Loving My Mommy Bod

By: Karen Beauvais

Whenever I want to bring a room into hysterics, I tell them that in college I taught exercise classes and danced on a dance team. If that room is full of my children, I like to bust a move or two just to show them I still have it. The net result is usually tweens howling with laughter on the floor or 20-somethings at work snickering and shouting “MISS KAREN!”

When we have children, our willowy frames get curvy and stretched. It is a sad moment to stand in front of a mirror the first day of bathing suit season, when you realize there is just not enough fabric to work the kind of miracle you need right now. 

It is upsetting that throughout the animal kingdom, the males are often the more beautiful than the females. The male peacock, for example, is the one with the fabulous teal and green feathers that fan out in an extravagant display while the mother peacock, who has to do all the hard work nesting those eggs and all, looks downright frumpy! If the sign wasn’t there at the zoo, I would not have even have known she was a peacock. I would have thought she was some sort of common pheasant or something. 

One day I read an article about “loving your mommy body” like a war hero embraces his battle scars. See that one, I got that in Nam! And that one came when I dove on a grenade and saved my platoon!

All of a sudden, I realized my body was the way it was because 4 people came out of it. “See that scar? That’s a C-section that four human beings made. Four human beings that became honor students and camp counselors, good friends and wonderful Christians, I tell ya,” I bragged to myself... as I put the skinny jeans back on the rack.

But seriously, that simple article changed my outlook on “me.” I was not a stretchmark or bulge; I was mom, the hand that rocks the cradle… that changes the world.

God knew what he was doing when he made us soft and curvy. He knew that plenty of tears would be comforted in hugs and that the child we were raising wouldn’t be looking for a super-model, but the warm heart that is Mom.

Friend, love yourself today for all that you are, and forget what you are not. You earned your battle scars, revel in them and remember they brought forth life and goodness. And while that may not get you a reality TV show or a trip down the catwalk, it will net the best hugs ever and the greatest vocation of all time.

Word of the Day:
“I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful,  I know that full well.” Psalm 139:14

Prayer:
Father help me to remember you fashioned me in my mother’s womb. You made me for greatness, and greatness has come out of me. Help me not compare myself to an airbrush or Photoshop but to love the “me” that you created me to be!

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