B Positive
I sat in a chair to the left of the airport departure door as the man behind the desk picked up the microphone and reminded us again, “This airplane has thirty-seven rows and one-hundred-eighty seats.”
A few minutes later he said, “Five minutes to boarding.”
One minute later, “Four minutes to boarding.” And again, “This airplane thirty rows and…”
This guy was sure chipper at a quarter to six in the morning while I could hardly keep my eyes open and the tea in the travel cup I held was still too hot to drink. My husband and I waited until it was our turn to board before heading to the podium with our tickets.
As the man cleared us to board the plane I said, “You must be a morning person.”
He smiled and said, “No, it’s my blood type.”
I paused on my way through the door. “What?”
“My bloodtype,” he repeated. “B positive.”
I didn’t get it at first and turned away but then looked back and laughed as it sunk in; Be Positive.
The man’s enthusiastic attitude made me smile on an otherwise hard day. I needed his B Positive attitude because my husband and I were turning home after burying our grandmother the day before.
God used the difficult time of welcoming Grandma into heaven to show me something about my struggles with body image. For you to fully understand the depth of what I want to share I have to first tell you more about Mason’s grandma who became my grandma almost eight years ago the first day I met her.
Superwoman
Grandma’s parents came to the United States after fleeing the Armenian genocide. Most people are aware of the Holocaust of WWII, but not many know that there was a genocide in the country of Armenia (near Turkey) thirty years prior. My husband might not be here today if not for his ancestors seeking refuge outside the country during a time when over a million people were murdered.
Grandma was born in the United States and lived in central Michigan. From a young age she worked the family concessions business in. She traveled the state in a wagon and sold goodies at fairs and big events. I remember the first time I went to visit her at the wagon at a county fair. There were pink and blue bags of cotton candy hanging inside the wagon with caramel apples displayed in the window along with popcorn, caramel corn, and soda. Mason and I have a thing for popcorn so we gobbled some of that up pronto.
Almost two years ago she came with the family to visit Mason and I in sunny Florida and I grew very close with her. She always wore wedged shoes that didn’t do much for her very short frame and dressed like the paparazzi might be hiding in the bushes ready to snap a photo of her. We walked a museum filled with Renaissance art and outdoor city squares. I brought her to church with me where she hugged most she came in contact with. She took good care of herself and we all said things like, “I hope I’m like grandma someday.”
A few months after her trip to visit Mason and I she was diagnosed with two cancerous brain tumors. Although she was 88 years old she wanted to do everything she could to get well and get back behind the window of a popcorn wagon.
She loved people and some of the relationships she made by simply selling concessions spanned decades and she didn’t want to lose that connection she had with the people she loved and the new people she could come to love.
But the cancer treatments didn’t get her healthy enough to work again. They prolonged her life but didn’t eradicate the cancer. When I went back to Michigan to visit her at her house (because she refused help and lived on her own for much of her treatment) she looked drastically different. Gone was the woman who could work and love on people all day. The treatments took much of her hair and caused her to sleep a lot, but her personality was still bubbly and welcoming.
When I came home in 2018 she had reluctantly moved into my in-law’s house and was bedridden. My mother in law was her full-time caregiver along with the help of hospice nurses and aids who stopped in on a daily basis. My mother-in-law took care of her every need. Her personality was still there although she continued to decline and sleep more.
A few months later we got the call that she wouldn’t be with us much longer so Mason and I made our way home to visit with her one last time. My heart broke because her body was with us, but she struggled to communicate, only opening her eyes brief minutes and not really seeing. She stopped eating and could hardly drink. We sat by her bedside and read her the Bible.
The last sentence I heard her say was, “I’m thankful for you.” She parroted the words back to my mother in law on Thanksgiving day. Two days later she passed.
I’m not telling you this to bore you or garner sympathy but to expound on a deep truth God implanted in my heart during the week of her funeral. In her last days—or months—she did not leave her bed. Her body could no longer support her caring for herself, but she was still in there. Her love even in the last sentence I heard her say was abundant.
Seeing grandma suffer and pass made me wonder why we do this. Why do we focus so much on our bodies?
When I learned that grandma died I thought as all Christians do, that her soul was no longer in her body and she was in heaven, which was true. But God took my wondering a step further as I thought about her soul no longer being in her body. God showed me that grandma’s body was a house for her soul. Our bodies are the instruments that we have been given to use to do the work God has placed in our souls.
This is when I realized that placing so much energy on the appearance of our bodies is silly. Our bodies are homes for our souls. The thing we should be concerned about regarding our bodies is their health, not their appearance.
Popular culture uses the word “health” to encourage weight loss and while sometimes weight loss can be a part of health it’s a very small part. Health is the way we treat, think about, and use our bodies. Grandma took good care of her body, but she also took good care of her soul. She loved God deeply. We are made up of bodies, minds, and souls. God used grandma to show me that our bodies are the clothes our soul wears.
Our health should be broken into three different tiers. Physical health, mental health, and spiritual health.
Physical Health
Physical health encompasses how we treat our physical bodies. This can include things like eating well, exercising, resting, and being attentive to its needs.
Taking care of our physical bodies can be as simple as putting on a coat before going out into the cold or as complex as eating foods that have nutritional benefits. We can take the time to learn more about how our bodies work by talking to doctors and health care professionals. We should take care of our physical bodies, the clothes for our soul to the best of our ability.
But we MUST remember that our physical bodies are not the only part of us that requires nurturing. We can not expect to be healthy just because we are eating clean or exercising regularly.
Mental Health
Mental health is the relationship we have with ourselves. What we think, believe, fear, hope, and know.
Mental health has been a big aspect of my life since I’ve been in eating disorder recovery. Eating disorders are mental illnesses which are another way of saying you are not mentally healthy. Through the years I’ve picked up what some doctors call “tools” to help keep oneself mentally healthy. These tools can look different for everyone but some of the things I do to stay mentally healthy are. . .
- Read a book
- Go for a run
- Take a nap
- Write
- Create crafts or jewelry
- Watch a show or movie
- Talk with a therapist or close friend
- Talke to God
These are all things I do when I feel emotionally strained or exhausted. A good example of this would be the week I traveled home for Grandma’s funeral. Before Mason and I went to sleep the night before the funeral I pulled out my book and said, “I need to read a few pages for the sake of normalcy.” I knew I needed the peace of reading my book before bed which is one of my routines. I only read four or six pages but it was enough to keep me grounded.
Another example is how I react when I start to have unhealthy thoughts regarding food or my body. Instead of dwelling on them and acting on those unhealthy behaviors like restricting or binging, I try to take my mind off of it by going for a run or doing one of the other things listed above.
Philippians 4 tells us the things we should settle our minds on in. The Message translation says it this way in verse 8,
“…I’d say you’ll do best by filling your minds and meditating on things true, noble, reputable, authentic, compelling, gracious—the best, not the worst; the beautiful, not he ugly; things to praise, not things to curse.”
Philippians 4:8 MSG
The things we believe and think about are the things that shape us. We need to be aware that what goes on in our mind are part of our overall health. Writing this is like telling myself to get it together because I do not dwell on only the things in Philippians 4:8. This is something I need to work on too.
Spiritual Health
God created us to be in a relationship with him. We are the only species on the planet with souls and he wants us to choose him. Our spiritual health is connected to our relationship with God.
2 Corinthians 10:3-5 says,
For though we live in the world, we do not wage ware as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.
NIV Translation
We are more than bodies. We are souls. We don’t communicate or fight against only the physical and mental world. We live within a spiritual world.
To maintain FULL body health we must cultivate health in our spiritual life. This can look different for different people but I’ll list a few here. . .
- Listen to worship music
- Meditate on God
- Read a book on a spiritual topic you are interested in
- Go to church
- Pray
- Spend time with a friend who shares the same faith as you
- Talk to a spiritual mentor
- Read the Bible
The 3 Pillars
If we want to be truly healthy we musts strengthen and nourish the 3 pillars of health.
Physical
Mental
Spiritual
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Thanks for reading! What are some of the things you do physically, mentally, or spiritually to stay healthy?