Lessons I Learned from the School of Hard Knocks

When I was almost 5-years old, I was molested by a 12-year-old neighbor boy. I had never been a "skinny" child but shortly after that I began to gain weight. This is also when my father began making hurtful and critical comments about my size. Already so insecure and feeling so much shame about my body, his comments only drove me to seek more comfort in food. Food acted like a drug for me - it numbed any emotional pain or discomfort I felt and enhanced any happiness I had. I was an obese child who turned into an obese teenager. 

As a teenager when I would sit and eat at the table my father would sit and glare at me with a look of such disgust. At times I would glare back, but mostly I would try to ignore it until I broke down into tears. I learned to take my food down to my room. My portion sizes were off the charts, but you see, I was trying so desperately to fill the hole in my heart where the love and approval of my dad should have been. 

At 16-18 I probably weighed close to (if not more than) 400 lbs. Several times my dad would hold either my 2-year-old or 4-year-old sister in his lap and laughingly whisper something for them to say to me. Reluctantly they would turn to me and say, "Miranda, you're fat. You're ugly." If my dad caught my other siblings overeating he would say, "You better watch how you eat. Do you want to end up like Miranda?" You can imagine my devastation.

As I have slowly put less stock into the treatment of my dad, some of the weight has come off. But, at 25, I still weigh 300 lbs. It is only very recently (like within the last 3 days), thanks to my relationship with my Savior and inspiration from cjanekendrick and Janna Dean's blog posts that I have come to realize that my size really DOESN'T matter.

Christ has never loved me any less because I am fat. Being fat has never made me any less of a good, or kind person. In fact, my struggle with weight has probably made me even more compassionate than I would have been without it. I have come to realize that the body that I have thought about and treated with such contempt is one of the greatest gifts Heavenly Father has given me. I need to start taking care of it. Feeding it more nutritious food and exercising it regularly will be a part of that, but obsessing over a number on a scale will not.

These realizations have hit me with more of an impact than they ever have before. I know who I am and what I am worth and none of that can come even close to being expressed by such a trivial word as "fat". My father did the best he could for me with the limitations he was given by the generations before him. Because of that I have been given an extraordinary opportunity to learn and grow. Someday I will learn to forgive my dad. Maybe I will even have to thank him, because in the loss of my relationship with him I have gained an ever deepening relationship with Jesus Christ. And that is worth more than all the love my dad ever could have given me.