“Go Away for I Am a Child of God”

I am grateful for my body. For the past 737 days I have completed a goal to exercise 30-40 minutes intentionally. On January 1st, I completed two years of that goal and needed to switch it up a bit. I needed to switch it up because, although I did SOMETHING, it wasn’t always an intentional, productive effort. So I changed up my game. I declared to my vlogging public that I was going to get into the pool to exercise – no matter the weather. The past couple of days have been testing my resolve (although have provided some humorous vlog footage of my husband all bundled up watching my efforts in the wind and rain in the pool).

I haven’t always been grateful for my body. I went years disliking my size, my aches and pains, and my seemingly inability to move about the planet freely. For years I fought my body, angry that I had to exercise, starve myself, or discipline myself with little visible progress. My goal to exercise 30-40 minutes per day hasn’t really changed the shape of my body, but it has been a lesson in self love, perseverance, accomplishment, commitment and determination. I have learned so much in the past two years. I can see myself learning more in the year to come because I have learned that having a body is about learning to see past the earthly and to see the Spirit.

Most definitely, having a body is a learning experience.  I haven’t always been grateful. But it is beginning to dawn on me that Jesus felt aches and pains, scrapes and bruises, sleepless nights, hunger and thirst, stiffness and illness… all before He performed the Atonement. He experienced mortality! Duh! He did chores. He worked for a living. He was part of a family dynamic and I bet, had to deal with grumpy and distant people. He experienced all that is mortality! The Good and the Bad! 

He was tired. He was cold. He was too hot. His feet hurt. His muscles ached after working all day. He learned things. He felt things. All this He did for His own learning and benefit. The Atonement of Jesus Christ was something that ADDED to His experience and thus, enriches my experience. He then felt MY tiredness, MY hunger, MY pain, My aches, My frustration, My sadness, MY emotions, MY sins, My illness, MY heartache. And then multiply that by every member of MY family, the members in my ward, my community, by every person who has ever and will ever walk the planet. No wonder He bled from every pore. The weight was crushing! I think MY own aches, pains, emotions, sins, etc. are crushing.

Humbled.

Multiply that by trillions, by a number I can’t comprehend – since Moses taught He is the Savior of worlds without end. Now that is humbling. No wonder Moses said – to paraphrase – he was nothing, yet everything. No wonder Moses could say to Satan (again paraphrasing), “Go away for I am a CHILD of God.” He understood just how important we are to God, to Jesus Christ, and to each other. I am determined to have the faith and hope and love in Christ that Moses had, to with confidence say, “Go away, for I am a CHILD of God. I am a CHILD of LIGHT.”