BIG
a reflection on out-growing the spirituality you inherited
Last night, in the hazy-orange sunlight of the Scottish summer evening, my four-year-old jumped up from the dinner table. She peeled up her stained Bluey t-shirt to reveal her stomach.
“Look at how BIG I am!”
Her smile glowed beneath her home-cut fringe, as I watched her stomach expand with eager breath. The word “big” launched at me like shrapnel. I smiled, masking a flinch.
“You are the biggest little girl in the world!” I cheered. She looked at me, expectantly. I lifted my own top at the dinner table to reveal a scarred and stretched pouch.
“That is a big tummy.” Her eyes widened as she danced over to trace the stretchmarks with delicate fingers.
“I know!” I proclaimed, my mind racing in a vicious cycle of guilt and shame. Because the truth is—I have spent my whole life avoiding the word “big.”
As a little girl, I was well acquainted with the adverb “too.”
“Too loud.”
“Too emotional.”
“Too dramatic.”
“Too much.”
“Too big.”
But what felt the most confusing is that “too” means nothing in isolation. There always has to be a referent behind a “too” statement.
“Too loud” for whom?
“Too dramatic” for where?
“Too big” for what?
Since those questions were always left unanswered, I was left to fill them in.
One time, I went to a dinner with some friends, and the hosts had this blind and deaf dog named Gizmo. The dog’s inability to see or hear forced him to navigate the small living space by walking two feet, bumping into something, turning around, and then repeating the process.
In navigating these questions, I felt like Gizmo. I would progress in the relationship, bump into the “too” boundary, adjust, and recalibrate.
I learned, through painstaking trial and error, that little girls aren’t supposed to grow up.
They’re supposed to grow small.
As I grew, I was supposed to grow thinner— in my body, my voice, my emotions, my spirituality.
I was an oak tree pruned into a bonsai.
And all of this pruning was dictated by a God who was supposed to be Big.
When I was little, I learned a song about God.
God is bigger than the bogey man.
He’s bigger than Godzilla and the monsters on TV.
God is bigger than the bogey man,
And He’s looking out for you and me.
There’s just something about theology as taught by singing vegetables that really makes it stick. But if God was bigger than the bogey man, was he bigger than me?
Because the thing that scared me the most was not the bogey man or Godzilla—it was bigness itself.
I was 18 when I realized that bulimia wouldn’t be my preferred variety of eating disorder.
I didn’t have the stomach for it.
I envied my friends with anorexic tendencies. How come they get the kind of eating disorder that makes them SMALLER? God was surely bigger than them.
And when I went to church, my space in the world got even more cramped.
“A woman’s place is in the…”
Pew (next to her husband)—
Nursery (on every fourth Sunday of the month)—
Kitchen (before and after the potluck)—
Choir (soprano, preferred)—
And never, ever behind the pulpit.
Come to think of it, the woman’s big tits and big hormones and big hair might get in the way of Big God! And then who would be able to see God’s holy, divine, and most importantly— big— Dick?
I look back on the deconstruction of my faith, and I picture an old Southern chapel with green couch cushions. And I see myself pressed up against every wall. Like Alice after sampling the cake in Wonderland, I grew and grew and grew until the little chapel could no longer contain me. I stuck my arm up against a stained-glass window. My head bumped against the baptistry. I could feel a jab in my ribs from the bare wooden cross.
Until finally, I was too big for the space I was given.
So, slowly, I had to tear it down— pew by pew and brick by brick— until I could see the sky. And I could look up through the ancient oak tree, pull up my shirt, expand my gut, and say—
“LOOK HOW BIG I AM!”
And God, with Her own scars and stretch marks, could look down and smile at me with pride.
“You are the biggest little girl in the world.”