Warning: This episode touches on themes of body image, disordered eating, and suicidal ideation.
I had elective plastic surgery. Emphasis on elective.
By my six-week post-op checkup, I was nearly fifteen pounds heavier than I was when I went in. I was swollen, puffy, my clothes didn’t fit, and my confidence was in the toilet. I was riddled with regret about the whole thing.
Nobody mentions any of that at the consultation appointment.
During those first few months post-op, I became someone I didn’t recognize. Depressed. Crying spells. Disordered eating. Suicidal ideation. Pouring wine like it was a ministry. Some days were darker than I’d seen in a very long time. My therapist met that woman. My spouse met that woman. And she wasn’t pretty.
The obvious question here is, was it worth it?…
Would you judge me if I said it was?
It’s okay, I would have judged myself for that too before I’d lived it. One of life’s greatest gifts is living long enough to change your mind.
This experience taught me something I thought I already knew. It taught me that the actual issue is rarely what you think the issue is. Whatever you think it is, is just easier to fix - and often easier to see - than what’s really broken.
And, let’s be honest, it must be pretty fucking broken if a five-figure bill couldn’t fix it.
There’s a woman in John 4 who walks to a well for water at noon when the sun was at its highest and hottest. She’s timed her errand that way to avoid the stares and whispers of judgement that comes when you got five divorces and a live-in boyfriend under your belt (no pun intended).
She arrives carrying a jar and, for a moment, it becomes the whole reason Jesus is even talking to her. He has no bucket, so He needs what she’s holding. Before long, the jar becomes a prop, a backdrop, while Jesus goes straight for her thirst. Straight for her wounded places. By the end, she is so moved, she leaves the jar sitting in the dirt.
The object her entire errand was built around sat abandoned, because Jesus addressed the thing she’d really come carrying: her wounds. He surfaced and satisfied a thirst that had lived in her far longer than the afternoon they met.
That’s the part nobody tells you about the fix, any fix. The new body. The new business. The new city. The new man. You can absolutely get the thing. The thing is gettable. Surgeons are skilled. The results, honestly? Worth it.
But the container she brought to the well was never going to be enough to hold what she really needed. In fact, there wasn’t a physical container large enough nor a substance powerful enough to do the work Jesus did for her that day.
Like the woman at the well, I was focused on the fix I could see. What I couldn’t see followed me home from the operating room, sat on my chest for half a year and introduced itself to everyone I love - plus the people I pay to help me learn to love myself.
I’ll cut to the chase: it was worth it and it wasn’t enough. You can love the result and be terrified by what it revealed. It’s okay to say, “I did the thing, and I’d do it again, and, also the thing didn’t touch the real issue.”
There’s no lie or contradiction. That’s life being life. That’s my human experience unfolding as two truths at once.
I’m not fixed. This isn’t a 20-minute sitcom arc and everything isn’t all well in the end. This is something I still carry. Something that made me think twice about sharing it here; but that instinct to pull back and share less is almost always guidance that it’s exactly what we need to hear.
God could not care less about your lipo, your nose job, your fat transfer, or your filler. All that stuff is neutral. And so is the money you pay for them with - all neutral and inconsequential for Him. What your heavenly Father truly grieves is that the one-of-a-fucking-kind apple of His eye can’t seem to see herself as He does - perfect.
I wonder…
- What have you paid good money for, hoping it would quiet a voice that had nothing to do with money at all?
- What did you tell yourself it would give you once it was fixed?
- If the surgeon can’t touch it and the invoice can’t buy it, what is “it,” really? Say or write the actual word.
- If God already sees you as complete, what feeling or whose validation are you still thirsting for?
If this topic reflects what you’re experiencing, please know you don’t have to carry it alone. The 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline (call or text 988) is available 24/7, and the National Alliance for Eating Disorders helpline (1-866-662-1235) offers support specific to disordered eating.
Affirmation
Confidence is not a reward I unlock after enough changes. It is a decision available to me right now, in this exact body, with zero changes required.
I love you.
Coi Marie
If this landed for you, pass it on. First time reading? Catch up at afteramen.org.
