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Do You Love Your Body? – by Heidi McLaughlin

Posted: November 3, 2019

As a teenager my lips and nose were too big for my face and my knees didn’t fit with my skinny legs. I wanted to look great in tight pants, but being so thin made everything look awkward. In my twenties and thirties I didn’t like my legs or face and in my forties it was my waist and arms. And on and on it went. Nothing was ever right about my body.

Now that I am so much older I actually love my body.

Not that my body is perfect by any means, in fact it’s looking old on the outside. The wrinkles on my face are there to stay and most days my feet and hands hurt when I get out of bed. Due to a fall this last January I hurt my knee and the trauma escalated arthritis. My neck is wrinkled and I have spots that show up in unexplainable places.

On one of my 5 kilometre walks, huffing and puffing my way up the long hill toward the Mission Hill winery, I told God: “Thank you God for my body, I love it.” I have learned to love and appreciate my body, and I’m sad it took me this long. As I walked I kept up my thankful tirade. “Thank you God for my eyes, I can see all this beautiful landscape. Thank you I can hear, and I can chew and enjoy food. Thank you that I have strong legs where I can walk for hours and not grow faint.”

“Thank you that I can still think, create and find joy.”

I’ve realized that this is my one and only body that God gave me to use while I’m living out my life. It’s certainly not perfect but I am so grateful for it.  I need to take good care of it, not only for my health, but because: “Don’t you realize that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and was given to by God? You do not belong to yourself, for God bought you with a high price. So you must honor God with our body” (1 Corinthians 6:19 NLT).  Wow, isn’t it incredible that Christ lives in me?

I know I need to honour His dwelling place on the inside and outside.

Let me encourage you to look at yourself today and thank God for your body. This is the best it’s going to get.  If you look back at yourself twenty, thirty or even forty years, you will realize you should have been thankful then. This is the body God gave you while we are walking this earth. It’s yours and only you can take care of it. In fact, enjoy it in every way you can. You’re the container and dwelling place of the most Holy sacrament known to man. Treasure it.

Posted in: Beauty from the Inside Out, becoming, Finding Truth, Holy Temple, Jesus, joy, love yourself, my body, self worth, thankful