Heavenly Bodies

Offering Our Pear Shapes and Fuzzy Brows in Worship

“I hardly ever do things like this,” my friend Becky told me on the phone yesterday, “But my daughter needed makeup for a play she’s in, so I took us down to the makeup counter at kind of a nice makeup shop on Main, and I asked them to help us figure out Her Colors.”

I could tell “Her Colors” was capitalized, like a headline in Composure (“Fastest growing women’s magazine in the country,” name that movie!)

I like that this mama used a fun, physical experience to connect emotionally with her almost-teenage girl, and to say something new about female appearance.

At the height of Christian purity culture, some of us were raised to see makeup as seductive, because it drew unnecessary attention to our beauty when we should be modest (though my own mom, and Becky’s, wore makeup and never taught us it was anything scandalous.) Becky doesn’t want her little girl to look prematurely sexualized. But she also wants her to know that beauty doesn’t have to mean seduction – that it can be a lovely thing to play around with style and hue and glamor, and to do it companionably with other women.

Becky loves her daughter. She loves art and beauty and parenting. She’s always trying to figure out how to offer it all up to God. I’d go so far as to say she made that makeup counter an altar of worship.

Me, I don’t know what the magazine headlines for my body are.

I have no idea, for example, what my eyebrow shape is supposed to be, although I just learned about the Natural Fuzzy Brow and I think it’s real cute. I have never identified my shape as PEAR or APPLE, and I don’t know if my face is round or rectangular although I do know it is not heart shaped. I tried taking a an online quiz to tell me what Kibbe Body Type I am but it fizzled out because I am unclear if my legs are Elongated and Broad – compared to what?

(Please do not DM to tell me.)

I do think about my body. I’m a big fan. I think it is a good, solid body, and it brings me a lot of joy.

I like that I can smell coffee, after a brush with Covid took away my sense of smell for a while and everything tasted like carboard and there was no point to even eating. I like that I can taste pear crisp or pepper arugula.

I like how my body works. I am constantly impressed that I gestated and bore two babies, how crazy is that?!

In some seasons I am as sedentary as the most alarmist health article you can find – “Studies Show Americans Exercise Less Frequently Than Hibernating Hedgehogs!!”

But in this particular season I’ve been jogging kinda regularly (largely thanks to a standing running date with a girlfriend, it’s called Joy-Pairing, look it up.) Right now I can run 4 miles or so and only take a few breaks for walking. I love how my lungs expand as I trot through the woods.

Most of the time, I think I’m beautiful. Not like, as a model would be, but in a way particular to me. My hair is usually gorgeously wavy and curly, with glints of gold and undercurrents of red and when it is at its biggest, I feel like a lioness. My blue eyes are biggish, if not Zoeey Deschenal massive, and they can hold a gaze with total focus. My freckles are wonderful, even if I got skin cancer last summer and now I’m a little bit scared they’re a liability. But mostly I love them.

I don’t love everything. I didn’t love the skin cancer. My arms, belly, and legs are maybe like, 2 clicks too big for my personal preference? Because I was a tiny little lady til puberty, and in my head I’m still supposed to be fairy-sized? And I would shorten my nose if I could. But I don’t mind my body’s foibles that much.

I love my body like I love my husband: with a fluctuating ratio of passion to absentmindness, annoyed with the flaws, delighted by the quirks, and wholly committed til death do us part.

I don’t know My Colors. But I know other things.

I know when I’m craving sugar, I’m really craving reassurance, quick energy, or novelty for a bored mind. I know when my right hip flexor pings, I better stop before it stops me; limitations grant us humility and patience. I know how much more accessible is the righteousness of Christ unto me if I get myself to bed before 10.

And I do not know, but believe, that death won’t really part my body and me, not for long. We’ll be rejoined in an instant, in the twinkling of an eye, launched into eternity together with no sense of ever having been dead. I’m going to spend the rest of my never-ending days in some version of this blessed, actual body.

In the life to come Becky’s trip to the makeup counter with her daughter will matter. My runs with my friend will matter. Being together as bodies matters.

I think the coffee and the crisp, the babies and the skin cancer, will all reverberate out in some strange lovely harmony, like church bells ringing out across a land once ravaged by war and now healed.

Jesus busted out of his tomb in a body that was glorified and still scarred; I believe I will live in a glorified, but definitely still physical, version of this body-mind-spirit I am now.

Pearl, Lapiz Lazuli, and Gold will be My Colors.