This is the first week I am participating in the Wellness Wednesday link-up over at Scoops of Joy, and one of the prompts this week is “Why I love my body.” I immediately knew that this was the prompt I wanted to write about…not because I have some smokin’ hot, perfect body, but because I really have come to love my body how it is.

I didn’t always “love my body.” Growing up, my body was always way taller than anyone else’s. I hated it! I was always trying to make myself smaller, by hunching over, or bending one knee and kind of leaning to the other side. I’m sure I probably looked ridiculous. Plus I have been struggling with bad posture and the resulting back pain all my life because of those bad habits I adopted as a pre-teen. I can remember whenever a loving relative would comment on how tall I was getting, I would have to hold back tears. Why did they always have to point it out? Like everyone couldn’t tell I was a giant freakshow!

If I only had known then what I know now. Tall is beautiful! Even more beautiful is confidence, something I surely wasn’t exuding in my hunchback of Notre Dame stance.

Fast forward to me now-30 years old and 5 babies later. I finally come to embrace my height, and something else comes along I surely don’t want to embrace. FAT. I miss the days when my tall, lanky body could eat pizza and cheeseburger and junk food all day, every day, and not gain an ounce. But add age and back to back pregnancies into the mix, and it seems like if I even look at food I gain weight. At least with my height it seems to proportion pretty well. Thank you tall gene! I’m sorry I was so cruel to you before.

But you know what? I do love my body. Extra baby weight and all. Of course I am going to try to lose it, and one of my goals is to lose 30 pounds this year, but right now I’m not stressing over it. You know why?

Because my body has packed on the extra pounds to carry a healthy baby to term.

My body is carrying a little extra weight to make milk so my baby can gain weight and be healthy.

I even love the stretch marks I’ve accumulated over the past 5 pregnancies. Because they remind me of how miraculous it is that my body can stretch that much to hold a life inside it. (Even though ever since I’ve been rubbing Young Living Frankincense oil and coconut oil on my tummy, they have faded so much you can’t even see most of them anymore. My mom was amazed when I showed her!)

No, my body isn’t perfect. But it’s mine. It’s the body God gave me and that my babies helped redesign. I’m happy with it. And that is why I love my body!

You might find me linked up to one of these awesome blogs.