece, trying to force it into place. He may be right; I let myself get pulled into it with my Dad at Easter dinner. I want to tear my hair out when he says, almost verbatim, “Everybody knows that fat is unhealthy. Calories in, calories out. It’s as simple as that”. Mom, on the other hand, wants to play both sides. She gives us a box of Girl Guide Cookies (which in Canada come in one kind: row of chocolate sandwich cookies, row of vanilla). Yum, cookies.  She then tells my husband that the vanilla ones are for me, since they have 80 fewer calories than the chocolate. (She must be working off different nutritional information than what I can find online, I’d check the box but it’s been incorporated into the “stash” of desk-chocolate that keeps me going for lunch at his office). How you can hand me a box of cookies, while simultaneously telling me I’m definitely not to enjoy the cookies escapes me.

Right.  Puzzles.

So here’s the piece in my hand today: I have an appointment with my OB this afternoon, and he’s going to weigh me.  And I know that that will be in my mind when I decide if I’ll have a muffin before my in-service training today.   And it’ll be in my mind at lunch.  And how’s this for messed up: even though I have to present a case study for peer scrutiny this afternoon, its my doc’s comment on some scale number that has me anxious.

So it would seem that “relationship with the scale” is a piece that I can’t quite fit into place yet.  If I were as smart as my daughter, I’d just set it aside and deal with it later.

I hope that with age, comes wisdom- if not smarts.  She, in her two-year-old need to “I do it! My turn!” banished me to a chair on the opposite side of the room, as punishment for trying to help.  I can’t do it alone.  Which is partly why I read the fatosphere every day, and write much, much less often.  So I’ll post this, and then I’ll read someone else’s words about how its a journey, and starting on it matters, and I don’t have to have it all figured out.  And that will help.

(And I’ll build an elaborate fantasy about banishing my mommy to a chair on the opposite side of the room, during one of her misguided attempts to help).

And when faced with a muffin, I’ll take a minute and think about whether or not I’m actually hungry, and try to make that more important than an impending weigh-in.

I have a lot of faith that eventually, this will all fit together.