A new craze has started in malls across America. Besides the delightful trains, bright-colored play places, and shiny carousels we have to entertain our children, now they can ride giant stuffed animals.
These adorable creations are small scooters or mini bikes covered in a plush exterior so you can literally hop on the back of a plush dog and whisk away on your very own neverending story. They look like a cuddly Harley Davidson for Doc McStuffins.
To celebrate my niece’s birthday, my sisters and I took our kiddos to ride on these fluffy speed demons. I wanted to ride with my daughter just as my sisters did with their children. (Mostly because I was pretty sure that my little one was going to have the driving and coordination skills of her mother.) But I knew they would have a weight limit.
So I asked the question and got the answer I expected. A number. A number smaller than mine. And so, I watched.
I have been overweight most of my life. I have a very faint memory of being thin. I think I was five.
Dealing with being an overweight person is both physically and mentally hard. I have spent years in prayer, in tears, in bouts of apathy, denial, and shame.
I think the worst part about dealing with the fallout from being heavy is that you wear it all on the outside of your bones. I can’t hide this failure for all the Spanx and slimming black in the world.
When dealing with the emotions of struggling with my weight, I am often met with hours of loving encouragement. But one particular sentence I really never care to hear again.
Now, it has not been said by anyone truly close to me. And it is always said in love, or with the best of intentions. The sentence is this:
“Your weight is just a number” or “Your dress size is just a number.”
I see the thinking behind this phrase. It’s the idea that you shouldn’t let your size define you. The idea that you are more than the size you currently are. The concept that you have an inner heart and depth that have nothing to do with how you fill out a pair of yoga pants.
The sentiment is lovely, but the statement is flawed.
My weight is not just a number. Numbers are just digits that you can erase with a pencil when solving a math problem, or clear from a calculator. But this particular number is not that disposable.
It’s the number that caused me to be brutally bullied in jr. high, and probably kept me from getting asked out in high school.
It’s the number that kept me from ever going on pointe shoes in ballet, sealing the deal that I would never be the ballerina I dreamed about becoming.
It’s the number that caused sports coaches to call me slow. It’s the number that had some refuse to play me in even the smallest capacity because they were embarrassed of me. (For the record, this was not all the coaches.)
It’s the number that stopped me from playing the ingénue in most of the school plays. This number had me eternally cast as the mother (or a centaur).
My dress size is not just a number. It’s the number that had me shopping in “my mom’s section” at 12. It’s the number that forced me to shop for my formal gowns in the grown-up section instead of the cute misses section.
It had me shopping in plus size stores at 16. Plus size stores were not as widespread and trendy then as they are now, and internet shopping was nonexistent. (Yes, I am that old.) If you shopped in plus size stores back then you were just trying desperately not to look middle aged, and you could forget about anything fashion forward.
I remember when Target started carrying cute plus size stuff, when I was in college. It was a revelation.
Now we have a wide variety (no pun intended) of awesome stores attempting to fit all kinds of sizes. It’s a great time for clothes as far as the fluffy of us are concerned.
But my dress size is still the number that closes off entire sections of the mall to me. Trying to buy shirts at certain women’s stores would be as foolish as for me as trying to buy a bathing suit at Gymboree.
These may all seem like grievances of the past. But the number of my weight haunts me still.
It keeps me from riding children’s rides with my daughter. It wears out my shoes and puts holes in the inner thighs of my jeans. It causes lawn chairs to cut into my thighs.
And the greatest tragedy, it makes me dodge the photos from my little girl’s growing up. It makes me look at every photo with the question, “Do I look fat in that?”
It’s the number that has kept me on the side watching. Watching as my little one zooms away on a motorized giraffe. Watching other teammates take the court to play. Watching other young ladies play the fair love interest or lead in the play. Watching as the other couples line up for their picture at the school banquets. Just watching.
I know that I can’t tie every failing in my life back to this one lynchpin, but I can’t help but feel like the correlation is there.
I want to be clear. I am not looking for pity or apologies. This is not a “feel bad for the poor little fat girl” post. And I am not mincing words about my failings in all of this.
It is what it is, and the hurts of the past are what they are. But more than that, God has turned those tears of mourning to joy, because of the way He has used those trials to shape me. He has redeemed those wounds to His glory.
But, please, don’t tell me it’s just a number. It may be factually a number, but let’s not dismiss what it has represented in my life.
Pain. Sorrow. Shame.
Now, it is not ok for me to hold on to that pain forever, to tattoo the number on my head, as it were. I need to heal. I need to view it all in the holy perspective of God’s grace and forgiveness and mercy and love, and that list goes on and on.
I need to see myself as more than my size and the purpose of my time on this earth as more than where I shop or what rides can hold my backside.
I don’t really have a solution to all of this. I just wanted to lay out all the pieces of this problem. Sort them out one by one so that I can look at them as a whole. Take apart the clock, and take each piece for what it is.
Then to slide the whole of it across the counter to the watchmaker. I lay this all before the Lord, and mutter the prayer, “Best of luck with that.”
The job of taking control of these feelings and how I carry them in my life is something I am going to have to ask God to help me with. Because this is the only way I know how to start.
The truth is, my life is not over. There are more goals to reach, dreams to achieve, roles to play, and numbers, many more years of numbers, that may eventually head in a better direction. Who knows, maybe someday I will ride my very own Panda Scooter off into the sunset.
So I will sit and watch again. Sit and watch what the Lord can do in my life. Perhaps I shouldn’t count me out just yet.
Taffy the Great 