In Zadar, Croatia there is a thousand-year-old church that sits crumbling on the edge of the Adriatic Sea. Embedded in its foundation are countless broken artifacts, altars, and columns from the pagan temple that once stood in its place. It was only a few meters from this church where I swam in open water for the first time. There, the intersection of city and sea is mediated by an aging sea wall with stone steps that sink into the turquoise water of the Adriatic. As I descended these steps, I felt the rush and swell of open water and my own heart leaping into my throat as I slipped from the lowest step into the embrace of the sea.

Days later I returned home to Seattle, where brooding grey replaced brilliant blue and that church with its foundation of ruins receded to memory. And yet, in this season of #metoo, of marginalized voices breaking through, and of watching the Church teeter precariously between closing ranks and unfurling into the heavy work of lament, I think often of the church built on ruins and the sea that embraced me when I took a deep breath and chose to do the thing I feared: exist in my body.

For my body, descending the steps in my bathing suit on the seawall packed with rowdy young European tourists felt far riskier than swimming alone in open water: I am a fat woman. No stranger to catcalling鈥檚 weight-shaming counterpart: 鈥渇atcalling,鈥� existing in my body comes with a cost, and overt experiences of body shame remind me of what often remains unspoken. For my body, freedom costs. I spent three days in that city before deciding I was willing to pay the price.

I am grateful to be a part of a community that has challenged me to enter conversations around the areas where I am privileged. I am being trained to consider race, culture, sexual orientation, gender identity, and socioeconomic status in every professional conversation I engage. Growing competency to engage these issues with integrity is absolutely critical to dismantling individual and systemic oppression鈥攂ut my body asks: will we say we are done, there? Or will we enter the difficult work of examining our dis-ease about bodies in order to make space for diverse bodies, like mine? Will we stop and notice how thin-ideals are so internalized that privilege could permit many of us to live a lifetime without considering how they inform the ways we engage with persons who have bodies very different from our own?

For most of my life I believed the message coming at me from all directions that said that my body size was something with a moral value: bad. I believed, as stigma dictated, my body was evidence of a lack of willpower. I did not know that studies that look at the long-term effects of diets show that nearly all bodies return to their beginning weight or heavier after a diet, and that weight-cycling is shown to do more harm to bodies than living a healthy lifestyle at a higher weight. Some of the voices that have spoken harm over my body actually may have told themselves they were motivating me towards a 鈥渉ealthy change,鈥� but what experts now know is that experiences of stigma and body shame actually result in poorer mental health, increased binge eating, decreased use of healthcare services, and actually tend to increase weight gain over time. Unfortunately, weight-based stigma is embedded in our culture, fortified by a $66 billion diet industry, and is intensifying rapidly as this socially-acceptable form of discrimination has more than doubled in recent years. (Source citations available .)

鈥淔or most of my life I believed the message coming at me from all directions that said that my body size was something with a moral value: bad.鈥�

The problem with all of this for those of us who follow Christ, as theologian Marcia Mount Shoop reminds us in her book , is that we can鈥檛 thrive as a church body when any one person鈥檚 body is excluded or distanced:

鈥淲e may unconsciously reject those who are outside the range of our comfort zones even when we believe ourselves to be hospitable to difference. [鈥 When someone intersects us who embodies the jarring truth that there is contradiction, complexity, and ambiguity in human embodied existence, we fear the chaos they may bring with them. Fear wounds us as the body of Christ. It trivializes who we are and how the future becomes.鈥�

So how do we replace stigma with embrace in our homes, communities, and churches? Our task is first to enter the difficult work of holding our own dis-ease about bodies and the insecurities large bodies might provoke within us. This is complex work that is unique to each individual, but often stigma is a way that we set ourselves apart from that which we fear that we are or might become. In a culture where thin is ideal and obese is understood to indicate a weakness of will, what might we gain through socially-normalized marginalization of large bodies?

How would Christ engage in a world in which the line between the Samaritan and the Jew was thinly veiled, a line that people moved across often and unwillingly?

I believe Christ would affirm that all bodies are good bodies; I believe that Christ would remind me that, in the countercultural words a friend texted me as I sat in my hotel room quietly working up the courage to swim, my body deserved the richness of life as much as any other body.

There are structures in our cultural and faith heritage that are crumbling, and, like the church built on ruins, we are charged to use these ruins to create something new. We are invited, in this creating, to join with God through expanding our capacity to hold diverse voices and experiences. As for me, I鈥檓 experimenting with a new way of being an embodied person as I honor the rolls and contours I鈥檇 never have chosen for myself by giving this body, in all its largeness, permission to exist, to thrive, and to adventure to far-off places and defy watching eyes by stepping out into turquoise blue seas.

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The words 鈥渨restle with the text until it blesses you鈥� are carefully lettered in a corner of my notes from the first lecture of the Old Testament Genre course at 天美视频. Those words, spoken by the professor, , landed deep, despite my insistence that my goal in the class was just checking off a required course for my degree. I did not expect to learn in that course a new way to wrestle with text, a different way than my faith community and my undergraduate religion studies had prepared me: to be invited to not simply search the text for meaning, but to fight with my whole self鈥攁nd in that fighting, to find my blessing.

My final paper was on Tamar鈥檚 story in 2 Samuel 13. The story opens on Amnon, a son of King David, who is consumed with lust for his sister Tamar. With the help of a wicked friend, Amnon executes a plan to manipulate Tamar into his bedroom. Once there, despite Tamar鈥檚 wise and articulate appeals to his honor, pride, and reason, Amnon rapes her. Amnon鈥檚 lust immediately subsides and exposes his contempt, and in contempt Amnon abandons her outside his home. Both David and Tamar鈥檚 brother Absalom find out about this incestuous violence, but they neither care for nor redeem her, and instead urge her to silence as the narrative proceeds to outline how Absalom, through violence, ascends to power upon the stepping stone of his sister鈥檚 rape.

Tamar鈥檚 story is not a story we write devotionals about or discuss over coffee at bible studies. Hers is the story of a victim who is avenged but not redeemed, given refuge but not restored. A woman who, the text says, was left desolate. Her story is a story with themes many of us know well, we who have felt the powerlessness of victimhood, the hollow taste of revenge without redemption, or the soul-wasting weight of silence imposed on our most meaningful stories. In these shoes Tamar walked, and as I entered her story I longed to hear her voice鈥攎y ears open to what her story might speak into my story.

Hers is the story of a victim who is avenged but not redeemed, given refuge but not restored.

As I began to read through scholars鈥� interpretations and investigate key words, I found the first clue. As the passage closes, Tamar is said to be 鈥渄esolate.鈥� This word in Hebrew, , blends a meaning of destruction and brokenness with a secondary meaning of shocked or stunned. I stared at the screen that day, shocked as I discovered that ancient Hebrew appeared to have a word for the condition of the body and soul it took physicians till 1980 to name in English as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

In my research I met the words of scholar Alice Bellis, who writes in , 鈥淭amar is not an ancient anomaly. She is all around us. If awareness can lead to change, let us remember Tamar鈥檚 story and resolve that sexual abuse can and will stop.鈥� This response, written lifetimes after Tamar鈥檚 death, rang true but hollow to me. If the purpose of this story is awareness that leads to change, then Tamar鈥檚 abuse has continued indirectly via being set aside by our religious communities through generations of worshippers.

In our culture, a culture where awareness of the violence and oppression around us is guaranteed by a 24 hours news cycle, I believe that it is not, in fact, awareness of a need for change that we need to take away from this passage, but instead it is the voice of Tamar that we desperately need in order to be motivated toward change. Tamar is rare in biblical literature in that she is a victim given narrative space to speak in her own defense, in her own voice, and to express the anguish of her broken heart and violated body. Tamar鈥檚 gift to us is her voice. Because of her voice, her story, though horrific, remains not secret. Her anguish becomes a signpost that resonates with the reader who will listen and hear the voice of the oppressed. We as individuals and communities need to hear Tamar鈥檚 voice and allow it to break through the hardness of our hearts in order to open our ears to the survivors living in desolation in our own communities.

Tamar鈥檚 gift to us is her voice.

In the final hours before my study on Tamar was due, I struggled to finish鈥攎y heart laid open before me, broken for my sister鈥檚 desolation, for my desolation. And in that place I felt God鈥檚 invitation to reject desolation and consider an alternate narrative. What if, the Spirit prodded, the end of Tamar鈥檚 scene is not the end of her story? What if Tamar鈥檚 story is a fragment鈥攁 plot twist in a narrative that is about sons and kingship? The Bible parts from Tamar鈥檚 story as she retreats into a place of desolation, but she is wise and she is royal and I refuse to believe that that is where her narrative ended.

Commentators helped me locate hope in this story鈥攈ope for Tamar鈥檚 wisdom being a sustaining source that would provide for her in darkness, and hope that her gifts and birthright ushered her into a life as a kind and wise presence in the lives of the poor and oppressed in her community that her prior status had barred her from knowing. I discovered, as I wrestled, the depth of this story and the uniqueness of the opportunity to hear Tamar鈥檚 voice of wisdom and voice of mourning. Tamar invited me to mourn for and with her, and in the difficult work of mourning, she gave me the vision to see beyond the desolation left in the wake of trauma. I thought I would find redemption in Tamar鈥檚 story if I fought hard enough. Instead, I was broken by her story, and in that brokenness at the end of wrestling, I found my blessing.

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