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When Your Body Changes Shape: Love From the Rev. Dr. Honeycrisp

There is nothing like the living, moving camera footage to tell you quite honestly what shape you’re at. I am in rehearsals right now for “Cabaret,” and my wonderful director takes rehearsal footage so we can review our scenes and numbers at home. I tend to wear fairly fitted garments when rehearsing so I can move comfortably and be aware of my limbs and what I’m doing with them, and my stance, and my posture, and everything about my presence. I rehearse in shoes similar to those I am going to wear so that I can feel how my character stands. Last week I was doing my big act one number while wearing some snug heels and I almost tipped over when doing one gesture, so that was good to know. My character is a very solid, grounded lady and it wouldn’t do to be falling off my feet.

So anyway, although I see myself on video footage preaching, I am generally wearing robes so I haven’t fully seen what the Snacking Ravages of the Winter have contributed to my apple shape. Well, now I have seen it. My clothes still fit and my weight hasn’t gone up much, but that doesn’t mean a lot. As they say, you can go up a good 20 lbs. in most modern clothes and not bust buttons because today’s cuts and fabrics tend to have a lot of give. I may have put on only four or five lbs., but you know how a pregnant woman will suddenly *pop* at about her third or fourth month and suddenly the baby bump is super evident? These last lbs. have definitely brought me full circle to total apple shape. I am an apple on legs. And the legs – well, they’re moving from chicken leg to turkey drumstick comparisons.

I have said this many times : I don’t hate fat and I don’t hate my body and I don’t think fat bodies (including mine) are ugly or immoral. Fat is just fat. I am fat like I have brown hair and tiny hands. I can change my hair color, I can change my body shape. That’s not what this post is about.

This post is about the way I hope you look at yourself when your body shape changes, however it changes and for whatever reasons. I hope you will be honest about it, kind and appreciative of it (after all, it is your body and it tells your story) and strategic about how you want to dress and adorn it for whatever its real shape is at this time.

Most people do not stay the same shape all their lives. Even if your weight is stable, the weight shifts as muscle mass changes. So this is not just for people who gain or lose weight.
This is about bosoms that droop, or waistlines that disappear, or ankles that suddenly become quite thick and not to your personal liking, or biceps and pecs that soften and create a surprising new form that makes yous self-conscious in the golf shirts you’ve always felt served you perfectly well as day attire. What to do now?

Please do not dress to hide your body. Do assure that your clothing fits you well.
Please do not hide from your body changes or ignore them. They’re there, it’s okay, you’re who you are and worthy and wonderful. You’re here. You have important things to do and love to dispense. You are a leader. Step out and show up, but bring your body along in honesty. This means that you may have to visit a tailor or engage the services of a stylist to help you find outfits that make you feel good and suit you in your current form.

Please do not hold off on beauty because of a future goal. This is a vicious thing to do to yourself. Don’t say, “I’ll get a suit when I lose weight.” What, and walk around now busting out of your sports jackets? Appear at events in trousers that pool around your tushie and ankles because you’re hoping to put on some of the weight you lost when you were receiving chemo treatments? Squeeze into your pre-pregnancy or pre-Winter of 2015 summer office hours dresses as a way of “motivating” yourself to stick to your diet?

Posh and tiddle. Piddle and twosh, or whatever they say in England. Tosh. I think it’s tosh. Twosh and poddle.

LOOK YOUR BEST NOW, AS YOU ARE.

I am an apple. I am a round Cortland apple, or maybe a Pink Lady apple or a Macoun. Call me Rev. Honeycrisp. My fore and aft are round all the way around and topped by an ample bosom, all balanced on tiny feet. So that’s what it is now. Maybe always. I never speak for a someday I can’t see and may never know. I can’t only live for today with the body I am in now, and grateful for. This is the body that propels me through these beautiful spring days. This is the body that is on stage every night falling in love and singing beautiful duets and dancing and having her heart broken. This is the body that will travel with me on summer adventures. This is the body through which I pray and think and live and experience the living God. This is the body that wears the pants and shirts and skirts and dresses that fit a bit differently and surprise me and sometimes don’t fit. Those items will be stored in the closet on the left side for now, because I don’t think it will be impossible to make the apple a little bit smaller and fit back into them. But if a year goes by and the apple that is me is still this round, I will send those clothes off to someone else and not allow them to torment me with guilt or regret.

Life is hard and demanding. Sometimes pizza and buttered popcorn seem like friends on another blizzardy night. And then you emerge into the sunshine of the summer and say, “My, my, that pizza definitely was my friend at the time but right now these walking shoes and this dog leash and that path by the beach is a better friend. Let me spend my time with them today.”

You can be, and are, beautiful as you are now.
Find the beauty and show it off.

Kiss of peace, PB

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The “I-Needs”

I have some Lenten commitments that help me feel right in my heart and life, and right with GAWD.

Isn’t it hard to talk about our relationships with God in a way that doesn’t sound smarmy and pious? I hate being smarmy and pious so I’ll stick with irreverent, thankyouverymuch.

On my recent vacation, I had one goal: to pay attention to what I require in order to feel good in body, mind and spirit. That’s all I did. And it turned out to be extremely valuable. I got clear about the following things. I call them the “I Need This And It’s Okay.”

1. I need a lot of time to transition from being awake to being in the day.

This is huge for my mental and emotional health! When I open my eyes, I need silence and calm. This means that I need to get to bed early enough whenever possible to not require an alarm to wake up.
In the silence and calm, I think things out. I think things like,

What am I hoping to get done today?
Who most needs my time?
How is that work going?
Who’s at the very top of my ‘get back to’ or ‘pray for’ or ‘visit’ list?
How am I feeling about that meeting we had yesterday?
Is the issue resolved or do I need to do follow-up?
What’s coming up that I need to plan for?
God, can you help me with a story for my sermon?

This is just lying in bed thinking. I need this time. If I don’t get or take this time I feel out of breath, rushed and frazzled by 10 AM.
You might call this prayer. Sometimes it is prayer.
A lot of the time, actual prayer time happens later in the day or at night in bed on the other side of the day.

2. No aggravation before 10 AM.

This means that most e-mails get read later in the morning.
There is nothing so important that it can’t be postponed ’til late morning. This helps me keep my perspective on everything, and I believe it has helped my stress level and mindfulness about how to respond to challenging issues.

3. I need to take my dog for a proper walk.

Back everything up. He gets a half an hour of unrushed snorfling time, even if it takes me ten minutes to get the both of us dressed for the cold, and lately it does. Did you know that they make little doggie galoshes? They do, and my beagle wears them because if he doesn’t he gets ice stuck in his paw pads and salt burns.

4. I need to properly feed myself and my animals.

This means actual breakfast and coffee, not gulped on the run. Not a Power Bar. Not a string cheese. The animals don’t get kibble slapped into a bowl. They get a thoughtfully prepared meal, even if it’s just kibble. It’s all in the way I prepare it for them.

5. I need to read.

Even 20 minutes of reading helps me feel grounded in wisdom and sanity. It has to be something good, but it has to be concentrated reading, not clicking.

6. I need to keep food at church.

It has meant the world to me to have small containers of actual food at church. It means everything not to scarf down a Power Bar at 4pm or go home starved and light-headed.

7. I need to cook.

See how simple these things are? Feed myself and others. Rest. Wake calmly. The cooking thing is essential for me to feel connected to how I am feeding myself. It is essential. When I don’t cook for a week or even four or five days I feel like an orphan, and it doesn’t matter if I go to restaurants or get good take-out. It’s the alchemy of taking out the ingredients and patiently and creatively and gratefully transforming them into delicious food that I eat in my own home off of my own plates that nourishes me. Cooking is love, and I feel love when I cook. I also make food for others and that makes me happy.

8. I need to have something fun to look forward to in the not-too-far future.

Dinner with friends. Someone stopping over for coffee. A theatre outing. A date with a cute guy. A fresh setting that isn’t church or home, the grocery store or the snow piled sidewalks.

9. I need to stop working at the end of the day.

Just stop. If I have a night meeting, I have to work. But I try not to have too many night meetings.

10. I need to recognize that I cannot participate in and support every worthy organization that begs my loyalty and attention.

I cannot keep up with the demand as a minister on behalf of my congregation and I cannot keep up with the demand as a private citizen. I must choose a few that I can support and accept that I have to let a lot of pleas for time, talent and treasure go unanswered. It’s hard, but it’s the only way I can stay clear and not drown in requests.

It feels selfish to make a list of personal needs in the season of Lent, which calls us to deny ourselves (please, darlings, don’t give me that new-fangled thing about how Lent is now about ADDING something. That’s crap! Give me my hair shirt and my ashes!). But while my timing may not be liturgically on fleek (and I believe I am the first to use “on fleek” in that context), it is honest and authentic. I needed to get clear about my needs and try to live into them for my own good and the good of my ministry.

How about you, dumplings? What do you need? What are you becoming aware that you need? Line ’em up. Let’s look at them.

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Clergy, Decorate Thine Own House First

You know how some years you just don’t get around to doing any decorating of your own home because you’re too wrapped up (pun intended) with holiday season busyness at church and in your community?

I did that last year, and it was fine. For me, it’s fine to do that sometimes if I think about my own needs and priorities (and I don’t have children, so I can do that).

But this year, I need Advent. I need it very much. I pray for God to dwell among us in a way that we can feel and access in our responses to living in a broken world. I need the journey to Bethlehem. Dear God, I need angels smashing through the wall saying, “HEY. DON’T FREAK OUT BUT GOD IS GOING TO DO THIS HUGE THING, ARE YOU UP FOR IT?” I need a nobody little girl from an oppressed community to say, “Yes, as a matter of fact I am, and let me spontaneously bring forth an astonishing statement about what God is doing here, let me sing it, let me lay it down.”

I need lights and angels and creche sets around the house and I need to pad down to my kitchen every morning like a little kid and open the Advent calendar for the day and squeal at what’s behind the flap of paper.

Some years, like a succulent, I can draw moisture for a dry season out of the ground upon which I stand with my people. This year, though, I need to fling a lot of tinsel around, light the smelly candles, wrap the bannisters in garland. I need to get a party going for the Christ child. Can’t skip it this year.

So in the spirit of “Physician, heal thyself,” I am saying, “Minister, deck thy halls first.”
If you need to.
But now would be a good time to stop and ask yourself if you need to and not look up on December 26th and feel a sad pang that you did all that to make Christmas deep and beautiful for your community but left your own home barren of effort.

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Every Possible Day Off

You must take every possible day off. You know why. Be honest.
Because your scheduled day off is often not at all a day off, really. You’re running around trying desperately to catch up. You didn’t finish your sermon on your writing day. Your writing “day” is more like a writing “few hours” because e-mail and phone calls and other obligations are incessant and someone died and now there’s a funeral to prepare in addition to Sunday’s service. Because you’re in search for a new Music Director and someone has to review the applications and that someone is you. Because there are four evening events and meetings to attend this week and that means that the laundry, cooking, car servicing, grocery shopping and hair cut are going to have to be crammed into already full days.

So you have this day that looks miraculously unscheduled and it’s not on your regular day off? TAKE THAT DAY. Again, be honest with yourself. Didn’t you attend a meeting or write a newsletter column or make a few phone calls or visit someone in the hospital on your last several “days off?” Then take this one REALLY OFF.

Do not be guilty.Grab it while you can. Sleep. Read. Stare at the ceiling and think. Take a walk. Let the hours simply pass. Observe the dust on your windowsills and do nothing about it. Think about God, or history, or Jesus, or Mary. Paint or knit. Take another nap.

When do you get a whole day, a Sabbath? God knows you schedule them, but ministry is about responding and showing up, and you don’t last in ministry if you tell everyone you couldn’t show up or respond or work on something that had to be done by a deadline because you were being true to your day off. You can postpone some things, sure, and folks will understand, but you don’t tell them you can’t do the funeral because that’s your day off, and you don’t say “I’m sorry about your crisis but I’m having my day off so you’ll have to wait,” do you? You show up. You respond. You interrupt your own plans and needs and respond.

Ministry is the art of remaining ready, willing, and able to show up for people and to be fully present to them in all their humanity when you do. That readiness requires constant emotional and spiritual discipline. You cannot practice that discipline if you do not take advantage of the rare empty squares on the calendar to be fully present to your own life.

Okay? NO GUILT.