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Spring 2008
Roots and Branches
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For the Welfare of Your Soul from Fall 2006
“But . . . but . . . I . . . want to show you something,” Katie says quietly. I have embarrassed her. She shows me a miniature Book of Mormon. Perfect for an eight-year-old to love. I finger the pages and listen to her tell me how her inactive grandmother found it when they were starting to paint. Katie asked if she could have it, and her grandmother obliged. The first person she wanted to tell about her new book was me, and I had yelled at her before she could show me.
Read For the Welfare of Your Soul
Courtney Kendrick
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I must die thin. That’s how the poem by Candace Melville starts in our most recent issue.
And really. Could it be true? If not a hair on my head will be lost, must I be prepared for being resurrected with my big thighs perfectly in tact?
I was at the funeral of my dear, dear, neighbor Saturday. She was 88. She was beautiful; her body worn out by decades of gracious love and sacrifice for her family. My children loved her deeply. Her’s was a wellspring of love borne through the candy dish on her counter that hundreds of neighbor children frequented. I will miss her greatly.
My daughter asks me this as we’re leaving.
“When she’s resurrected, will she still be old? I mean, I know she’ll have a perfect body and all, but will it be an old body? Or will she be, like, 10 again?”
Hmmmm. Good question. Now I don’t expect that anyone will have the answer to that, but the idea of coming back to this earth in a perfectly functioning and well tuned 97 year old body isn’t exactly candy for my brain.
I think I’d like to be 22. That was a good year.
How ’bout you?
Good one, Justine!
My understanding is that we’ll be resurrected in our “prime.” I’ll have to dig up the quote.
I had always understood it as “our prime” as well. I’ve wondered if that means I should run a marathon sometime, and make that be my “prime”, just so I can live with a runner’s body for eternity.
I’ll be 32. Always have been, always will be.
Twenty-two, just after my mission, during which I walked ten miles or so a day and was in fabulous shape. Pre-nursing, pre-baby. That is the body I want.
Or, if I ever get back in shape, maybe I’d want that one instead, that reflected my service to my kids. Bearing their scars, you know.
Do we get to pick?
Although, I have to add. 22 for the body, but as old as possible for the brain…
I would like to mix and match, please?
I want the stomach, derrière, skin, and veins I had at 23, mixed with my milk-filled breasts and my new, more womanly hips custom made by my children.
I truly hope that at that point I just won’t even care. I want to be beyond it by then. Really.
That said, I highly recommend the chapter on thighs in Anne Lamott’s Traveling Mercies.
i just hope– whatever my prime is– that i’m happy with it.
because that would be my definition of hell: eternity to count calories and be dissatisfied. ugh.
Dalene, I think I actually hope I keep caring, only because I love my body (well, most parts of it, anyway) and am hoping to continue loving it. One measure of the difference between us and Satan is our body. We’re all moving forward with the hope that we can be reunited with our bodies. I want to care about what becomes of this vessel I dwell in, largely because I know I’m getting it back at some point.
And, let’s discuss. Are we all going to get cleavage in the hereafter?
If it’s when I’ve been most amazed and thankful at my body, then I’d be pregnant, but I don’t think that would be it. If there’s an instant where I am totally comfortable and happy and healthy in my body, I choose that!
As it will all be to our perfect satisfaction, I can’t wait to see just what my ‘prime’ will have been.
Kind of like a mystery door prize - for everyone!
I think it is interesting that Christ retains the scars on his hands, feet, wrists, and side. Perhaps we will choose to retain our scars to remember what we did in our earthly life.
I have stretch marks but they clearly remind me of what I gave to bear my children.
I read an essay by some lady with last name of Santiage in an old issue of the Women’s conference talks. She talks about how mothers often despair of the bodies that we have after giving birth and nursing. And we think a young woman in her 20’s is so perfect. But yet, what do they know in all their perfection of tight tummies, perky breasts and slim thighs.
And, is without blemish, perfection?
I want to have my 26-year-old body, as far as weight and health go, but I’d like the greater contentedness and peace I continue to learn.
And cleavage has more to do with positioning and bra-style than actual size, sistah.
28!!!! Please!!!!
I want the body of the girl who was the body double for Britney Spears latest picture.
You know, I used to have just killer legs because I walked everywhere when I was young. Nice ankles, all that. Then I had surgery, big surgery, to have my tubes untied, and was down for a couple of months. Then I got pregnant, threatened to miscarry, and had to stay down. Miscarried, got pregnant again, had to stay down.
When Sarah, who I finally had, was about a year old, I took her to Mommy and Me swim class and got this good look of myself and about died. I had cellulite. I stood there, amongst uncaring strangers, also in swimsuits and yelled, “what happened to my legs?”
I got over it, I guess.
Yeah, I want to look great, but it would be even better to feel great, as well.
On dying thin…
My mother-in-law died before I met my husband, but we have lots of photos of her. She was not quite 5 feet tall, and always a little round–not fat, just plump.
Toward the end of her life, when my husband was a little boy, she gets skinny in the photos. You might think she looked “good,” except she’s so different from the whole rest of her life, and you know she died not long after.
I wonder if I’ll meet her someday, both plump and prime, and also indescribably beautiful.
I heard an Education Week speaker last week say that we’ll be 33, because Jesus picked that as his prime age for resurrection! I’m not sure about that, since I’ll bee 33 next month and was definitely happier a decade ago with my pre-4 kids shape…
Perhaps I need to clarify. I do appreciate having a body and I care what happens to it. I just don’t equate that with being concerned about having the perfect body (according to the telestial world’s standards) throughout the eternities. That’s all I’m saying.
That said, I still recommend the chapter on thighs in the Anne Lamott book.
And that, anon, is why I avoid Education Week.
Dear Justine, Can I donate some of my cleavage? It’s yours!
In pictures God is always portrayed as about 50. Wonder why He chose that age.
Kyle, as far as I know those pictures aren’t self-portraits. *grin*
What? You mean that’s not how God really looks? *stunned*