The question for our local assembly recently was “Do we have examples of a gaze ‘given to me now’ as Carrón points out in the Beginning Day text?” and I really tried to take an honest look into what has been happening in a very particular way to me recently, and what I discovered was very surprising.

Over the last year I had fallen into a guilty pleasure of following fitness women on Instagram. I think it started out of a desire to be fit myself even though I’ve been pregnant for 15 out of the last 19 months, so mostly I was just kind of living vicariously through them. But very recently something has changed in my desire to follow these women as I started noticing an increase in posts about “self-love.” Let me quote a couple that had caught my attention recently.


“TIP OF THE DAY: When you look back on 2017, don’t think of it as a year of pain but a year of growth. You made it through each day. You should be proud of yourself. You are a better you. Take a deep breath and enter 2018 with hope.”

“When I loved myself enough, I began leaving whatever wasn’t healthy. This meant people, jobs, my own beliefs and habits – anything that kept me small. A part of me called it disloyal. Now I see it as self-loving.”


“Begin by being grateful for your body. Be obsessed with being kind, to others and TO YOURSELF. Become consumed in being consistent— small, simple daily efforts to think positively, eat well, and be active will add up to be everything. YOU ARE POWERFUL! You deserve to be healthy and happy!!! Maybe that will look like a physical “transformation”, maybe not. But I promise you that whether you want to change your body or not, whether you want to gain weight or lose weight or whatever, your physical goals will become secondary as you continue on your journey to live healthier and happier. My point — TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF.”

So I read these things, and I was actually really really inspired, and I found myself looking forward to reading these encouraging posts before I get out of bed to start my day. These are women about my age who seem to have found something that I not only lack in many ways, but I really want - A healthy relationship with myself, with those around me, with food etc, and they seem to have found a path to that – and they are telling me it starts with being kind to themselves - so then I found myself testing out their experience for myself.

It might seem a little silly, but I have seen this gaze that Carrón is talking about - a gaze given to me now, happening to me now, in some of the posts I read on Instagram. and if I’m totally honest in testifying (as Carrón says is important in the Beginning Day text) I have to say that these women and what they share about having mercy on themselves has been extremely helpful to me in the last few months – In the recent months of testing their experience and being more kind to myself I have started to take many things more seriously out of a desire to have something of what they have– some are small like planning a menu for the week to make grocery shopping and cooking meals easier and less stressful (and heathier!), Some are bigger like reading and preparing each week for School of Community or making an effort to listen more to my friends when they share rather than talking more, and then digesting their words and letting it change me and love them more. However, I think the biggest change was a commitment to seeing a counselor twice a month. This came solely as a desire to love myself more. All of these changes have had a huge effect on my day-to-day life, most especially in my relationship with my husband, and my children, but also with my siblings and my friends.

Now, I’m not saying “I’m happier because I read Instagram posts…” But I think that paying attention to how the posts moved me… not excluding it or keeping it as a guilty pleasure because it feels a little silly, but actually acknowledging it and testing it, has provided some very big and beautiful changes for me. And whenever I recognize changes in myself I have to say that it is Christ’s mysterious, present presence that is changing me. Christ was gazing at me, and gave me fitness Instagram accounts as a way to Him. And I’m really grateful.

Carrón says in the beginning day - “if we don’t live everything that is given to us as a cry that reminds us of the memory of Christ, nothing we do will be able to satisfy and give us the gladness we desire.” - and I found this to be true! Thank you.

Emily, USA