40 days to 40 years and the body that’ll get me there…

Nine years ago I made a promise to a dying man. Maybe he didn’t hear me, and maybe he didn’t ask me to but I promised my Gramps I would take care of myself as best as I could so I could be around for my family as long as possible.
 
Gramps had a good life… but seventy-eight was too soon to go. Too many people loved him, too many great-grandkids never got to sit at his knee and hear Rudyard Kipling’s story of the Elephant’s Child. My Gramps loved others well, but didn’t love himself enough to keep himself around longer. He struggled with his weight through mid-life and had the heart attacks to prove his health and nutritional choices had weakened his body as he entered his Golden Years.
 
“I don’t know if I’ll ever be as loved as you, but I’ll do my part to be around as long as I can for the people who do love me.”
 
That’s the promise I made. Up to that point I did what I wanted with my body, physically, sexually and nutritionally. To avoid pain and seek pleasure, I always took the easy way, and like a butterfly helped out of my cocoon, my body, sheltered from pain and difficulty with drugs and sexual experiences when I was younger, and food and laziness after I became a Christian, was withered (or in my case bloated) and pitiful.
 
And then he died and I promised and started walking, then running, then moving and making my body strong.
 
My body
 
This wondrous thing of power and beauty… this “jar of clay” as unique as the soul God filled it with…
 
is about to turn forty!
 
 
Nearly five years ago I started a fitness journey to see what my body could do. No supplements, no wraps, no diets (except eating sensibly), no surgeries, just me and the body God put the rest of me in.
 
Let me tell you my body is amazing! I am stronger than I thought I could ever be. I can do things I never imagined I could do because my core, arms and legs are trained to move. I keep meeting goals and doing more … and yet…
 
While I love my body, I’m not as fast as I could be, I’m not able to do some of the things I want to do (or think I could do if I trained a little harder), I’m no match for the strength of a man, and because of the damage I did in my youth, and the fact that I am aging, I can’t say that I’ll ever be fully satisfied with my shape or size.
 
And so all this work and all this hooey about how it’s all to honor a promise and make myself healthier comes down to a sad vain truth. Yes, I want to be healthy, but I want a beautiful body… because it looks pretty.
 
This frustrates me because I feel like I should be proud of my body… and I am to an extent. Like in other areas of my life, I made mistakes with my body when I was younger, I misused it, misfed it and down right disrespected it for years. I’ve spent most of the last decade getting healthy and fit but I still want to look better.
 
Shouldn’t I be satisfied? Why do I want to look even better, be even stronger, and shape my body and achieve physical milestones while there’s still time?
 
I want a flatter, tighter stomach…
I want to jump two tractor tires…
I want to climb the peg board thingy…
Why do I want more?
It’s not just because I like to challenge myself and want to see if I can fix the damage I did... it’s also because I want others to see the proof of my hard work.
 
I want my husband to enjoy the body I have. I want others to respect the work I’ve done. I wish I was a better advertisement for how gettin’ it at the gym can “fix you.” I want to be attractive in the eyes of others as much as my own.
 
But the damage is too much to overcome without help. I’ve tried hard, so hard, these last five years to build and shape my body by myself and now I’m out of time. That 5 year “After” picture is about to be taken. What will my effort prove? Will it be enough to garner respect or will I hear, “You work out like you do and your stomach still looks like that and you still have cellulite, and you have the nerve to post a picture like that and call it an after picture? Ewww!” I’m afraid I’ll to lose respect because I didn’t get flat abs or irradiate my cellulite. I’m ashamed of dimples and veins everyone will see… but when has being afraid ever stopped me before?
 
But… I have forty days to make one last final push. And I will fight for the best “After” picture I can take. I hope my effort, though not enough to “fix” my past or stop me from aging is at least enough to keep me healthy and maybe, possibly inspirational enough to encourage other cocooned butterflies to fight the good fight so they can fly!