Here's the skinny on weight.

Recently a grown woman pinched my leg and demanded “WHY are you so skinny!?”  

“Bony butt” (6th grade)

“Chicken legs!”  (9th grade)

“We don’t like skinny people like you!”  (Outburst of laughter.)  (Two friends) 

“ You’re so lucky you can wear anything you want...if only I was a size______” 

“Go eat a cheeseburger!” (At a blood drive...was told I was too skinny to donate blood, then told to go eat a cheeseburger)

Pinched, snubbed, heckled, laughed at, envied,  judged.  JUDGED.  j u d g e d

Here’s the deal.   It’s not ok to pinch me.  It’s not ok to point and judge me as if I’ve stolen the skinny gene that belongs to someone else.  I am not a thief.  It’s not ok to pinch someone’s cheeks and tell them they’re fat and it’s not ok to pinch someones knees and tell them their skinny.   

Can’t we just ALL stop talking about weight and be done with it?  

We are all UNIQUE.  Stop comparing.  Stop judging.  Stop obsessing, criticizing,  worshipping, longing for and lusting after something that doesn’t belong to you.  YOU belong to YOU.  YOU are perfect the way God made you.  PERFECT in His image. Beautiful.  WORTHY.  (And if weight is your struggle then please throw away your bully of a scale, don’t buy into fashion magazines and please please please don’t beat yourself up.  The woman next to you does not have the secret, nor does that blog or that pill or that super star diet that everyone is talking about.  We as a society need to stop being SLAVES to the idea of “skinny” and start living FREELY in the body God has uniquely designed for us.)  Life is SHORT.  VERY VERY SHORT.  Let’s start LOVING ourselves and our friends just the way they are without pinching, judging and comparing.  We will all be dust one day.  DUST!  How many hours a day do we want to spend stressing over the size and shape of our BODIES.  FLESH!  GROSS.  Let’s breath air into our lungs and thank GOD for our LIVES.  If we have breath, we have life and if we have life let’s be grateful!  

Being skinny is not something to punish and not something to reward.

Do you know how often I whisper in my daughters ear...”Being skinny is NOT the prize, don’t chase after it baby.  Don’t.  You are healthy.  Beautiful."  Our daughters are listening to the compliments and the judgements we receive and they are thinking about how their own bodies measure up.  The truth is, the only size we need to worry about is the size of our love.  Love does not wear a size 2 or a size 20.  It wears kindness, compassion, honesty, empathy, encouragement and thanksgiving and unity.     

Skinny is NOT the prize.    

Being ALIVE and appreciative of every moment of every day with all you got to give is.  THAT’S what we should run after.  A deep down gratitude of our creator.  Anything else is just plain worship or judgement.  

So hands off of fat.  Hands off of skinny.  Let’s put our hands all over healthy...let’s put our hands all over LIFE and living!  Better yet, let’s put our hands TOGETHER and see each other as EQUAL.  AMEN?    

STOP. BODY. SHAMING.