i wanna be a butterfly.

Last year, Richard and I spent Easter weekend relaxing and enjoying time with my mom and dad. I was tired, very tired. But I work hard, stay up late, struggle with anemia. There have been times in my life when i mistook unconsciousness for exhaustion. A few yawns here and there as we antiqued--well, i just didn't think it was a big deal.

I wore a yellow dress to church and in Ruth-girl fashion, I really thought I looked good. I had lost a few pounds (and was valiantly trying to lose a few more). I felt stylish and svelt-ish. Until...

Until a woman in the congregation came up to greet me after church and asked me outright if I was pregnant. No, I said, confused. She pointed at my mid-section and said, "Oh I was just sure that was a baby bump. Are you positive?" I absolutely was. The answer was no. Even after she asked me two more times and I could feel the tears welling up. I could hardly speak by the end of the encounter, so embarrassed was I that I had ever thought I looked good.

Four days later, I found out I was pregnant and had been for *several* weeks.

I've struggled all my life with my own self-image, with an inability to be satisfied with the person that I am when it comes to the way that I look. So many times, I have thought "someday, when I am down to my ideal, i'll have a new lease on life." But for the months that followed last Easter, I found that I had to take "dying to self" to a whole new level. First I was nauseated, then I was starving. First, I slept all the time, then I couldn't sleep at all. I was sore and swollen.

By December, I tried NOT to look when the nurse measured my weight. I felt heavy with the burden, not only of a full term baby, but with the sense that I was ever further from that new life, that ideal me.

Then Jack was born and every day he is cheekier and funnier and more chunkalicious. Jack loves me just the way I am. He beckons me to forgive these wide hips because the balance him perfectly. He shows me how to forgive this stomach because it was his home for nine months. He teaches me how to forgive this whole soft body because for now, it is his favorite place to sleep, his source of nourishment and comfort, his place of peace. That's a lot for any body to take on.

It would be a lie to say that I'm not working on my weight, that I don't sometimes look in the mirror and think "slug." Sure, I still live in fear of the stranger (or friend) who asks about my baby bump because yes, I still have one. But I also have this new life.

It isn't the transformation that I was longing for last year, but it is just the change I needed.