A Message from the Big Guy

Happy Sunday everyone!  I went to church today.  Most of mass was spent wrestling with my three year old in the back pew reserved for families with small children.  Truthfully, I did more worrying about the darn germs from boogers and drool infesting our seats than praying.  It’s no small miracle that these words from the 2nd reading caught my attention:

Do you not know that your body

is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you,

whom you have from God, and that you are not your own?

For you have been purchased at a price.

Therefore glorify God in your body. (1 Corinthians 6:19-20)

Apparently God got the memo that I am writing a blog about this very subject. Hmm, I see He's not a follower yet...

We are souls having a human experience.  I read that in a book several years ago and it resonated with me.  I truly see myself as a soul learning lessons about love and fear, traveling around Earth in a little vehicle that God picked out just for me-my body!

Some people, whether they consciously know it or not, really get this concept.  They treat their bodies like a temple.  They nourish it with nutrients, exercise and stretching.  Cherishing it like a child might treasure a favorite present on Christmas morning. They are taking care of the gift that God created with only them in mind.

I, however well intentioned, lose sight of this fact.  I let emotions get in the way.  Emotions I don't want to surface because I don’t want to feel them.  So I stuff them down metaphorically, and literally, with food.  Mostly they're emotions birthed in my youth:  Anger, resentment, & abandonment- stemming from my brother’s death and the deep festering wound his absence created for our family.  Embarrassment, shame, & guilt from being the teenager who needed attention from boys to make up for the emptiness I couldn’t possibly have known how to express at the time. 

I’ve carried this junk (and more!) with me for 36 years!  I continue to punish myself for having feelings-stuffing them down deeper and deeper each time they try to surface.  And the mean things I say to myself!   I'd never suggest to someone I love to shut up because they “don’t have it that bad,” or because “it could be a lot worse.”  In A Course in Weight Loss, Marianne Williamson is quick to point out that if we don’t lean on God, we will lean on something or someone else in a very unhealthy way.  She says, "It is when you allow God to be bigger, that you allow yourself to be physically smaller.  You will begin to give up your burdens when you remember there is someone there to give them to.”

Today’s scripture was a perfect way for me to be reminded to give up my burdens so that I can truly enjoy and treasure the gift, this body, God chose for me.   My sincere prayer is that this blog finds its way to you when you most need reassurance of this beautiful & sacred truth. 

Love & blessings!