Dear friend,

For a long time, I think I believed that if I was ever really going to change my body, I first had to become unhappy enough with it. I needed to look in the mirror and notice everything I wanted to change. I needed to remember how uncomfortable I felt in certain clothes, think about how much better I used to look, or compare myself to some version of myself I thought I should be. Somewhere along the way, I learned to believe that feeling bad about myself was useful. If I could become disappointed enough, ashamed enough, or frustrated enough, maybe those feelings would finally push me to do what I kept promising myself I was going to do.
The difficult thing is that shame actually can motivate us for a while. It has motivated me many times. It can get you out the door for a walk, make you clean out the kitchen, start another eating plan, or promise yourself that tomorrow everything is going to be different. I know that cycle well because I started thinking about my body and trying to change it when I was only eleven years old. Exercise and dieting became connected to how I felt about myself very early, and although the details changed as I got older, that underlying relationship followed me into adulthood. There have certainly been times when I exercised because I genuinely wanted to be strong and healthy, but there have also been times when movement felt like something I owed because of what I had eaten. Food could become something I needed to control, and one day of choices I wasn't proud of could easily become another reason to tell myself I would start over on Monday. Underneath so much of it was the belief that I needed to become different before I could really feel okay about myself.
I don't believe that anymore, but I want to be careful about what I mean by that because I haven't stopped wanting to change. I still want to be healthier. I want to be stronger. I want to make better choices with food, move my body consistently, and live in a way that reflects what I say matters to me. I don't think grace requires me to pretend that everything I'm doing is healthy when it isn't. I also don't think accepting myself means becoming passive about my health. What I am beginning to understand is that wanting to change and hating myself are not the same thing. I can look honestly at the way I am living and recognize that something needs to change without turning that truth into evidence that there is something wrong with me as a person.
That distinction has become very important to me. I can want a stronger body without despising the body I have today. I can make different choices with food without treating eating as a moral failure. I can exercise because I want to care for myself rather than because I am trying to make up for something I ate. I can have goals, practice discipline, and expect more from myself while still extending grace to the woman who is trying to get there. For someone who has spent years believing that self-criticism was necessary for change, learning to hold those things together is not always easy.
I keep coming back to the idea of stewardship. Scripture tells us that our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit and reminds us that we are not our own, but belong to God (1 Corinthians 6:19–20). I have known those verses for years, but I am beginning to think about them differently. If my body belongs to God, then caring for it matters. But I think the spirit in which I care for it matters too. I don't believe God needs me to hate something He created before I will finally take responsibility for caring for it. There is such a difference between looking at myself and thinking, I hate what I've done to myself, so I have to fix this, and thinking, God has entrusted this body to me, and I want to learn how to care for it well.
Interestingly, the choices that come from those two places may look exactly the same from the outside. I might take the same walk, prepare the same meal, drink the same water, or pick up the same weights. No one looking at me would know the difference, but I would. One choice is being driven by punishment and the other by stewardship. One says that I need to change before I deserve to feel good about myself, while the other recognizes that caring for myself is something worth doing now.
I am learning that this quieter kind of care doesn't usually come with the intensity of another dramatic fresh start. Sometimes it is simply taking the walk because I said I would. It is preparing something nourishing when ordering something would be easier, going to bed when I need rest, or choosing to move my body even when I don't feel particularly motivated. And when I don't do those things perfectly, it means returning to them instead of deciding that I have ruined everything. That may not feel as powerful as the shame that once pushed me into another all-or-nothing attempt to change myself, but I am beginning to believe it is much stronger because it is something I can actually live with.
Maybe you know this struggle too. Maybe part of you is afraid that if you stop criticizing yourself, you'll stop trying. Maybe you've confused accepting yourself with giving up on yourself, or you've depended on disappointment for motivation for so long that you aren't sure what would be left without it. I am discovering that quite a lot is left. Responsibility is still there. Wisdom and discipline are still there. The desire to grow is still there. Faith is there. And thankfully, grace is there too.
I still have things I want to change, and I don't think there is anything wrong with admitting that. I want my actions to line up more closely with what I say I value. I want to become stronger and healthier, and I want to take better care of this body as I grow older. What I no longer want is to believe that I have to be cruel to myself in order to get there. Maybe caring for our bodies doesn't begin after we finally become the women we think we should be. Maybe we begin by caring for the women we are right now, trusting that faithful care practiced over time will help shape the women we are becoming.

With grace,

Autumn-Body Grace Letters