She Was Jesus to me. Sitting on a Picnic Bench.

I am so excited and so honored to be published at Prodigal Magazine. You can read my story here.

I won't be posting on Linden Tree as much as I had hoped to while on vacation. I left my laptop on the plane and it is happily on it's way to Honolulu. Hopefully an honest person will find it and turn it in, but until then I am stuck borrowing a few minutes here and there on other people's computers. I'm trying so hard to have a positive attitude about this and not let it put a damper on my trip to Minnesota. Ta!

Eavesdropping

After a long talk with my friend, Amanda on body image and all that surrounds that topic I decided to write my thoughts on it. I'm not really sure where these posts are headed. I'm just kind of going for it and writing down stories from my life that have impacted me among other thoughts. I guess I'm really just trying to sort it all out for my own sake. So here it goes.....

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Do you remember the first time that you felt self-conscious of yourself? That you weren't measuring up to societies standards of beauty? Was it a commercial or magazine ad or something someone said to you?

I was always a sneaky kid. I used to crawl from my bedroom to underneath the couch where I would watch the movies that my parents had rented. I saw Black Hawk Down and Schindler's List at a ridiculously young age.....Shame on me!

I also would sneak from my room to the bathroom where I could listen in on my parent's conversations through our thin walls. And it was on such an occasion that I heard my Dad call my fat.

My Dad used to pull up to the window at the McDonald's drive-thru and say (so as everyone could hear), "See girls, you need to work hard so you don't end up with a job like this." And, then he would make a comment about their weight and how it was holding them back in life. He didn't like some of my Mom's friends because they were slightly overweight. He didn't let my Mom buy butter because it would make us fat. My Dad spent more time in his gym than he did with us. He couldn't stand overweight people. A person’s size measured a person’s worth.

I must have been eight or nine when I overheard my Dad that night. A friend from church had given us candy, and Mom had stored it in a bowl in our broken microwave that we used as a cabinet. My Dad was getting on my Mom's case again about the food we eat. He said that it was disgusting how much sweets we had in the house. I heard him shuffling around and pulling the candy out from the microwave and the tasty-cakes out from the snack cabinet probably to throw them away to make his point. And, then he said something that landed on me like a ton of bricks, "You know Lyndsay eats a lot. She's getting pretty chunky."

I gasped and a sob caught in my throat. Because being called chunky by him didn't just mean that I needed to lose a few pounds, it meant that I was dumb and worthless and ugly. It meant that I couldn't hope for anything more than a life at the drive-thru window making minimum wage as people like my father would drive up and use me as an object lesson for their kids on how to fail at life.

I was in such shock that he would say that about me that I ran from my hiding place in the bathroom to the hallway where he could see me. My moppy blonde hair all tossled from sleep, my flannel jammies hanging limply on my frail little body, and tears pouring down my cheeks. And, there he sat in his chair, ironically, with a bowl of ice cream in his lap.

My Mom was horrified that I had heard it and held me as I sobbed in her arms. My Dad wouldn't look me in the eyes. He did apologize to me, but only because my Mom made him. And, really it was only an apology for being caught. It was an apology that I was so sensitive and emotional. He never took blame for anything he did. If and when he did apologize it was only to highlight how weak I was. He would tell me that I needed to toughen up and not get so hurt when he treated me like that. In the end, the blame fell to my shoulders. And, so he said "sorry" that night but he didn't reassure me or tell me that he was wrong and that I was beautiful and healthy the way that I was. And, I went to bed that night feeling fat and ugly and worthless.

I hate that this feeling still lingers over ten years later. I wish that I wasn't affected by it, but I was and am. The next morning I lingered in front of the mirror. Before then I was just a little girl who would brush her teeth and hair as quickly as she could in the morning so she could off and play with sisters in the back yard. But, on this morning I stood and stared at myself and turned and stared some more. And all I saw where imperfections and flaws.

Here is a picture of me taken around the time that this
 story happened. As you can see, I was anything but fat.
 Looking back, I don't even understand how
 he could have said or thought that about me.

Life is Busy

Hi guys! I have a couple posts ready, but won't be able to publish them until the weekend. I'm staying with a friend who had surgery. She is a single mom with two boys. I'll be playing "mommy" while she recovers and so I won't have much time on the internet. So, I'll see you back here in a few days! Also, I will be out of town from next Wednesday to the following Wednesday. I'm going to Minnesota again!!! Ahhhh! So excited. Can't wait to read to the littles, pinch chubby baby cheeks, play board games, drink copious dregs of tea, and stay up chatting and laughing and acting dumb until 3 in the morning. :) I will most likely post pictures here, but probably won't have time to write.

I am not a classy granola lady in pearls.

As I was pouring myself a cup of coffee last Friday morning I heard one of my coworkers say in her lovely jamaican accent, "Lyndsay! You look so hippie. And, like a classy sort of June Cleaver." Yes! I finally am the 1950's, chic, granola lady fashionista I have always strived to be. I turned around to say "Thank you" only to find her hands outstretched about two feet apart from eachother. Oh! You mean that kind of "hippie". Not "hippie", but "hippy". I am fully aware of my "hippy-ness". Thanks for the very visual reminder. I don't know why she pointed out my childbearing hips, but for my own sake I'm going to pretend that she meant it as a compliment.

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Someday I (Lord willing) will be a Mom. That excites me and terrifies me at the same time. I want daughters very much, but the thought of raising young women in today's world scares the what-what out of me. I've been thinking about this over the past few weeks. And yesterday it occured to me that it is near impossible to expect to raise confident, modest, girls with a healthy and sure body image when I am none of those things myself. I'm the girl who cringed and felt naked and exposed when I wore bermuda shorts for the first time last year. How can I hope to have strong and confidently beautiful daughters when I am incapable of modeling that to them? I think that I need to do an overhaul on myself. And, so I will be blogging on the subject of body image over the next few weeks as I try to sort through the things that were instilled in me through out my life whether it be by society, the world, the church, family, or the unspoken assumptions I made.

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When my coworker told me how "hippy" I looked, I smiled to her face and then quickly rushed to the bathroom where I stood on my tippy toes and twisted around so I could get a good look at my waist from every angle. And, I thought about what she said for the rest of the day. I couldn't wait to get home from work so I could change out of that embarassing pair of slacks into something that hid my figure a little better. I think it was as I was craning my neck to see my backside when I realized just how ridiculous this was and how badly I need to readjust my perspective.

Pinterest Friday (Oh, Puh-lease!)

Hi friends! One of my greatest pet peeves is something that I am bombarded with daily on Pinterest: Food Art.

                                                           

 

I admit that it takes a great deal of talent to carve the face of an Indian man into the rind of a watermelon or to make a horrifyingly realistic man face veggie tray, but I ask you...."What is the point?" I don't want my food staring at me. Do you? It is for this very reason that I go to the supermarket and buy already de-boned, cut up, disguised chicken that in no way resembles it's truest of farm animal forms. That is why I don't gather eggs under the rumpus of mother hens for my morning breakfast. No. I purchase them in a nice carton of twelve and go about my day. So, why I ask would you take a perfectly good piece of fruit and make it into something creepy? It's fruit. It is of the purest origin. Nothing about fruit is gross, and yet you make it gross by forming it into Chief Bear Moon River and Ken Barbie Doll's face.

I am not against all food art. For instance.....no, wait. That's right. I do hate all food art. There is no exception.

 

I don't understand the logic behind my disapproval of food art save that it is totally unnatural. Some forms are worse than others. If it doesn't make me dry heave then it has been left out of today's post. If it does make me dry heave, then it has been included so you can join me in utter revulsion:

You guys do realize that you are serving a baby for everyone to eat, right? You literally are carving a melon into a baby shape and then eating it. At a shower. That's sick.

 I don't even know what to say about this. Firstly, it only has two legs. Secondly, it's a pile of rice with raisins. That is not real food. Thirdly, Why can't you just eat a bowl full of rice with raisins on the side? Why must it look like a lumpy, lanky, lamb?

 Awwww. It's a rice ball Pikachu with a pink cheese flowers, fruit rollup cheeks, spam balls, and kale salad for added nutrition. Yummy!

 

 Enough with the rice, people! It's blue and there's an egg yolk and algae and mushroom geese! Ugghh!

 Leather omelets are the new "Snuggie".

I realize that this may not necessarily qualify as "food art", but I think it deserves mentioning here. I am all for disguising vegetables into fun foods to get your kids to eat healthier. But, why would you go through so much trouble to feed them the ultimate nutritonless meal? It's boiled processed pig and other misc. meats with noodle worms. That is vile.


And, this of course was my favorite:

The meat caste served on a Rubbermaid bin lid. As someone who is ever teetering on the edge of vegetarianism, I can say that this may be the most convincing case to spare the lives of animals and stick with tofu that I ever did see. Somebody spent a lot of time building that meat castle, and I doubt that it was in a refrigerated room or that it could fit into a refrigerator. I'll betcha that the cheese is sweating and the flies are buzzing around the turrets right about now.

My Imaginary Dinner Party

Let's play a game! I'm planning an imaginary dinner party where I get to invite all of the woman that I look up to and admire. There are no rules since this game is completely in my head and so that means that any and all are welcome...they can be real or fictional or even dead. No. Rules.


1.) Florence Nightingale. She was my hero as a little girl. I loved that she cared more about her convictions and the strong desire placed on her heart over conforming to what society, class, and family expected of her. She was a brave, gentle servant.

2.) Julia Child (of course). She is precious and hilarious. She taught me to be fearless in the kitchen and trust my instincts. She taught me that less is more and to cook with my heart.

3.) Glennon Doyle Melton. She taught me that I don't have to agree with someone to love them. That we are all different and unique, but equally important. She taught me about being brave and kind and gentle. She is the reason that I write.

4.) Kate Conner. I want to be her. I could go on and on about how much I love her, but that would take forever and might be a little weird. The thing that I love most about her is that she knows that she matters. She is beautiful model of what Biblical feminism and femininity looks like.

5.) Heather Kopp. I. Can't. Even.... She's just so wonderful. Because she is messed up and broken and loves Jesus so so much. I hope that can write as beautifully as she does someday.

6.) Ellen DeGeneres. She is just so awesome and funny and kind. I have to meet her.

7.) Lily Potter. I need to thank her for teaching me so much about love.

8.) Lucy Pevensie. I want her to tell me just what Aslan is like.

9.) And lastly, Charlotte & Fern. They taught me about friendship and loyalty and living a simple life fully.


No, that's a cozy little party! We'll all laugh and talk and share and it will be wonderful.

How about you? Who would you invite?

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I feel bad that I haven't been paying much attention to my blog of late. It's summertime and it seems that a lot of bloggers have been taking breaks from the internet. It's quiet out here in cyberspace and I think it gave me permission to take a little break for a while myself. I've been writing just as much as ever, but not here. My posts on the Linden Tree have been rather sporadic, but hopefully I will be able to tidy up the many half posts I have saved to my drafts and publish them soon.

Sunshine!

The sun finally came out after weeks of rain and moody skies. I went to the waterpark with these peeps. There is no way that I would have rather spent my day. I'm absolutely in love with them.