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More than Half Enough

More than Half Enough

Last updated on: July 27, 2015 at 3:01 pm by Erin Wathen

More than Half Enough 2015-07-27T15:01:59-07:00 Erin Wathen

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Guest post, by Rev. Ryan Motter

“Well, look at you. You’re half the man you used to be.”

It was in the line after worship, standing at the back door as we shook hands and exchanged pleasantries. The other congregation members were offering gentle reminders: “Don’t forget the Youth meeting on Wednesday,” “Please remember that I’m having that procedure tomorrow morning,” “I’ll be out of town for the next three weeks. Pray for me.”

From these folks, she comes up and places her hands on my shoulder, as if we are old friends who hadn’t seen one another in a long, long time. It is likely that she means well, but her words are a knee to the gut.

She knows nothing about my life-long struggle with weight. I keep stories of this part of my life out of sermons. When I was little, I was bullied for my weight. I remember when, while waiting for my little league baseball game to start, the father of one of my teammates sat behind me on the bleachers, spit sunflower seed shells into my hair, and muttered under his breath, “You’re so worthless.”

In my first year at college, I gained a freshman thirty. It was a hard transition from sheltered suburban boy to independent college “man.” I realized that, whenever I wanted, I could go to the small Pizza Hut that filled the Student Union with its seductive smell and I could eat a personal pan pizza and a whole order of breadsticks…by myself… for lunch…every day…of the first semester.

In Divinity School, I added a seminary twenty. While serving a congregation part-time and keeping fifteen hours of coursework a semester, my main social outings were around oversized restaurant dinner portions, fast food runs during studying benders or ice cream rewards after deadlines. There was no time for the state-of-the-art fitness center, especially not as I pursued my call to “healthy and effective” congregational ministry.

When I graduated high school, I weighed 260; by the time I left seminary, I was 310. I imagine the panicked voice of the treasurer at the first congregation I served saying, “That’s almost a 20% increase in five years! Inflation is going to kill you!”

At the point where she caught me in that line, I was finally down to my high school weight. I was in my second year of working out regularly on elliptical machines and was celebrating that I had completed a Couch-to-5K program AND my first ever half-marathon. I joined Weight Watchers and eventually moved to counting calories, and I hesitantly turned down hundreds of second helpings. I ceremonially relieved the old “fat clothes” of their hangers, stuffed them in large yellow trash bags, and took them with joy to a thrift store where, when I dropped them off, I said to the young men helping me unload the car, “Good riddance!”

A friend took me shopping for new clothes and suddenly there was joy in that act. I could try on anything and it fit. It all fit, for the first time in ten years. She introduced me to Spanx for Men, which are marketed to make you feel like Superman. The first time I squeezed into them, they swaddled my new body. They swaddled me like a baby. My life was brand new.

The Clergy Health Initiative at Duke, studying a group of United Methodist Clergy in North Carolina, reports that pastors “have a particularly high rate of obesity- 41% compared to just 29% of North Carolinians, even when demographic adjustments are made.” I’d like to believe that’s just North Carolina, but Missouri ranks as the state with the 10th highest obesity rate and North Carolina is 29th. I’d also like to believe that its just United Methodists, but most United Methodists only take communion once a quarter while we Disciples of Christ take Communion every Sunday. We’ve got to have it that much worse, right?

If it is true that obesity affects 41% of clergy, then nearly every other pastor you meet struggles with their own weight. If their struggle is like mine, they also wrestle with self-esteem, confidence, and insecurity. They likely have stories of bullying and fat shaming in their back pocket, tucked away and hard to let go. They may also have the excuses of overbearing pastoral expectations that they believe, for right or for wrong, have kept them from personal health.

These stories serve one main function: they ground us as pastoral counselors, spiritual companions and “wounded healers.” This hardly makes pastors who struggle with weight half of anything. Any clergyperson who claims their story does so to make of their self a complete whole, one who is living in fulfillment of his or her God-given identity. These pastors know the road to health is not easy, and they also know it is never walked alone.

The language of fat shaming that focuses on over-indulgence and over-consumption misses the broader struggle: the battle to know how much “enough” is in our lives. That battle is far different than eating too much or eating that which isn’t good for us. The true battle is about knowing who we are as incarnate beings, with bodies that are often less and/or more than we want for them. Finding “enough” is complicated: how much presence, how much work, how much personal time, and how much self is already rather hard to know without it being cluttered with “how much do I need to fit the perception of what is a good body?”

God takes all of our bodies, loves them, and works redemption of them. In grateful response, we find just a few words that have to do for us: “I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.” We offer up those words and we bare them to God’s people in the midst of places where anyone can walk through the line and stick their fingers into the wounds in our own sides.

These offerings don’t make you half the one God created you to be. Instead, they make you all. They make you whole. They make you enough.

Ryan Motter has served for the last five years as one of the pastors of First Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in Smithville, Missouri. He shares his life with his wife, Suzanne, and their dog, Jeff Louise. Ryan and Suz are eagerly awaiting their first child, a daughter, this November. You can read Ryan’s blog at ryankmotter.wordpress.com.

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