On a Tuesday morning, are you talking with more excitement about what happened on The Bachelor than about the ways God is meeting you in the midst of what’s happening around you? If you have more confidence naming the contestants than believing the names God calls you, here’s what I want to remind you of:

In John 4, Jesus met the Samaritan woman at the well and spoke to her full of truth and full of grace. He told her who she was, what she had done, and that he loved her in the midst of it. After she realized Jesus was the Messiah, she left her water jar and ran and yelled come and see this man who told me everything I’ve ever done and loves me anyway!

He loves you anyway!

School and work and stress make it easy to forget about the first time Jesus felt personal and real and close. Or maybe you’re not sure he ever did. It’s too easy, I know, I’m with you, and I’m sorry. But I’m afraid that when we forget how we felt the first time Jesus met us, we become numb to the Word of God and to what he’s doing in our life. I’m afraid that our forgetfulness leads to a reality TV show becoming our entertainment and finding a rose ceremony more exciting than the fact that Jesus knows everything we’ve ever done and loves us anyway.

When we encounter the real full-of-grace and full-of-truth Jesus, we’ll know. We’ll talk with more excitement about what he’s up to than what’s happening on The Bachelor. We’ll long for what he’ll do with more expectancy than we gossip and guess who will get the final rose. When we realize what the Samaritan woman realized— that Jesus knew everything she ever did and loved her anyway— we’ll leave our water jars and tell anyone who will listen. We will never be the same.

Because that kind of love changes us. That kind of love can’t keep quiet.

There’s no shame here if you watch The Bachelor or if it’s easier for you to talk about TV shows than how God is meeting you in your midst. I only want to get you thinking. Plus, if you’re like me, your mind is weak and needs reminders. So here it is for both of us: God is faithful, Jesus is personal, the Word is still relevant. Jesus Messiah knows everything you’ve ever done and loves you anyway. He lived and died and lived again to get you back.

Now that’s something to gossip about.

You’ll do a lot. You’ll listen and pray and drive and coach all so that teenagers might know that God loves them where they’re at. Don’t forget that God loves you where you’re at, too.

Jesus spoke purpose over his disciples when he said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations…” (Matthew 28:18 ESV).

We know it, we quote it, we call it our purpose, too. Let’s not forget how he ended the sentence:

“[…] I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

Jesus, Immanuel, God with us! He loves you where you’re at and he’s right there with you. Don’t be fooled into thinking you can listen and pray and drive and coach all on your own. Kids might think you’re fun and cool, but that is not your mission. That’s standing in ankle-deep water when you were called to experience the depth of the deep end.

Leading will get good when you remember that the kingdom built on Love and Joy and Invitation is your inheritance. When you listen to what the Prince of Peace says because you know his words are for you, too. It will be easy for you to view your Bible as a tool you use to teach teenagers. Please don’t forget it’s much more than that. It’s the written story of a living God who became flesh and blood and moved into the neighborhood (John 1:14, MSG). It’s a story spanning for years you can’t even put numbers to and you’re invited into it.

So, before you run up on stage tonight to meet your new team, sit with Jesus. Remember why you even signed up to run this race. It’s all because of him, isn’t it?

I hope your mission spans farther and wider and deeper than summer camps and successful ministry stats. I hope your mission is to love God (to know God!) and love others.

Every kid, everywhere. Even you.

Have you ever asked a group of women to name their favorite thing about themselves? Try it out as an experiment, and I bet you’ll find that most will respond by describing a character trait.

“My wit.”

“My laugh.”

“My confidence.”

Be so bold as to ask their favorite thing about their bodies and you will watch that aforementioned confidence quickly fade.

“My hair?”

“My eyes?” ending with an inflection as if they’re questioning their own answer.

(Note: If you have a friend who promptly responds with an actual body part… you know what I mean — legs, arms, butt (gasp)— keep that girl close because that’s the kind of body positivity you need in your life. She is your unicorn.)

At some point you were taught that it’s okay to like certain parts of who you are: your responsibility, intellect, faithfulness or hospitality, but it’s not okay to like your body. There’s a whole industry built on a foundation of women wanting to change their bodies and you and I are buying into it.

But we can all link arms and call BS on that, you know? You can love your quiet spirit and also love your legs. Maybe you’re an extrovert and love your ability to make strangers feel like friends— awesome— you can love your nose and waist and butt (gasp) just the same.

What if you changed the narrative? What if you stopped detaching your body from the rest of who you are, stopped referring to your body as “it,” stopped considering your body a failure when it doesn’t measure up to the measurements you deem good? What if, instead, you spoke about your body as “me” and considered me lovely, bragged about your strong arms and the color of your eyes, talked about your body like you were something to cherish instead of something to change?

A legion of women linking arms can put a hefty crack in even the strongest foundation. Changing the narrative starts with you. Be someone’s unicorn.

BRAVERY

Bravery says you can do the things that scare you so they don’t scare you anymore. It invites you out of fear, walks you across a wire in the sky, and introduces you to the freedom that has been waiting to embrace you on the other end.

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JOY

Joy pulls you off the shoreline and cranks up the speed to remind you that you’re not in control. It teaches you to let go of your expectations and raise your hands up in the air instead– safety doesn’t precede joy, surrender does.

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PATIENCE

Patience points you to your destination on the horizon and tells you to go for it. It stays behind and watches with pride as the distance between you grows. On the journey, you might feel all alone and far away and those feelings will change you. But patience teaches you to love yourself in the loneliness without losing hope for what’s waiting up ahead.

 

I have some things that I really don’t want to tell you, but that I want you to know. I want you to know because I get this feeling in my chest when I think about typing it up. So I’m agreeing that my heart is fluttering because I need to let people like you know that someone like me feels these feelings, too. I need to let you know that you’re not alone. But this is hard for me to tell you because it’s messy and vulnerable and I don’t want the freaking internet to know my flaws. I think I want you to see my Instagram feed and decide I must have “it” all together. I think I want you to assume I’m confident in who I am and therefore must not struggle with body image. But those thoughts are a load of bowlshirt. And what I actually know is that if you thought I didn’t struggle, you might feel more alone and ashamed of having body image issues yourself. And what I actually know is that we need to bring all of it to the light.

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This morning I woke up and everything was fine. Totally fine. I made a smoothie, drank some coffee, read my Bible, stretched and did some stomach workouts (I’m calling them ‘stomach workouts’ because I don’t have abs and never have, ha). I was feeling thankful. Totally fine. When it was time to get ready for the day, I decided to put on a pair of jeans I haven’t worn in a while. Not too-long-of-a while, but, like, a couple months. I’m not even sure why I haven’t worn them, I guess I just prefer other pairs.

They wouldn’t go over my hips. It was as though I was putting on jeans I wore in high school because they wouldn’t_ even_ go_ over_ my_ hips. My mind raced, but I wore these in the fall, maybe, I definitely wore them in the summer (PS- I wear jeans through the summer, never shorts, because I’m insecure about my legs and thighs). I’ve worn these within the last 6 months. Why aren’t they going over my effing hips? Queue breakdown. I stepped on the scale. I cried. I looked in the mirror at my body and my gut and my hips that were now too wide to hold jeans I wore a couple months ago.

In a matter of minutes, I went from being totally fine to really-freaking-pissed. And confused. And sad. And ashamed. I haven’t changed my eating habits. I work out 5-to-6 days a week at the gym. Nothing about my routine has changed in the last few months. So how in the world did my body let itself store fat in areas I don’t want it to?

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Because of the fiasco from this morning, I’ve been thinking about my insecurities and my issues all day. I’ve never been happy with my body. It’s always been a struggle for me to look a certain way (what does “a certain way” even mean?), and I can’t actually remember a time when I was content with how I looked. Right now, I weigh more than I ever have, which I hate. But as I was thinking of ways to lose 15 pounds today, I thought back to stages in my life when I had the same insecurities and brainstormed the same weight-loss plans.

This was me in 2009. The smallest I’ve ever been post-puberty (maybe even pre-puberty… I was a chunky kid, which is what led to my body image issues). I know for certain it was 2009 and I know for certain it was the smallest I’ve ever been because of the mental turmoil I went through that year. I despised myself and my reflection. I spent hours at the gym and limited myself to 300 calories a day. So, yeah, I lost a lot of weight, but it was never satisfying and it caused a lot of harm in my life: my grades suffered, my social life was essentially non-existent, I cried when I was alone, and I felt trapped. Never happy. Never accomplished. Always left wanting more (or less?) and wanting a different body altogether. Now, when I look at this photo, I don’t think I look particularly skinny, but I also don’t think I look fat. I look… normal. But I have vivid memories of looking in the mirror in 2009, even at this photo right after it was taken, and thinking a grotesquely fat creature was looking back at me.

I’m incredibly thankful for the people and events in my life that led to an end of that season and ultimately to recovery and a healthier mental state. I started gaining weight (because that’s what happens when you begin to eat more than 300 calories a day), which was an emotional rollercoaster at first, but eventually I got to a point where I was okay. And by “okay” I mean that I let myself eat food because I knew I needed it, but I definitely didn’t like the way I looked.

In late 2010 I started dating Danny, and for most of our dating relationship I critiqued my weight because I was scared that if I got too fat he’d break up with me for a skinnier girl. Throughout college I was regimented in going to the rec center and sticking to a diet. I longed to look like I did in 2009, but I only wished it could come with less mental exhaustion. In 2013, Danny and I got engaged, which meant my exercise routine and diet were now focused on an end-goal of liking the way I looked in my wedding dress. Then we got married, which meant I needed to maintain a weight for the same reasons I did when we were dating, but now with higher and more humiliating stakes. And let me say this loud and clear– Danny never put this pressure on me at all. It always was and still is only in my head. He loves me and is so kind to me. But there’s something (culture? the enemy?) that fed me these lies and I gobbled them right up and let them make space in my soul.

Now that we’ve been married for four-and-a-half years, my body is different than it was on our wedding day. It’s especially different than it was in 2009. Yes, I weigh more than I have in the past, and yes, I’d like to feel more healthy than I do right now. But today when I was having my breakdown, all I could think about was how I wished to look like I did in 2009. Or 2014. Maybe even last summer when those jeans fit. And then I remembered that who I was when I weighed what I did years ago didn’t like what I looked like. So how can who I am now trick myself into thinking that once I reach my goal weight I won’t decide I can’t really be happy until I get back to what I weighed in 2009? And we both know now that weighing what I did in 2009 didn’t mean I was happy.

Here’s my point: it has always been something. I’ve always created a reason in my mind that I needed to lose weight. I’ve always told myself that happiness was on the other side of a number. And then it wasn’t.

Who’s with me? I think we have a predetermined number in our mind that we “need” to be. Maybe it’s 125. Or maybe 125 seems scary heavy to you. Isn’t it funny how all of our bodies are different? I think in order to ever weigh 125 pounds, I’d need to limit myself to 300 calories a day and that is not living. Another woman my age might easily weigh 125 pounds. That woman and I have very different body types. But for whatever reason and whatever the number is, we choose one and we focus on it.

“I just need to lose 5 more pounds.”

“I’m watching what I eat so I can hit my goal weight.”

Where do these decisions come from? Who told you your goal weight? And if you have to restrict yourself to get to it, who’s to say you’ll be able to relax and stop restricting yourself once you hit it? Who told you happiness couldn’t exist within the person you are right now?

I don’t have an answer to this or even a pretty ending about how I’m better now. I wish I did, but I actually know that’s not what this post is supposed to be about. BUT I can tell you that if you’re feeling any of this, you’re definitely not alone. I’m right there with you.

Here are photos from over the years where I specifically remember feeling insecure. Now all I see is a normal-looking girl. In a lot of them I even think I look beautiful. I’m sharing them with you because maybe you’ll see her, too.

Oh, what I would give to be able to speak that beauty and truth over who I was when I was 18, 20, 22. I wonder if I’ll think the same thing when I’m 40 looking back at photos from this year.

I’ve heard this phrase used for another social movement, but I think it applies here: Don’t waste your life. My honest truth is that I don’t want to forever look back on dated photos of myself and notice my beauty at the same time I mourn how I despised what I looked like in that season. I want to live right now by loving who I am and what I look like right now. Maybe it’s actually less about loving what I look like and more about loving what my body can do. Loving how it has blessed me. Loving how it holds my heart and my brain and the parts that make me so special.

Here’s what I’ll tell you because it’s what I want to tell myself:

You are beautiful. Your body is beautiful and purposeful. Miraculous, even. Your hips and your butt and your stomach are good. You don’t look like you used to and you don’t need to. You were different then. You are stronger now because you’ve been through hard things and you’ve made it through. The girl you used to be couldn’t have imagined the good and capable and important woman you are today. Who you are is so much more than what you look like in a photo, or the pants that fit you, or the number on your scale. You are built up of a sound mind and a spirit that sees the good in others and generously speaks it over them. You are wise and discerning and believe other people hold immense value and aren’t afraid to let them know it. I only wish you’d see it and speak it over yourself as easily. You are more profound than a weight-loss success story; you have more depth than the space you take up. Your face glows and your heart beats and your legs move and that is worth a celebration. The beauty of who you are–all of you— every ounce and pound and roll and cell– is worth a celebration. 

Here’s what I’ll challenge you to do:

Look through some old photos of yourself. Be honest and decide how you were feeling when each picture was taken. Do you remember? Speak to that girl in the photos… speak beauty and worth and love over her. Then, muster up every ounce of bravery and self-love this will take, and go do the same thing in the mirror.

I love you and I’m fighting for you to love yourself. I’m fighting to love myself, too.

-Kathryn

It could have been the rainy weather or my hormones. Am I having a quarter-life crisis? Maybe. The photos on Facebook of kids going back to school have me feeling pretty nostalgic, so those could be to blame. But whatever the reason, I cried on I-71 North yesterday. “Old Friends” by Ben Rector came on when I was just north of Redbank Road and in a perfectly timed series of events, the chorus hit while I was stopped (#rushhour) next to the exit I would have taken to go to my childhood home and boom, tears.

Old friends are the strangest group of people, aren’t they? I barely know them now, what they do, where they live. If I don’t follow them on social media, I might not even recognize them in public. They don’t know my married name, but they know the kid that I used to be. And that might mean know me better than all of my ‘new’ friends– the friends who know me as Kathryn Tilmes, who know what I do, and where I live.

Because you can’t really know someone like you know a friend you’ve seen get yelled at by their parents. You can’t really know someone like you know a friend who’s house is intertwined in your memories with your own. A friend who’s clothes you borrowed; a friend who lived down the road in a place where you showed up unannounced at the backdoor; someone who ate dinner at a table that you helped set before you both sat down to eat with their family (after you got permission from your mom, of course). That’s a different level of friendship. That’s sacred.

And then, because middle school is hard and high school is weird, you grew apart or got in a fight about something that you can’t even remember. Or, the most haunting, you didn’t get in a fight at all. The friendship never really ended, but at some point you fell out of touch until you had your last conversation one day without even knowing it.

So, yeah, I cried. I cried over those memories and friendships and a childhood I’ll never get back. But I also cried because I’m hopeful that one day I’ll have a kid who rides a bike down our street with a friend who’s parents feel like they’re part of our family, too. Maybe someday I’ll be stuck in (#rushhour) traffic on I-71 North while my kid and a friend set our table. And then when I get back home, we’ll all eat dinner together… our family and the friend who feels like an extension of us because she happens to live next door. Thinking of the past + hoping for the future made me realize that it’s all sacred. The little moments make us who we are.

I’m thankful for: Ben Rector making music that makes me feel something. Rita Lane, the orange bus, Madeira High School, and the friendships made in those places. Old friends and our little moments that made me who I am. New friends and how seamlessly they feel part of my life now. (and especially) The friendships that started years ago and have stood the test of time.

Spend more time with your neighbors.