Holding On To Letting Go

I haven’t been walking much in the last two weeks. I have been doing a workout over my lunch hours (benefit of remote working) using a YouTube channel called “Walking With Rick” which reminds me of a Richard Simmons “Sweatin’ to the Oldies” series or a “Jazzercise” aerobic workout. It is 30 minutes, gets my heart rate up, and moves my body a lot and that is all I need. I did step on the scale after our Thanksgiving feast and the following feasts from leftovers to see if I had gained any weight. I haven’t and I was very happy with that. I remained steady and will really push to lose a good amount between now and Christmas. I just wish it were a tad warmer outside and that Daylight Savings Time would go away for good. I would walk after work if it wasn’t dark! 

Anyone who knows me well knows I really watch very little TV. In the evening, I will sit in my recliner which is in front of the TV and read or study while Wade watches various things . . . normally sports. We do enjoy a few shows together and one of the new shows we have been watching had a scene this week where a divorcing husband and wife were fighting over possession of an old Ford Mustang convertible. The wife was granted ownership by the courts. She didn’t really want it but wasn’t about to give it to her husband. The husband loved the car and really wanted it. He said something about her not wanting it because she liked it . . . she only wanted it because she didn’t want him to have it. And, with that, my ears perked up with a new topic!

There is a strange little truth buried in that story. One I wish I hadn’t related to so well. It is the idea that sometimes we cling to things we don’t even like anymore. Not because they bring us joy. Not because they serve us in any way. Not even because they are comfortable. But because the thought of letting them go feels a tad like losing something to someone else. Now, I am not talking about keepsakes or relationships or that sweater from 20 years ago that we swear we will fit into again someday. I mean much deeper things. The emotional things. Things we grip with white knuckle tightness even as they cut into us. For me, I am realizing one of those things was my weight. And let me be clear . . . I didn’t want it. Not one ounce more than the world wanted me to have it. But I held on to it anyway, in this twisted, unspoken way, because letting it go felt like giving someone else the satisfaction of seeing me smaller, seeing me change, seeing me succeed . . . and maybe even seeing me more happy. It is a ridiculous thing to say out loud. I know this. But sometimes ridiculous things have a strange way of being true. 

Somewhere along the way after the sideways glances in restaurants, after the airplane passengers efforts to avoid eye contact with the big girl, after the chairs with arms too narrow to contain me comfortably, and the comments that were meant to be helpful but actually sliced like little irritating, burning papercuts, I started to believe something dangerous. That the weight was mine to carry because I allowed it to happen in the first place and that if I let that go it would somehow mean that the current version of Lacy was not as valuable as the sought-after thinner and more healthful version of Lacy would be. In my mind, someone other than ME was going to win if this happened.

But win what, exactly? The right to see me differently? The right to judge me differently? The right to suddenly approve of me when they hadn’t before? It makes no sense and yet, at the time, it made all the sense in the world. There is a certain kind of stubbornness that grows in people who have been hurt repeatedly and I have found it especially evident in big girls. This thought that I will keep THIS . . . this weight, this body, this choice . . . because no one gets to take anything else from me. And I realized 7 years ago when I first started to lose weight and get healthy that carrying that weight . . . physically, emotionally, and spiritually . . . wasn’t protecting me from anything or anyone. It was protecting people from having to deal with me feeling worthy, confident, or visible. Holding on to the weight is not an act of self-preservation. It is an act of self-punishment. And I didn’t even know I was doing it. Not in the way you’d think anyway.

The truth is, when you’ve been made to feel “less than” long enough, you start living a life that matches that. You stop advocating for yourself. You stop dreaming. You stop asking for better. And sometimes, without even knowing it, you hold onto the very things that are hurtful simply because you don’t feel like you deserve anything more gentle or better.

Losing weight like I did before didn’t just reveal my cheekbones, jawlines, and wider smile. It revealed this odd little corner of my heart where I had tucked away years of minimizing myself . . . not the experiences . . . but me, the person who lived them. As the pounds came off, it felt like I was slowly loosening this stubborn emotional fist I’d been clenching for decades. I wasn’t giving anything to anyone else. I wasn’t “losing” anything. I was finally setting something down that was never mine to carry in the first place and gaining bits and pieces of who I know Lacy to be. Pieces that were long forgotten. I was learning to set it down not out of spite and not out of fear, but out of worth. To be fully who God intends me to be I need to set aside anything that I shouldn’t be holding on to in the first place. In the past few years as weight returned to my body I have forgotten these truths. 

The heavy things we hold . . . old habits, old hurts, old versions of ourselves . . . are burdens. They aren’t trophies. They aren’t shields. They aren’t proof that we can endure. The proof that we can endure comes from the simple fact that we are still here, alive and even thriving after surviving. We don’t have to carry it just to remember what it was like to walk through it in the first place. Burdens don’t become blessings just because we have held them for a long time. Letting go of mine has felt a little like opening a window in a house that has been shut up for years. The light came in slowly at first, in little patches, illuminating things I had forgotten about myself.

I am capable.
I am worthy.
I am allowed to change.
I am allowed to be better. 
And I am allowed to take up space. I am allowed to take space and shrink at the same time if shrinking is what healing looks like.

I am not losing weight so anyone else would see me differently. I am losing weight because I need to see myself differently. Because I finally realized I was holding on to something that belonged to a version of me I had outgrown. And just like that, I am letting go. Not because someone else wanted me to. But because for the first time in a long while I wanted better for myself than I had ever wanted to prove something to anyone else.

And I think that’s what healing is. It is believing, softly and bravely, that you deserve to put down what’s hurting you and holding you back. Letting go. That is what I am holding on to.