How to Overcome Body Shame with Ken and Tabatha

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What we've realized after 24 years of marriage , 22 years of ministry , 16 years of being pastors , is that we all need mentorship , we all need somebody to look up to and we also need people that we can learn from of what not to do so . we'd love to share our wins and also our losses .

In hopes that you can grow closer to God and the people that God has placed in your life , I pumped up about today's episode . We're gonna help you overcome somebody's shame . Sweetheart , what you got .

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It was like watching me or listening to myself many times and I learned so much new stuff . I'm currently unmarried , but the content in these videos I am sure will help to prepare me for a happy and successful marriage in the Lord . Thank you both for your willingness to share your life with us . I appreciate this channel .

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Guilt is feeling bad for something that you've done , and shame is feeling bad for who you are , and the thing about body shaming is that you feel bad because you think that this exterior part is who you are , so it speaks to your identity .

I feel like I'm less of a person because of my size , because of my skin color , because of my height , and that's why it's so important that we talk about it so good ?

We are fearfully and wonderfully made by God . We can do all things through Christ . We're beautiful creatures and it's important that we know that , because if you don't know who you are and you don't define yourself by what God says , you will be defined by someone . You will let other people define you .

Social media comparison , you compare yourself to other people . That will define you for the negative . Your family , where you come from , all of those things will speak to you and try to define who you are , but all of those things will lead you down the wrong path .

Speaking from my own background and from my history , is that I allowed the family that I was born into to surround me . So I was born and raised in the projects . I was teased when I was in school no-transcript People told me , because you know , I was an Oreo cookie , a half breed , a mutt . You know all of these things .

You're poor , you know you're never gonna be anything , you don't belong here and because of what I looked like , where I was from , I allowed those things to define me and I felt , less than for years of my life I didn't go certain places because I didn't feel like that place was for me , or I didn't do certain things because I felt I'm not good enough to

do those things . And so if we allow other things to define us , it's not gonna be good .

I don't just feel bad , but I want to empathize and put myself in somebody else's shoes and realize that People really have mind monsters that they're dealing with and when you said that , it reminded me of a time where I would go into a Restaurant and maybe be the only black person there and I felt like I didn't belong .

And I want to kind of Kind of stretch that out , saying that there's many people who they feel like that and you might be like , oh , why don't they just get over it ? Well , it's a mind monster .

Yeah and Satan has basically created an identity that's not really them , and so they feel too white , or they feel too black , or they feel too fat , or they feel too skinny , or they feel not smart enough , or they feel too poor or they feel like .

I don't understand this language and I think the beauty of the body of Christ is that we get to embrace all the different Differences , because we've all been made in the image and likeness of God . I guess I say all that to say all the isms is a sucker , like the racisms , the sexism and all that stuff . They just the sucker .

It's just like come on , grow up , really . You're completely ignorant and so .

But I think that some of us believe the lie because we have a Certain standard of beauty and our nation , whether it be a European Look , a certain nose , a certain lips , a certain size , a certain waist , and we've defined our beauty based upon Magazines and movies and so forth and so on , not to diminish those people's beauty , that what people call models , but

to say that that's not the only definition of beauty , and I think like we can really get into it and really hope people get free from body shame and so Would you say that this is ? It's a woman thing , or is this a man thing , woman thing ?

You know , you can almost see women almost feel like by the time they get a certain age and they have some wrinkles on their face , they really feel like their best is behind . And then men are celebrated as we get gray and black . I know he's , he's , he's debonair , he's suave .

You know it's almost a double standard , but just so everybody know , from my opinion I feel like this is a human being thing , I mean for men . There are some men who in high school they had a six pack and they were very cut and then years later they're not and they can feel Bad about that .

I think men deal with Certain body parts , maybe sexual body parts . Is it big enough ? Is it ? Is it small enough ? Is it this that enough ? You know , I think men can think about some men .

Some men lose their hair and then they feel like they're getting old , they feel like they're less than they feel like they're not attractive anymore because they have , and that's just a genetic thing , and so I think it's a little bit different for men and women .

I think that you might have a little bit different bend on what you consider a part of yourself that you don't like , but I think this is a humanity thing . Yeah , satan is basically trying to get us to dump on ourself , and at some point you got to stop it and say no , I'm fearfully and wonderfully made just like I am . Absolutely begin to love yourself .

So that's my perspective .

And so , as a believer In my adult years , I had to overcome those beliefs that I had , those beliefs that I wasn't pretty .

And so , yeah , just kind of take me down there , walk a little bit like your . Your weight Gain challenge , weight loss challenge how you've been ? Did you deal with any eating disorders ? I mean , give me the whole gambit .

Okay , and now in school the boys are pulling the bra straps and you're noticing , well , mine aren't as big as this one , or mine are too big , and there's just all of these Changes that start going on with us , and so we start seeing a different , we start seeing a difference , and then , you know you , we get older and we start comparing ourselves to the

magazine covers and the Supermodels , and you know whoever we see , you know on the big screen , and I don't even want to know what kids are dealing with in social media Nowadays you know they're dealing with people being mean and ignorant bullying , cyber bullying .

know . For me , I Grew up with I Don't know a lot of racism . When I grew back , I mean , this is the early 80s when I grew up , and so I lived in a town where I mean because a lot of people now they say really racism , like does that exist ?

It did exist then and I think it probably still exists now , maybe not to the extent , but back when I was growing up , I was the only black girl or person of color in my class and I would fight because of that . I mean , I fought at the bus stop just about every day , you know , I was getting to into a fight .

I didn't have friends on the playground , I played on the swings by myself . I was the last one picked in gym class , you know , because I was the girl that . I don't know if it was because I was the , the , the black girl or the girl that was , you know , of color , or because I was poor and from the projects , or a mix of both , but I had this .

So I developed this thing , you know , this thinking on the inside of me is that , you know , I was an outsider , I was a misfit . You know , I was the mutt , I was the one that didn't fit in and that spoke to who I was and that added , you know , as I grew up , I was sexually abused .

Growing up , that spoke to who I was I was dirty , I was unclean . That must have been something that I did for myself , you know to . I did something to deserve this and I was . I mean little things like being tall .

I was tall In growing up and so I was always like taller than the other girls and I was taller than some of the boys and that made me feel awkward . I didn't want to stand out .

I remember in high school , or you know , my first years of high school , kind of like bending my knees a little bit when I walked in the hallway because I didn't want to stand out . I just kind of wanted to blend in , disappear .

Nobody even know that I'm here , kind of thing , and but if I stood up straight , well then I was like , you know , I could see everybody and I stood out . So I had you just , you know issues , big time issues to overcome .

I mean , so you got those things happening , because to me , when I saw you and I saw you my freshman year of college and you're two years older to me and the first time I saw you , we're sitting at a West Virginia University football game and I'm sitting there and I don't even know who I'm with .

I might've been by myself , but this is like the first or second game of the year . I'm brand new on campus .

I know nobody and about five , six rows behind me , maybe the mayor of roarrrish or whatever the two and the midце of the step and the I the worker , became a part of the building and I'd been標 tengoing there to date on a full day a full day for막 gion with Gnatts back the whole family . From home .

So my sister left to a place where she continued to be a resident and she started바 actually the official first time we met but I didn't get a name , you didn't get a name .

You basically showed me a ring and then for the next year and a half I just kind of chilled out until you and him broke up and then I let some other time go and I played it real cool in the background

. But what I'm saying all that to say ? I always thought you the most beautiful person on our campus . You're the most beautiful woman that I've ever seen . To me , your smile , your eyes , your high cheekbones , your hair , everything about you is like super beautiful to me and I've always felt that from day one .

So to meet you and to know that you didn't feel that way about yourself , that's amazing . But it just shows you what we're talking about as a mind monster , absolutely Mind monster . It's something that it's a self perception that really we gotta get rid of .

I figured that out , but the identity was still on the inside of me . I still . If you peeled back everything , I would still be some girl . That wasn't enough , and that's what I had to deal with in my adult life .

I remember on our wedding day you didn't like the way that you look because of your weight , and so I've seen you kind of go up and down , up and down in your weight and so I kind of wanted you just to speak to that . Like so how have you journeyed through that and what has been your mindset to overcome it ? Just just talk to me more .

To me that was a big deal because I'm talking , you know . I was 20 pounds underweight Maybe when I met you .

But I've always been athletic and I love to run . I've been a runner my whole life . So for the most part I have been , you know , in shape . I consider myself a strong person . I like to .

You know , we go hiking , we go skiing , we go swimming , I love to be outdoors and doing that sort of thing and so , but , and I always thought that I would be the person who , when you get pregnant , you know you look all cute and everything .

And I was that person for like seven months , right , remember when I got pregnant with Hannah , I was cute , I was wearing my high heels , I was doing it looking really good . But then it , like month eight , something happened I blew up , my whole body blew up , ended up gaining 60 pounds , you know , in pregnancy .

And then I thought that I would be the woman that , after I had the baby , I would just lose it really quickly because you know that just looks so easy . I'll just exercise and I'm just going to nurse our breastfeed and they say the milk .

I mean , I had to fight for this weight to get off and I didn't even really lose a lot of weight , a Lot of that pregnancy , late wait until I stopped nursing , stopped breastfeeding , and then the weight began to come off . And I say that to say that you know , one person's body isn't another person's body .

We all don't have the same experiences , right , and what I've learned in that , throughout those processes , and I went on to have three more kids and now I got my weight under control , but then I learned that I had , like , this premenopause thing that started to happen to me and , like , maybe a couple of years ago I gained weight for no reason .

But it put me into full-blown menopause and my body like I eat well and I exercise well , but I still . I could lose 20 pounds .

Never thought that I would go through breast cancer , never thought that I would have a complete hysterectomy , never thought that I'd be sitting here 20 20 pounds overweight , but I feel really good about myself . Okay , like I , I'm not where I want to be , yeah , but I feel good about myself .

You know all throughout my life and this is there's some things that I had to deal with when I was fighting cancer that are really benefiting me right now , because I really had to put to death Body shame , yeah , when I was going through chemotherapy and I didn't have any hair or eyebrows and my fingernails were black my breast .

It was a brutal process to have a double mastectomy and then to do a Reconstruction . The reconstruction is what they ?

They remove all of your breast tissue but then they build back breast again artificial breast and it was ugly to say the the word that is appropriate is ugly going through that process and I remember looking in the mirror and being like this is , this is not where I wanted to be .

But to see you go through a thing where you lose all of your hair , all of your eyebrows , eyelashes , fingernails and all of your breast , that is a very Not just humbling , gruesome , hurtful season that could break a person . But I've seen you kind of come back stronger , like you said and you feel good about yourself .

There's an inner strength , and that's what . When you overcome body shame , it's almost like when you know who you are so much that greater is he that's in you than he that is in this world . Yeah , that you cannot be defined by other people's standards when God has defined you as an heir of God , in a joint heir with Christ Jesus .

There's something about your internal beauty that has Helped you last through the seasons where your external beauty might have been being challenged . Yeah , and that's my hope for listeners .

And that made me feel good , like it made me feel good . I'm like , yes , you know , this is great , I take care of myself .

But what I found is that if you , if you receive too much of that applause and you pay too much attention to that , it really sets you up for a time where , okay , you do gain the weight , you do hit menopause and now you can't lose the weight , you have a baby and now it's hard to .

It really sets you up in those times , because now you're not nobody's like oh , tabitha , you don't look like you're 47 . Nobody's like oh you look so good right now , Like nobody's telling me that and if I'm looking for someone to say that , my confidence is gonna be really low .

As long as I don't look like I'm 57 , I'm good . But it's okay for me to look 47 years old . It's okay for me to have a little bit of gray hair , a little bit of wisdom lines or wrinkles , like someone may say . But like all of that , it's okay . But we have to become okay with that and over the years I was able to become okay with that .

I think I really wanna share this point . Here's how I got from being this half-breed that you know wasn't good enough for anything to a woman of God who was enough because she has God living on the inside of her .

I had to renew my mind according to the word of God and so a long time ago , when I was depressed and doing all of this stuff , I found out what God says about me and I wrote down I am more than a conqueror . Through Christ Jesus , I can do all things . Through Christ , I'm fearfully and wonderfully made . God loves me , I love me .

I wrote these things down and I began to look myself in the mirror every single day , and in the beginning I cried every single day because it was just life-giving for me to look myself in the face and say , tabitha , I love you . Tabitha , you're gonna get this stuff together . Tabitha , god loves you .

And so I did that , and what I was doing was just negating all of those lies that had been told to me my whole life . And so , at that point now , I sowed the word of God into my identity , the word of God into who I was .

And so for the rest of my life now , when I was hit with cancer or when I , you know , got pregnant and couldn't lose weight , now , when I'm in menopause , I'm still going back to say , no , I'm a child of God no . I'm beautiful , fearfully and wonderfully made , so we can always go back to that anchor of like who we are in Christ .

And I do feel like we need to stop for a moment and just talk about how that affects the marriage , because I do believe that when a person is dealing with body shame , then they kind of begin to cover up and they don't wanna be intimate with the lights on , they don't want their husband or wife to see them a certain way , and it actually can have a real

negative effect on the marriage . What I like about you is that somehow you have this confidence to , even though you didn't have breast and was going through things . I know that there are some times that you're like , hey , I'm in the bathroom , but that's not like your common thing .

Your common thing is that you're kind of confident still , and I did wanna just stop right there and ask you how , because I'm actually amazed at it . Like you know me , I'm more of a private person and one of our kids is almost like if you see them naked , they're gonna like have a dog on heart attack . It's like just so much focus on their body .

You know , what I'm saying , and I know that there are other people out there that they just feel naked and ashamed . But somehow , even though you've had expanders in and now you have implants , that don't look the same as before and there's scars here and scars there .

You have weight that you've gained here and there , but still you've , and I gotta tell you it's sexy . Confidence is sexy .

Like , because I don't really know if you gained five pounds or 10 pounds , because I'm so close to you , and so if you gained 10 pounds and you walking around like , oh , I'm the worst thing ever , look at me , I'm so bad , I would not even know , because you're the only booty I'm looking at .

it . I'm telling you now I never have looked at you and like , oh , you're disgusting , or any negative thought .

Like , don't go to your husband and tell him how fat you are and look at this and love it . Don't show him . Don't do that , because now he's gonna look at you and see what you see . Like , don't do that . You present your best to him . I've been told that your butt is the only butt he can touch . Look at you , know all of that stuff .

It's the only one he gets to see . Let him see it . He doesn't care . All he knows is butt and breast . He's not looking at the size , he's not looking at all of these things that you're looking at . He just knows thighs . That's all he knows .

Let him be like that , let him enjoy it , and so I've just chosen to listen to wisdom and to just let you feast off of whatever you're , you know be whatever eye candy you need .

I thank God for the scars and to see how far he's brought us and I thank God for them . Fake nipples and tattoo nipples that's coming on the way as well . I'll take some of them , yeah .

It's going to be the best of it possibly can be . I can just feel good about myself as well . I think God wants us to feel good about ourselves .

Yeah , number three readjust your image of beauty . We've been told what beauty is and , truthfully , beauty is in the eye of the beholder , absolutely . What is beautiful to a man in America might not be beautiful to a man in Africa or a man in the Ukraine .

Or you felt like you wasn't beautiful , but you still said I'm beautiful by faith . So when you said you looked in the mirror and you spoke God's word over you , that what people need to know is that it does not mean that you believed it completely or that you felt it completely or that your emotions were in line .

You were actually using the authority of your words to put your emotions in check .

And so you gotta stop comparing yourself to yourself Like who were you last month , who were you trying to be on tomorrow ? I wanna do a podcast about aging , gracefully , because I think , some people . They turn 35 and it's like , oh my God , I'm 35 . And they turn 40 and it's like I'm about to have a midlife crisis . No , you made it this far .

I just think it's a perspective thing . Like I am now to the place at 45 where I'm like bring on 46 and 50 and 55 and 60 and 65 . And I'm gonna do it with a delight and with the joy of the Lord and with an appreciation for another year of life . I don't know , it's just something that's flipped in me .

And last but not least is number seven you gotta invest in you and treat yourself good , and this is what I'm really working with you on . I think you're doing better . Love yourself , surround yourself around people who love you , get away from people who tear you down .

You know and treat yourself good , like you'll treat everybody good , and I'm always on you that you gotta treat yourself good as well . You need personal days .

It's wonderful , but by the time I take care of everyone else , I'm exhausted , and taking care of myself is going to bed , and so therefore , I have to prioritize myself at certain times as well , and for me that means just putting it in the calendar . It's like okay , on this day I'm going to do this for me .

Yeah he made absolutely no mistakes when he gave you the skin that you're in your genetic code , the size that you are . We all can do the best that we possibly can do with stewarding our body . We're not suggesting you go out and just don't do nothing and just eat whatever you wanna eat .

But , dog on it , be okay with who you are and understand there's greater , greater as he that lives in you than he that's in this world . Thank you , guys , so much for tuning in to another episode of Doing Life with Ken and Tabitha . If you enjoy this content and you wanna be a part of our community , you wanna do life with us .

One way you can do that is by subscribing , hitting the download button , so you can be the first to get the content . We release new content every Thursday at 3 pm Eastern Standard Time here in America . We love to hear from you . We love to see your reviews and your comments and your likes . Those things really encourage us .

Okay , hey , we love you guys so very much . Just know that you're not alone . We are standing with you and standing for you , and until next Thursday we'll see you then . God bless you Peace .