Embodied Good News
Elianah is SBS’s newest staff member, having joined the team in late 2023 as our Program Coordinator.
Bodies. What a vulnerable topic to discuss. Our culture runs rampant with body-related shame, idolization, exploitation, and hierarchies. I think that it’s safe to say that all of us struggle with our relationship to our bodies in one sense or another. Many of our friends at SBS are undoubtedly also victims of the harmful ways we relate to bodies, even more than I can understand. Yet in the face of this, my friends at SBS have taught me so much about what it means to embrace my body as it was made to be.
One of the lies that many of us face, myself included, is that our bodies are supposed to do everything that others demand of them without showing any signs of stress. Work overtime without getting bags under your eyes. Have a baby without getting any bigger. Grow older without getting wrinkles (even laugh lines!). Get in a car accident but don’t inconvenience anyone with panic attacks the next time you have to drive down that same street. The list goes on and on.
But at SBS, we practice a different way of being in the world. We honor bodies as a glorious part of who we are, yet we are also aware that we are more than that. We confront the cultural body narratives just by way of how we are in community with one another. Thus, by being part of SBS, you are confronted with the wonderful reality of what it means to be human: to be finite, vulnerable, and mortal. No longer can 5-hour energy, anti-aging cream, or shapewear suppress the truth that our bodies are created for a greater purpose.
Our bodies are created to be diverse and a means of connection, strong and beautifully frail, breathing yet within limits. To have visible constraints is not an indication of something broken or sinful, but something sacred. It is something honest about yourself that naturally connects you to others.
This is one way that SBS has shared the Gospel with me - the Gospel that teaches that in Christ, God took on human form with all its frailty and beauty. My worth is determined by Who made me, rather than anything that I can produce, achieve, look like, or fit into. SBS reminds me that bodies of all shapes, sizes, and abilities have been called good since the very beginning.