Made to Carry Things

Here is a question that I have watched land in people, and I want you to actually sit with it rather than read past it.

Has anything you have ever wanted for your body been about it doing something?

Take your time. Go back as far as you like. And what most people find, when they are honest, is that every single ambition they have ever had for their own body has been subtractive. Less of it. Smaller. Reduced. Taking up not as much room.

Not one of them was about what it might be for.

That is a strange thing to notice about yourself, and it is not a moral failing. It is what happens when the only conversation anybody ever has with you about your body is a conversation about its size.

And before anything else, the plain thing that usually goes unsaid. You have not been idle about this. You have wanted something for this body for as long as you can remember and you have gone after it in more ways than anybody watching would guess, and you have gotten back up every time. What has been missing was never the effort.

The praise is about capacity

There is a description of a woman in Proverbs that everybody has heard weaponized, and I want to take one line out of it, because the line is about something completely different from what the chapter gets used for.

She girdeth her loins with strength, and strengtheneth her arms. (Proverbs 31:17, King James Version)

Read what is actually being admired.

Strength. Arms that can do things. The picture is of somebody gathering up their clothing so they can move properly, which is what girding is, and then getting on with a great deal of physical work.

There is not one word anywhere in that chapter about her size. Not one. Proverbs 31 is a long and detailed portrait of a woman being praised in public, and the Holy Spirit never once mentions how much of her there is, which given how that chapter is normally used at women is worth sitting with for a moment.

What is praised is what she can do.

You were made for capacity rather than for reduction, and the Scripture has never once praised anybody for being smaller. Proverbs 31:17 admires arms that can work and says nothing at all about size, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets a person notice an absence like that in a chapter they thought they knew.

You have a body that was built for going somewhere, and it has never once been an object to be reduced. Proverbs 31:17 says she girdeth her loins with strength and strengtheneth her arms, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes a verse about capacity land on somebody who has only ever been offered less.

What a body is actually for

So let me put the different question properly.

A body is for going places, carrying things, holding people, doing work, making things, and being present in a room where somebody needs you. That is the actual job description, and Proverbs 31:17 is one of many places where the Holy Spirit describes a body entirely in terms of what it accomplishes.

And here is what I notice about people who have spent decades in the subtractive conversation: they very often stop doing things. Not because they cannot. Because doing things in front of people means being seen, and being seen has been the whole problem, so the world quietly shrinks.

The tragedy of that is not the shrinking of a body. It is the shrinking of a life around a body, which is a much bigger loss and nobody talks about it.

You are for something, and the world has never once needed to get smaller around you. The written word says she strengtheneth her arms, which is a description of somebody expanding into what they can do, and the Spirit of God is the one who gives a person back a life rather than a shape.

You were made for carrying and for going, and no ambition of smallness has ever once come from God. The written word praises a woman for what her arms can do rather than for what they look like, and the Spirit of God is the one who changes what a person is allowed to want.

This is not exercise

I want to be extremely clear, because this is the row on this site that could most easily turn into a plan, and it never will.

There is no routine here. No duration, no repetition, no frequency, no target, no tracking, and nothing you are supposed to build up to. If you were waiting for the paragraph where I tell you to start with a walk and increase it, there is no such paragraph and there will not be one on this site, because the Holy Spirit did not put one in Proverbs 31 either.

The physical action today has enjoyment in it and permission to stop written into it, on purpose, because the second a duration gets attached to something it turns into a schedule, and a schedule is a thing to fail at, and Proverbs 31:17 does not include one.

Do one ordinary physical thing you would actually like doing. And stop when you want to.

You are allowed to enjoy it and stop, and there has never once been a minimum attached. Proverbs 31:17 shows a woman working without a single number in sight, and the Holy Spirit is the one who can hand a person something without turning it into an obligation by Thursday.

You are not being enrolled in anything today, and there has never once been a schedule hidden in this page. Proverbs 31 is the written word where strength is described and never handed out as an assignment, and the Holy Spirit is the one who can hand somebody a good thing with no duration attached.