What We're Still Talking About 03: Body Image Transcript
This transcript has been edited for clarity.
Emily Jensen: Hey, friends. Emily here. Welcome back to another episode of the Risen Motherhood podcast, in the What We're Still Talking About series, where we are taking a topic that we discussed early in our podcast and ministry, and we're aging it up—showing how the gospel principles we were applying when our kids were babies and toddlers still work for the things we're facing today over a decade into motherhood.
In those early years, one of the things we talked a lot about was postpartum body image. Our mom uniforms; maybe the way that pregnancy, nursing, C-section, caring for infants—those types of things—impacted the way our bodies looked, but now that Laura and I have school-aged children, we find that we're still having this conversation about body image and motherhood, but the focus has shifted a little bit to the role of fitness and exercise in our lives.
What you're going to hear today is a live podcast recording that we did at The Gospel Coalition Women's Conference, all about this topic. We titled it “Burpees and Biceps,” but we're going to really be diving into some of the pressure that moms face to be fit in motherhood. As we apply the gospel, we're going to explore what type of fitness God really requires of us in motherhood. Stay tuned for that.
Also, before we jump into the show, we want you to know that we're releasing a new version of the original Risen Motherhood book. It's a deluxe edition that comes out on October 25th, 2022. It includes all sorts of new content, including three new chapters. It has a gorgeous linen cover; it's an heirloom edition that's a great keepsake or a gift for a mom in your life, and you can pre-order it anywhere books are sold.
When you pre-order, you get some really awesome freebies. First of all, you get a book plate that Laura and I personally signed that will make your book a signed copy. Secondly, you get a gorgeous gold foil print to hang somewhere in your home. We hope that you'll grab these pre-order bonuses while they're still available. You can find out more by checking out our show notes or going to risenmotherhood.com/book. Let's jump into our live podcast recording.
Laura Wifler: We are guessing that all of you guys are like us: you've been in so many different places in your "fitness journey." We have everything from "exercise is completely impossible as a mom; there's just no time to fit that in" to "exercise is one of the main things that I do to stay sane as a mother." And so you have everything across the gamut, and it feels like everyone is so individual, and there's nutrition, and there's just body image issues. This conversation will never fit into forty-five minutes, but we are going to try.
Emily: We're going to try. We're using the word "fitness" today a little bit loosely, like Laura said. We're talking about exercise, we're talking about working out, but primarily, we're talking about any sustained effort you do to improve your physical health. Just keep that definition in mind as we work through this. We particularly feel this is something we have to make ourselves think about in our modern culture because we're increasingly becoming more sedentary in our daily activities.
We wake up and we sit on the couch. We sit to do work, we sit in the car, we sit to do things on our phone. It's like we just move around and sit from place to place to place, and so unless you're intentionally going out of your way to do something that's active or to go outside or to get in some exercise, our default anymore as a culture is more to just be sedentary, and so we have to apply the gospel truths to the world that we live in.
Laura: Yes. Some of us do have active days. I think about my husband. He gets up, and he is working incredibly hard all day in a very highly active job. There are some people who may not need to carve out a thirty-minute time to sweat it out, so we want to recognize that as well—that sometimes people are already keeping a natural level of fitness. But in general, for most of us, it's pretty well required. I feel like, for me, I sit, I sit, I sit, and I have to find a way to move my body.
Emily: Okay. We wanted to talk about: what are some of these truths that cover all of time, no matter what situation you're in, no matter what culture you're in? Going back to creation, God made us for rigorous movement, both in work and in play. Going back to the Garden—thinking about Adam and Eve and the work that he gave them to do—there's no way they were going to cultivate the garden and take care of the animals and even be fruitful and multiply without significant physical effort.
This was not something they could have done primarily from a couch or from a chair. It would've involved their whole bodies. Something I think is really interesting—as you get into more of the research that talks about how the physical body is all intertwined in the beautiful, wonderful, perfect way that God designed it. Movement actually helps every system in our body. It's just good in every way. It's part of the design.
Laura: There are huge benefits. I think we all know them. They're very well advertised research.
Emily: Quick Google search will give you the whole list.
Laura: We took one from Mayo Clinic: improves mood, boosts energy, combats diseases, supports the immune system. You got to tell them about that one thing you were telling me about.
Emily: The telomeres?
Laura: That's it. Tell them, man.
Emily: Okay. I got really nerdy a year ago—
Laura: I love when this happens.
Emily: I read a whole bunch of books on this. Telomeres are like the end of your shoelace, the little plastic piece on the end. That's what we have on the end of our chromosomes. They decrease over time and that controls your natural lifespan. It says how many times your chromosome can replicate. Strength and fitness and exercise is one of the things that helps preserve our telomere length. It's just one of the many things research and science is figuring out—"Hey, this actually helps us in our lifespan with aging." It's really fascinating.
Laura: I love that. Okay, but even though it's part of God's good design that we move our bodies, there are limitations on how much we can move. These aren't even part of the fall. We're not even there yet. We're just talking about good limitations that God has given us. One of those things is the fact that we all have a very limited physical potential. There is a reason there are world records, meaning there is a cap on how fit the human can get. We cannot run as fast as we want to. There is an ending on how much weight you can lift—all those kind of things.
I even saw this in my own life, where I was listening to this podcast, and they were talking about how when someone goes from very sedentary to exercising regularly—maybe just even three to five times a week—but a regular amount of exercise. What happens is in the first year, you're going to see a significant amount of change in your body composition and the way that you feel.
You're going to see a lot of the results very quickly, which happened to myself, but then, after about a year, you're going to have to turn the knob pretty significantly, pretty heavily, in order to see more results. You might have to change your nutrition. You might have to change how much you exercise. You might have to just do more and give more time—give more thought to what you're doing. There's just a natural limit. Unless you're an Olympic athlete, all of us are going to hit the spot where this is what we have.
Emily: This is about the best you can do.
Laura: Yes.
Emily: Another regular limitation by design is the fact that we don't have the same capacity for physical fitness at every point throughout pregnancy or postpartum. No matter what your baseline is, everybody has points where you can run harder and faster. I have seen an eight or nine-month pregnant girl jogging behind a stroller.
Laura: Yes, I have seen such a thing too.
Emily: I'm amazed by it. I know there are people that do that, but probably even that person has times where they can't do quite as much, where you're just a little bit more limited. Postpartum—I've just been happy to get up and walk sometimes after having babies. It's not like, "I'm going to go out and start doing squats tomorrow." There are just natural limitations—even in your time of the month—that you can't do as much.
Laura: Another thing is that we all need rest. We cannot endlessly exercise. We cannot endlessly move. God designed it in his good plan for us to need sleep, need time to recuperate. You were talking about something with your muscles rebuilding. Emily's real into this topic, in a good way. She's into the science-y stuff. I like it. Share that.
Emily: I won't whip out my biceps on stage.
Laura: Ooh, I was hoping she would do a burpee for us.
Emily: No. I might throw my back out.
Laura: Yes.
Emily: We're getting to that later.
Laura: We'll get to that. That's in the fall.
Emily: When I started trying to build muscle, I was doing a program that was six days a week, and I just kept feeling like my workouts were tanking and I was running out of energy. I did a little bit of reading, and it was amazing to me how actually taking a break between workouts helps you build muscle faster. That's a principle that God has built into so many things—that you work and you rest and you work and you rest. Those two things together are what allow you to grow and to serve, not just go, go, go with no rest. That principle exists in our muscles too.
Laura: That's good. Speaking of the fall, let's talk about some of the limitations that occur because of the fall. The first one that Emily and I often think of is just disability. We both have kiddos with very significant disabilities. Both our children will probably never be able to do fitness and exercise in the ways that regularly developing bodies do. We know that many of you may even be struggling through a disability or an invisible disability that prohibits how much you're able to do. Or chronic pain. Speaking of back pain—
Emily: We've already talked about back pain.
Laura: —We're thirty-five, and it's like, "Man, if anybody has a piano to move, we got to hire somebody." There is no way anyone in my community can do it because we're all over thirty-five and have bad backs.
Emily: There's definitely pain. There's autoimmune. There's all types of just different diseases—or going through something like cancer in your life would really limit the ability to do physical fitness. Even mental health. This would be something that's often recommended when somebody is struggling with anxiety and depression, but sometimes that's the last thing that someone wants to do when they're in that situation. It's hard to even get off the couch or get out of bed in the morning, let alone exercise. Or even viruses, sickness. Sometimes that can knock you out for days or weeks or months, and you're fatigued, and you just don't feel like yourself. There's definitely very real limitations there.
Laura: The fall doesn't just affect us physically; it also affects our heart motivations around exercise. For the sake of today's conversation, we're going to divide it into two ditches, and we know that, again, there's going to be a lot of nuance. You're going to find yourself in some of it. You're not going to see yourself in other things.
Emily: Maybe you feel both in the same day.
Laura: Right here, yes. The first ditch would just be this idea that you gain personal righteousness or holiness from exercising. There are a couple of red flags if you're maybe erring towards this ditch. Essentially, this is just seeing health and fitness as a way to earn salvation or to find your goodness or your worth. One thing we can look at is: just how committed are you to your exercise? Is it something that you're saying, "Hey, I exercise and go to the gym 10:00 AM every day," and that doesn't move. Unless it's a huge emergency, this is a massive priority for me. Even if needs come up, you're really, really trying to figure out a way to make that happen. Another thing—and this happens to me constantly—is that I will feel guilt or a level of unhappiness if I cannot get my workout in.
Emily: Almost like your day wasn't complete.
Laura: Yes. I feel bad. I just feel bad that I didn't exercise that day, like I wasn't self-disciplined enough. I start to get my joy found in my exercise. I'll wake up and be like, "I'm going to work out at 6:00 AM," and then for some reason, a kid wakes up—that doesn't happen. "I'm going to do it at 10:00. I'm going to do it at 3:00," and you keep pushing. I don't think there's anything wrong with saying, "Hey, I'm going to find times and ways to fit this into my schedule" but also being flexible and saying, "Hey, at the end of the day, people are more important than my time to exercise, and my joy is not at risk if it doesn't work out for me."
Emily: Yes. I haven't struggled with that ditch as much.
Laura: Of course, you haven't. It's so classic. [Laughter]
Emily: Oh, that's okay. I'll talk about my problems now. I think stewardship on the other side—failing to see how we can be good stewards of our body. Sometimes this is just as simple as knowing all of those benefits we talked about with health and fitness, knowing, "Hey, this would probably contribute to my energy, to my mental health, those things, but I don't really see how this can fit into my schedule right now. That's uncomfortable, and personally, I don't even really love working out. That doesn't feel good. I'm tired afterwards. I'm sweaty. I'm going to have to shower."
Then, pretty soon, I've got all of these barriers built up in my mind, and I think, "You know what? I'd rather just not do it today." I'm not really thinking ahead into the future of "How would spending a little bit of time on this right now help me in ten years, twenty years, or two weeks from now when someone needs me?" I think, too, it can also be developing—I don't know—an attitude of judgment towards people who do make time—
Laura: This can happen both sides.
Emily: —for working out, to just think, like, "You know what? I'm free in Christ. I don't have to work out."
Laura: This is so Emily. [Laughter]
Emily: Really, it's just a way to cover over, like—I actually don't want to think about stewarding my body right now because it is hard, and there's benefits.
Laura: Well, and judgment goes both ways, because I think when you're on the other side, you're like, "I'm disciplined, I naturally see the value, I reap the benefits, and all you people would too." You can start to say, "That mom really should apply herself towards that. She would have so many benefits," or "The reason she has mental health issues is because she's not working out." We'll self-diagnose other people. Really, both of these ditches often come with significant amounts of judgment towards "the other side of things."
Emily: I think another way that sin really distorts physical fitness is just in our "why"—our motivation. Of course, it's impossible to separate this conversation about fitness from the conversation of body image and what it is that we want in terms of what we look like, especially after having kids.
Laura: I know with my kiddos—in the course of four years, I gained and lost about 150 pounds. That very much changes your body image, and it affects how you're thinking about things. You give a lot of time, and much of that is also because culture tells us, "Hey, moms, you really need to care about this."
Emily: I'm pretty sure every time I get on Instagram or TikTok—
Laura: You're on TikTok? Are you on TikTok?
Emily: I do lurk—
Laura: Emily?
Emily: —on TikTok. Let's talk about that later.
Laura: Oh my, we do need to discuss.
Emily: You see all these body transformations. You see how I changed the subject?
Laura: Yes. I'm seriously stuck on this right now. We need to have a discussion. [Laughter]
Emily: Every time I go on and I'm looking through reels, there's almost always a body after baby transformation, where you see somebody and they're pregnant, and then the video goes by and they're holding their baby on their abs. You know what? There are some good things about—
Laura: On their abs. [Laughter]
Emily: -—that, but it's just pressure. All I would say—even if we're not looking for it, we're probably taking in messages that are saying, "You should really be changing your body." In fact, I think there's even a message that would say, "You could get a better body than what you had before a baby if you would be willing to put in the time and the work." We see benefits in that—we're not trying to say that's all wrong—but I think those messages are maybe changing our expectations about what we think our bodies should look like.
Laura: Absolutely. Speaking of what our bodies should look like, it's really interesting to look back at history and think about how bodies go through trends. In the '90s— remember, Em, when they used to wear really, really low jeans and it was hip bones? Hip bones were super cool and—
Emily: Super skinny.
Laura: —super skinny. Thank goodness that is not in. I don't want to see hip bones. Then it changed, and the Kardashian body type came in, where it was this slim-thick body type, where you had a big back end, you had big boobs, you had really tiny abs. Then now it's this athletic body—muscular, workout-like-an-athlete-type style. We really like that. It feels more natural than perhaps some of the last few trends that we had in bodies, but in reality, a lot of the people that we're watching or who are setting these tones may have paid for those bodies.
They aren't found in nature—they have been created through their wealth or their abilities to have different people around them to help them look that. For many of us, that's just unachievable. We're trying to make our bodies look like something that God didn't even design them to. We're doing these workout videos where maybe it's like, "Hey, have tank top arms or have the big booty or have whatever's in style," and we actually seek out workout videos that promise us these things.
Emily: Tank top arms by summer.
Laura: Then we're like, "Yes, let's do that because I need to look like that." The reality is: some of us will never look like that. It will not happen no matter how much you work out, and by the time maybe you do achieve it, the body trend has changed.
Emily: Really, the bottom line is: sometimes we're just trying to erase all of the visible evidence of motherhood. We talk about this in the Risen Motherhood book, that the reality of life-giving is that it's not free. There are always sacrifices, and there's always marks of life-giving, whether that's, "Hey, I've got more crow’s feet. I've got more wrinkles under my eyes. My gray hair is coming in faster," or "You know what? I don't have enough time to devote to this or as much time as I used to," and that's going to have an effect on the way that I look. Or literally, we have C-section scars or stretch marks, or there's extra rolls, and we're a little bit softer in certain places than we used to be. There are just marks of motherhood. Those things are not bad, and yet oftentimes, I think we're trying to remove those through our fitness journey or our exercise.
Laura: It's really rejecting the image of God in us, and it's just saying, "This isn't good enough, I want what she has. I want what somebody else has." Emily found this quote a while ago that has just always stuck with me. We don't know who it's from—P.S., if you do, tell us. It says, "American culture is obsessed with removing our humanity, and we all want to look eternal. We all want to look like we're going to last forever."
There's this element that I sometimes think—I feel like, as I exercise or even just think about body image, I think that I'm trying to apologize for how long I've been alive. I'm trying to say like, "Hey, my thirty-five years is too long; I want to look I've only been around for twenty-five." That is just a deep mark of the fall that gives us hope and thankfulness for Jesus.
Emily: We want to transition a little bit into thinking about not just what the world asks of us, but what type of fitness does God require of us. Just that word, "fitness"—we're using it to talk about exercising, but another definition for that word is just "the quality of being suitable for a particular role or task." We need to think about what makes us suitable to be in the kingdom of God, and then once we are in the kingdom of God, how would we want to train and work in our godliness and actually train for godliness? That word, "fitness," actually comes up in a hymn that Laura and I wanted to share here because we felt like it really encompasses that gospel truth.
Laura: That hymn is Come Ye Sinners by Joseph Hart. It was written in 1759. I'm going to read just a portion of it to you guys, but listen to some of the words that are in here, and especially, there's a last line that uses the word "fitness" specifically. We'll see what we can take away. It says "Come, ye sinners, poor and needy, weak and wounded, sick and sore. Jesus ready stands to save you, full of pity, love, and power. Come, ye weary, heavy laden, lost and ruined by the fall. If you tarry till you're better, you will never come at all. Let not conscience make you linger, not of fitness fondly dream. All the fitness he requires is to feel your need of him."
Emily: Maybe as Laura was reading that, you heard yourself in some of those things: poor, needy, sinner, weak, wounded, sore, heavy laden, lost, ruined by the fall. I think, in that, what we see is this reality that, on our own, we can never be suitable or fit for the kingdom of God. The only thing that makes us fit for the kingdom is knowing our need for Jesus Christ. It's turning from our sin, turning to him, and just coming and knowing that it's by grace through faith. Then once we are saved, God gives us this incredible mission to train for godliness.
I know there is a verse that's pretty popular in this category. 1 Timothy 4:8: "For while bodily training is of some value, godliness is of value in every way as it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come." What I love about this verse is that he doesn't say, "Just forget your body; it doesn't matter. Only invest in eternal things." It's like, "Yes, that does matter," but also, the priority of our investments and the emphasis of our lives is on training for godliness.
There are so many incredible parts, especially in the New Testament, that give imagery of things that we would do in our workouts that actually translate to spiritual things. Fighting sin and temptation. There's a verse from Paul which talks about boxing, like, "I don't box like I'm boxing the air. I box like I'm aiming to hit something." And racing so we can get the crown—having endurance till we get to the end. There is all this imagery there. Things like having fortitude in suffering or being able to endure persecution. This is all imagery of training.
As we are thinking about fitness, it's good for us to go back and say, "Am I investing in something that's not just going to help me right now, but that's going to last forever?" Godliness is of value in every way, and that's the heart of how we're spending our time and our energies.
Laura: Oh, I love that. I think that that begs the question, then: what is all this godliness for? We can think about the Great Commission: "Go therefore and make disciples." That requires going. It requires movement. Really, what happens is our physical fitness becomes a means or a vehicle for being able to serve others—to love them well. To love God and love others. You can't serve and love others just sitting in your home on your couch watching TV and going to get food and going back to your couch. It requires a significant amount of movement for you.
There's a stewardship component to this conversation that is really, really important—to say, "Okay. I want to first work on my spiritual fitness and apply—" Think about how much time we spend thinking about our physical fitness and what we wish we looked like and how we can get there and all that. What if we applied that toward our spiritual fitness first and then said, "Okay, now I can use this, and I'm going to be able to coach my kids' soccer team, and I'm going to run and be able to keep up with them. I can jump on the trampoline."
Or if you have a disability or if you're suffering from chronic health, I think about just the service and the love that it is to just offer a wave or to offer a smile. There are just really small acts of love that we can—
Emily: Or prayer.
Laura: Oh, yes.
Emily: We were talking about how sometimes—even in your postpartum period— what you're doing with your body is actually having that contact with the infant and holding and rocking and prayer. Some people—their ministry is prayer. When we have that godliness-first paradigm—identity in Christ—then we can just say, "Hey, God, whatever circumstances you've given me—how would I use my body to serve?"
Laura: Maybe you are a fitness instructor or maybe you are somebody who is a professional athlete or something and you spend a lot of time thinking about this because it's part of your job. That's still a means to be able to serve and love other people around you and to use your skillsets to tell other people about Jesus. It doesn't mean it's only the prayer or it's only athleticism. It's: how do we find a balance in between these things to say, "Okay, I'm going to bring these together and use everything as a means to love God."
I want to close with—or not close. We're not closing, don't worry—this little section with a quote from John Wesley that I loved. It says, "The mission of the Christian is to do all the good you can, by all the means you can, and all the ways you can, and all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as you ever can," and that requires movement and getting out and being active and being with others. I just think that's a good challenge for this part.
Emily: It is a tension, because as we think about what a lot of our culture is longing for—it's a body that we're not going to have in this life. That's something we just have to keep in mind. Our outer selves are wasting away. We are jars of clay. There is no amount of exercise, there is no fitness program that is going to cheat death. That is coming for us. As Christians, we get to walk in that tension and walk in that reality that, "I'm stewarding my body. I'm trying to do the best that I can, but this life is not all that I have."
We're looking ahead to eventually when we are with Christ. If we are found in him, our body will be like his, and it will live forever. We won't have some of these same struggles and limitations that we have now. It's just a lot to hold together and a lot of just the day-by-day journey. I think Laura and I were trying to grapple down—which we're going to have some questions we get to—like grapple down: what does that even mean in my real life as I wake up tomorrow and decide how fitness fits into that?
It's a lot like any of the other choices we make, like "How am I going to make a media choice? How am I going to know what activities our family is going to do? How am I going to know what kind of food I should serve?" It's journeying with God day-by-day and receiving and carrying out the good works that he has for us that day. We make a plan, and we do our best, and then we adjust.
Laura: Be flexible. There's a real personal conscience aspect. If you've been around Risen Motherhood very long, you know we're really big on this. It really depends on where the Lord is leading you, the Spirit is leading you—your unique life circumstances. Again, we're talking about: what are your physical abilities? What is your season of life? There are so many factors, and there's not one answer for every mom. We're hopeful to help you figure out some things. We have a couple of questions for you to ask and to think on. The first thing is just asking yourself, "Why do you exercise, or why would you exercise?" If you haven't started yet, "Why would you exercise?"
This is really, really important for you to answer authentically and get to the root level, because the first thing that comes to mind is like, "Oh, so that I can look like a certain ideal," or "I can feel good in my swimsuit this summer," or "So I can have great mental health or have sanity in motherhood." There are going to be a lot of high-level motivations that are totally okay. I'm asking you: what is your root motivation? Is that to look like a certain ideal? Is that the main driver for you? Is it because that's where your joy is found? Is it because that's where your identity is found?
Really asking those questions of yourself and saying, "Is my reason for exercising or my reason that I would want to start so that I can joyfully serve others—so that it can overflow, and I have the energy to jump up off the couch when my husband is home or to be able to push the stroller or push the bike along when my kids want me to do that?" We have to work through those motivations and see which ones are the holy motivations underneath.
Emily: I think another question is: "What does it look like for us to steward our body in the unique life circumstances God has given," knowing that there are different seasons? It doesn't matter what point you are at motherhood. You probably already know that every three months you have to re-evaluate your whole life and figure out how you're going to do everything again.
Laura: Maybe faster.
Emily: Yes. You just go through these different periods, and you have to, in each one, say, "Okay, what does this look like right now?" Particularly, I think—to speak to what Laura is saying about motivations—to find reasons why it may help you and to cling to those. I think, for me, this has been really helpful because I'm not naturally drawn to working out, and I wouldn't probably just voluntarily for fun get on the treadmill and run.
Laura: Me either, actually.
Emily: I think, for instance: our last couple of weeks have been full of a lot of grief. There was an afternoon I got home, and we had a babysitter for just a little bit longer. I looked at all that time and I thought, "I need to do dishes. I need to answer emails. My kids want me to sit and play bubbles with them." You guys know how it goes. "I've got a billion loads of laundry to fold." And I could feel the tightness in my chest. I knew that probably what I most needed to do was jump on my bike and go for a bike ride and sweat. I felt a lot of that tension releasing, and when I came home, that helped me reenter and serve my family better. Sometimes it's just a bit of a paradigm shift for—maybe I don't like to exercise naturally, but there's a component of this that helps me serve and love.
Another example of that. We were talking about having children with disabilities. A couple of years ago, I was really getting to where I was throwing my back out on a regular basis. We have an almost seven-year-old now who still doesn't walk independently and is still needing diapering and being laid into bed and things like that. It just occurred to me—if I'm going to love him and care for him through his teenage years, through his adult years, I have to have core strength. This is something that is part of the motherhood journey that God has given me. That's something I think of. When I'm laying on my back doing those things—the v-sit things—
Laura: Example, please.
Emily: No, I'm not going to lay down and do that right here. Oh, man. I think about, "This isn't the way I want to be spending my time right now maybe, but this is important for the motherhood journey that God has me on. I need to have strength." Everybody's reasons are going to be different, but I think we have to start getting a little creative mentally sometimes, if we're not naturally drawn to working out. Think: "How would God use this in my life to serve and love others?"
Laura: I would not say I'm naturally drawn to it either. I love comfort as much as the next person, but I remember one of the reasons that I started. I started because I was going through burnout and really overwhelmed and really struggling. I had had my three children, we had moved to Iowa, and we were living temporarily with my parents. We were working on the Risen Motherhood book. I just felt totally overwhelmed. I'd go on these walks on these gravel roads, and it eventually turned into running.
What clicked for me was that I wanted my body to feel as in pain as my heart did. There was something that just felt so good about the physical exhaustion, and I was not running far or fast, but it was just something about like—I wanted to hurt the way that I felt my life did. That was a hard time in my life. The Lord was kind. I kept up a medium level of fitness, and it's changed now, but I still love a good, hard run whenever I'm stressed out. I think there's something too that—it’s good for us to feel uncomfortable.
Like with Paul—there are so many examples of fitness in the Bible, where he uses these as parallels to what our lives should look like spiritually. There's something about feeling uncomfortable in our American, air-conditioned life that I think is like, "I want to feel that uncomfortable with my sin. I want to feel that uncomfortable with the pain of the fall. I want to feel that uncomfortable with living in the already-but-not-yet." It doesn't have to be your motivation, but I'm tossing it out there.
Emily: I like the "one more rep"—it’s something I heard one time.
Laura: Tell me more.
Emily: It’d be like something you'd put on your gym wall: one more rep. It's been good because sometimes I think I know what that feels like—to do one more rep than I want to—and it helps me when I'm in a situation where I need to do more dishes, or I need to do more laundry, or I need to stop and care for that child and work through one more tantrum or one more argument. I know what that feels like—to push a little bit further than what I was comfortable with. I know that God's grace can meet me and sustain me through that.
I think that's part of growing our capacity in motherhood, just like we would grow our muscles and our physical fitness. You grow muscles by lifting heavier than you want to until the point of burnout. Don't carry that metaphor too far. But just thinking through that and motherhood—sometimes we have to get used to doing just a little bit more than what we're comfortable with, and God grows us in that.
Laura: I think even of my daughter who just started equine therapy. My daughter's five with disabilities, and she started equine therapy. There's three kids in the class and thirty-five adults out there helping. It's awesome. I know. One of the girls has a pretty significant disability. She's an adult, probably in her mid-20s, and there are four people. She wears a harness around to help her sit up. Her whole goal the entire ride—for about thirty minutes—is to hold her head up. I'm going to literally cry. That's her whole goal.
I just thought—every time she would lift her head and get the strength to do that, she would just smile with just such joy. I just thought, "Oh my goodness, that is fitness, and that is blessing me as a mother to be able to see." I knew how hard that was for her, but it was just this beautiful thing. I think we think of fitness too often as big, hard, four-mile runs, and it is that, but it's also just lifting of the head and smiling and blessing other people. Again, you have to hold all of these things together, I guess. I don't know.
Emily: I think one of the questions that we wanted to work through as well was just practically considering the amount of time that we spend on this. Motherhood is just a lot of figuring out how you're going to do more things than what you have time for.
Laura: I alluded to this a little bit earlier. I think there's an element with the fitness culture and exercise culture and just American culture—we spend a lot of time thinking about our bodies: how we look, how we feel. "If I eat this, this is how I feel. If I exercise that way, then I'll probably feel a little bit better this way." That's very, very constant. I think it takes up a lot of mind space for us.
I remember a time when I had hit that plateau I was telling you guys about with exercise, and I felt like, "Man, what am I going to do to look better or whatever?" That's probably the extent of my thoughts. I was like, "I'll count macros because that's the popular kind of thing to do." There's nothing wrong with counting macros, but what I realized was it was taking a significant amount of time for me to work out and then also count these macros. I didn't feel like for me it was necessarily the best way for me to spend my energy and my brainpower.
I kept thinking, "Man, what if I applied this to theology? What if I applied this to who I can bless today, who I could text with an encouragement? What if I applied this towards the things of God?" It's not to say that eating well isn't a thing of God, because it is, but I think we have to start asking ourselves, what is the ROI on the time that we are investing in health and fitness, and what's the kingdom of God getting out of it, and at what point does it like—'Hey, that's not really benefiting eternity'"?
Again, if you are a personal trainer or you're a fitness coach and you're exercising all day, and I can see there being great value and I can see even seasons of life where, "Hey, it's important for us to count macros, and it's important for us to really think about nutrition." But I think you have to just evaluate pretty consistently to say—if you're kind of on that other extreme—"What is the eternal value of how much time I'm giving this?"
Emily: Definitely a lot to think through. The main thing that Laura and I kept coming away with—and just as we've had discussions in our friendship over the last couple of years—is just going back to this idea as our bodies and our lives as a vessel for Christ in this life. That doesn't always mean that our bodies are going to be fully functioning. We have to receive what he gives. If we're in a season where our main physical ministry is holding an infant and praying over them, that's a good ministry to have.
If we're in another season of life where we have time for fitness and exercise and working out and we're—
Laura: Running a marathon.
Emily: —lifting things or we're able to do more, that's good too. The main thing is we're keeping that in mind. Physical fitness is of value, but godliness is of value in every way. And being willing to receive whatever ministry God has given us in that.
