On Sabbath we talk about old age, ours and our parents. We talk about theirs because they will always be 25 or 30 years older than us and as we age, they do too, as we falter, they do too, as we forget, they do too. We talk about ours because what does a person need as they grow old? Shelter. Food. Water. Love. “Will we have all that we need?” we’re asking one another because in the absence of children, will anyone care about us when we are 70 and 80 and the phone doesn’t ring and the flowers don’t come and to whom do we leave our meager earthly belongings?

I saw a mother my age complain about her stretch marks and how difficult it is to sleep. “Motherhood,” she waxes, “has changed me forever.” Another mother talks her “lost body,” and the one she doesn’t recognize anymore and tries on her pre-baby jeans every week hoping this will be the one they’ll squeeze over her widened hips and soft skin like they used to. Another one talks about her labor as if it is the hardest thing a woman can do, as if she is a superhero for having done it, but I know for a fact she has never watched yet another lost life swirl clockwise in its ceramic and watery grave and that takes a different kind of courage. That changes your body too.

2020 is the year I will turn forty and when I was twenty I read in Ecclesiastes about old age, “Remember your Creator while you are young, before the time comes when the sun and the moon and the stars become dark to you—before problems come again and again like one storm after another.” The wise man lists on the ways in which the body will fail as it ages: our hearing, our teeth, our sight, our courage, our sleep—all of it will fade. All of it, once sure and certain, will fail. It will fail fast or slow, but it is coming for us all eventually.

I do remember feeling invincible once, perhaps twice. As if my strong and sure body would never feel a creak and I would never feel weak. I also remember sleeping on a bathroom floor in Central America while my body slowly lost the 50 pounds I’d gained to protect myself when no one else would. “I need to get on that diet!” someone said when I came home, seeing only my size six body and not my gaunt and grey skin. I remember my pre-marriage body, naked and unashamed because who was looking anyway? I remember my pre-miscarriage body, my pre-ectopic pregnancy body, my pre-depression body, my pre-teen body, my pre-abuse body, my pre-college body, my pre-everything body. I remember this body today too, the one I have today.

What does it mean to bear on our bodies the marks of living in this world, to experience all that life and God will give and throw at us, and to not blame the sleeplessness or stretch marks on being a mother—or to find pride in them either because they birthed live children? To not blame the creaks and groans on laziness or lack or time. To not see ourselves as a victim of some perverse injustice, but to simply say to the body that holds us today and to the God who made it: “Thank you” and also “This hurts”?

A mother will never have a pre-pregnancy body again. It is gone. In its place, the child she grew and the womb she grew it in.

My friend with chronic illness will never have a body unscathed by its ravages. It is gone. In its place, a raw familiarity with every joint in her body.

My husband will never run a 4:11 mile again. That body is gone. In its place, a 42 year old body, still lithe and fast, but older, wiser, and kinder.

My mother walks with a limp, my father-in-law has a different kind of limp. Their youthful bodies are gone. In their place, the stories of lives well-lived and full.

I will never have the body I had at 14 or 21 or 30 or 35 again. It is gone. In its place, this body, the one that has never birthed live children, but bears three small scars of one taken from her. The body that weathers months of unshakeable sadness and months of joyful confidence. The body that struggles to sleep. The body that has grown and shrunk and grown and shrunk and grown and shrunk since the first diet she tried at 13. The body that bears on it the marks of living in a world not fully healed or whole yet.

Your body is not good as it is because of what you have done or left undone with it. Your body is good as it is because God called it good. Very good, actually. And it is still very good with its cavernous wrinkles and silver stretch marks. It is still very good with its creaking joints and the litany of scars that tell your story. It is still very good with the weight you can’t shed and the weight you can’t help but shed. It is still very good just as it is. But it is also growing old and that is very good too, but also very hard. And it is okay that it’s very hard.

You aren’t sleepless because you’re a mother, though you may be a mother. Your body hasn’t changed because you birthed children, though you may have birthed them. You aren’t broken because you are ill, though you may be ill. You aren’t slow because there is something very, very wrong, though maybe there is. Mostly you may just be growing older, slower, fatter, smaller, kinder, wiser, gentler, and more patient. This is the great exchange we make in life on this earth: we lose our bodies and find our souls, and as we find our souls we find our bodies again too.