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Welcome to this brand new series all about body. Body image, food issues, body acceptance, comfort in sex… all of it affects how you make love.

But who made it? Is it yours? Are you responsible for how it looks?

My body image struggles caused me great pain throughout my life. It was my “project.” It was my obsession. It was my thing that made me feel OK but also horrible. But as my eating increased, so did my body. And I hated it. I wanted to get liposuction. I prayed God would make me thin. I prayed He’d increase my metabolism. I ordered many ridiculous contraptions that were supposed to make me lose the weight. I binged. I purged.

I share about my eating disorder and what God has brought me out of. Even the times I did lose the weight, did it fix my life? Or were there still things underneath that were still broken?

You can imagine what this all meant about my sex life and connecting to my husband.

If you’re anything like me, this is a journey. And in this series where I want to join with you on this struggle.

I think this is a huge barrier to a fulfilling sexual intimacy in your marriage. But where is God in all of this? What might He want you to know about your body?

Do the work to actively engage in this series to change.

Homework:

• What’s your food story and your body image?
• Where are you now?
• Where do you want to go, what do you want to feel, what do you want sex to be like?
• And make love to your man this week (“do before you feel”)

Next week we continue with Body P2: Know Your Worth, Freedom With Food

 

0:02
Welcome to the delight your marriage podcast. This show where you hear from amazing and inspiring wives sharing their struggles, triumphs, and advice for this journey called marriage. Here’s your host, belah rose.

0:19
Hey, Hey, and welcome. This is belah rose. And I have got to thank you so much for joining me back in the new year 2018. I’m excited, you’re here, I hope you had a wonderful, wonderful holiday. And I will say if you haven’t gotten a chance to go back and listen to my new year episode, I would encourage you to do that there’s really fantastic reflections in there that I believe God could really speak to you through so feel free to run back to that one. Otherwise, let’s dive into this brand new series I am so so excited about, I feel like God has given me just so much freedom in this area. And I really want to share it with you. And I really want to pray that God would change your heart, your life, the way you think about yourself, your body food, all love it, I’m just praying that God would give you a greater capacity to be free in it. So I titled this episode, behold your body. Because I think that for a lot of my life, I have thought of my body as my, my project, essentially, this is the thing that I have hated from elementary school, I remember being excited to go to middle school, because in middle school, you would walk between classes. So you’d be in like one class science class for an hour. And then you would walk down the hallway, across the school building to math class for an hour, and then you would walk across the building around your locker and then back to social studies class and all that rock walking, I was sure was going to make me lose weight. And then I also had the food thing, obviously, which was the, you know, the reason of the the the weight thing, and the food thing was a constant issue. Right, I was always going back for seconds or thirds of things that I really liked, especially sweet things. And, you know, I remember, awful, but I remember sleeping over at friend’s houses. And I remember the specific time but I am sure it happened more than this. But one specific time, I knew they had whipped cream in their freezer. And throughout the night, I ate the majority if not all of their whipped cream. which even now like I don’t make me embarrassed. But that was I grew up that way. And it’s not that my mom told me I should go eat, you know, other people’s sweets, that was not the case. But for whatever reason it is what happened. And I I struggled with this. And I remember, you know, boys will, I guess brothers will tease their younger sisters and I got teased that I was the tomato my sister was the carrot because she was always been. She’s my older sister, and oh my gosh, the way I wished my body was different. I would constantly be looking in the mirror, you know, squishing the sides of my,

3:47
my belly, trying to make the rolls go away. And I wished and prayed that God would make me thin and that I would you know be able to get liposuction. And there were different times that I would watch these ads on TV and I would buy the ridiculous contraption that you know I had one oh my gosh, I had one. Maybe you’ve seen these things, but I had one that you would put gel on the it was like this giant WWE wrestling belt and it would go around your midsection and you’ll put gel on these like metal circles and you’d put it on your your abs. And then it would like send these electric shocks that were supposed to like make your abs flex. And you were supposed to be able to like watch TV and it would give you a six pack and hilarious stuff. That was just one of the things the other one oh my gosh, this was hilarious. There was a woman that produced this program where there was this rod, probably three feet long. And there was like this run rubber band as long rubber band that went from one end to the other. And then I think what you would do is you would put the rubber band underneath your feet, and then you would pull the rod. And you’d go to the side, and you would pull it over your head and go to the other side. And at the same time you’re doing that you’re doing these hilarious, like giant like breaths in and then slow, like breaths out where you’re pushing the air. And it was so important to push the air so that you’re making it a Rubik and oh my gosh, there’s so funny that my mom, let me buy those things. But I had the money and she gave me the opportunity, you know, my babysitting money. Ah, anyway, the point is that this has been an obsession of mine, since I was very young. And it just continued. So as life heated up, my food was my go to, that was what made me feel okay. Which then made me hate my body more and more. And I went through middle school feeling that way. And then high school, I was in such a place of discomfort with my body, that my wardrobe was just hilarious. I mean, just t shirts and pants, pants that were boys pants often and, you know, loose fitting everything, which is fine. I don’t want to critique anyone’s wardrobe. But for me, it was just to cover up it was to not be seen. I didn’t have a boyfriend in high school. I couldn’t. I mean, my face got red in the face anytime a boy got near me because I was so insecure about the way my body looked. And not, you know, not for lack of trying at some point in high school, I ended up being part of the field hockey team and ended up starting after that, like I got in shape. And I started running four miles a day. So I did lose weight, probably for a short season there, but then came back and it regardless, I still was insecure, I couldn’t have gotten skinny enough, no matter what.

7:27
So then it just exacerbated as life kind of exacerbated. And then I ended up becoming Billy MC in college, but that it wasn’t bulimic because it and then I lost a lot of weight, what ended up happening is I would just go buy a big tub of ice cream, eat the whole thing. And then, you know, purge that. And so it was just this, this, this dark place of my life. It was dark. And I wanted so badly to be thin, and I thought my life would be fixed. I thought it would be fixed. And yet, the truth is, regardless of how much I ended up being able to lose because of some crazy diet of calorie counting, or, you know, some really hilarious stint of going to the gym three times a day, which I did do that in college at one point. And it just did not matter how much I actually ended up losing. It didn’t fix my life. It didn’t make me have the life I wanted. It didn’t make me confident didn’t make me have peace. It didn’t make others like me. Like I was hoping it didn’t make me have best friends and the loneliness I felt. It just exacerbated all the problems I already knew were there that I just didn’t want to deal with. We’re gonna talk about more about that later. But here’s what I want to say is that, first and foremost, you are a bearer of God’s Holy Spirit. You are His temple. He does not choose to live inside ugly things. Did you know that? Go back and read wherever section in the Old Testament is probably like Deuteronomy or I don’t know Leviticus, something where it talks in detail about how beautiful the temple of the Lord should be. Or the holies the holy of holies should be incredibly gorgeous. And here, the Holy Spirit lives inside of you. That’s one thoughts about beholding your body. The second thought is God designed your body. He did. This isn’t your responsibility. Your body wasn’t your creation. It’s not something you can critique and act like this is, you know, you’re, you’re critiquing the paper you’ve wrote, or somehow that it’s your ownership, you aren’t the owner. It’s not your masterpiece. It’s God’s, you are God’s masterpiece. And so when you have these ridiculous conversations with your friends about how fat you look, and how your nose is like a pug nose, and your eyes are too close together, and all these things, oh, my gosh, and I used to be there, right? I used to have those conversations. But since then, every single time, now that God has opened my eyes, every single time I hear something like that, I have to interrupt the conversation and be like, You know what, I am God’s masterpiece. And I am not going to let anyone criticize that much less myself. So I’m gonna have to leave. And you know, normally it’s around ladies that will laugh, and I’ll walk away, and they will continue that conversation. But, you know, I’m kind of willing to be the person that makes a different choice. And maybe it’ll spark something in them, that will make a change. Either way, the point is, you are God’s masterpiece. And eventually, I wanted to give you kind of a vision of where I’ve come from. But I also want you to have a vision of where you can go. Because when you get to a place where this becomes reality for you, where food is not an obsession, or dieting is not an obsession, you can have the freedom to embrace what God really wants you to embrace in this world. It’s hard work, I struggle, because this is my past, this is my pattern I grew up with.

12:11
But by God’s grace, I’m at such a different place than I’ve ever been in freedom in my body. And why does this have something very important to do with marriage is because when you feel free in your body, you can enjoy sex, when you accept every stretch, Mark, every roll, every you know, cellulite, and every beautiful curve, and, you know, amazing fingers and to die for clavicles as I enjoy my clavicles. But when you can accept it all, and you can just relax and you can just enjoy and you can just enjoy your ReSSA and be one with your husband, that makes sex different than sucking in. I’m not good enough to make love tonight because I over ate and I cannot enjoy intimacy. It’s like, that’s, that’s undermining your marriage, and you need that you need your marriage. So that’s why this is so important. That’s why I want you to really engage in this series. wherever you’ve come from, on the food journey, I encourage you, there’s a lot of freedom to be had. And, and I say food journey body journey. You know, it all kind of mixes together in my head. So if it doesn’t mix together in your head, feel free to, you know, pick out the nuggets that work for you. All right, well, here’s your homework, because I want this to be something you really engage in. I want you to do this homework. I’m purposefully making my podcast shorter, because I want you to really articulate what your thoughts are, you know, in my video course to let your husband is, you know, the Christian wife’s practical manual for passion and intimacy in marriage, passion and confidence in intimacy and marriage. That is where I really really encourage you to articulate your thoughts. You know, I give you questions to be answered that sex therapists have said, these are right on target. They need to be answered by you. You need to articulate your answers so that you can move forward but if you just passively listen, it’s like watching a video. Right? You don’t actively engage. It’s not something that can change you if you are not going to engage in it. Does that make sense? So here’s the questions. I’m going to send it ask you to write out Literally articulate. It’s hard work. I know. It’ll take probably five minutes. Lots of time. Just kidding, you can do this. Write it out. What’s your food story? Just a couple bullet points. Where did you come from? You know, I kind of gave you my story. Where’d you come from with food? And your body image? Okay, first, first question. Second question, where are you now? Are you struggling? Are you having challenges? Where are you now? And lastly, where do you want to go? What do you want to feel? What do you want to be like? What do you want sex to be like, because your body perspective and you’ve changed. So write those, write those out. And I will be talking to you next week to encourage continue the series on body, food, all that fun stuff.

16:01
So I hope that you’re writing in your journal, I will take a quick moment to say, make sure you’ll make love to your man this week, at least once, if not twice, if not three times. If you’re doing more than that, God bless you keep on. But it’s so important. And I think the enemy lies to us and says you have to be perfect before you can do anything. And especially the body. If you’re not perfectly beautiful. You can’t make love and enjoy it and unify your marriage. It’s just not true. You’ve got to act before you feel. You have to enjoy an act like you want to make love before you feel like making love. That’s the way a body a woman’s body works. We’re going to talk so much more about this. But don’t wait. Make love this week. It’s so vital to your marriage to the heart of your husband, to the way you connect to the unity that both of you need to do God’s work in this world. God bless. I will talk to you next Tuesday. Bye.

17:05
Thanks for listening. Stop by delight your marriage.com to check out all the show notes as well as many more resources and articles. Until next time, live with love, wisdom impassion