I did something in the midst of this crazy week that I've only done once before, when I was 22. For those of you keeping score, yes that was two long decades ago.

I joined a gym.

More accurately I joined "Hookey-Dookey Big Shot Fitness Center Near (that smaller of)the Lakes" It is state-of-the-art. I, sadly, am not. But the technology that allows a reasonable sum of cash to be transferred each month from my bank account to Hookey-Dookey is, so I signed on the dotted line. And my children...pardon me, one child and one adult still living at home...are sufficiently grown now in a way that allows me to leave the house occasionally for things other than work and gocery shopping, so the time was ripe.

The last time I joined a gym I was pregnant before the 2- year commitment was up. No danger of that happening this time.

The women's dressing room at Hookey-Dookey (HD) has over 200 lockers in the section that I use. But it has only 2 curtained-off little changing booths. Do the math. That means most of us getting ready for a class aren't going to get to change in private. I mentioned in an earlier post that I have been going to the water aerobics class that is also attended by several women with more life experience than me.

Who do you suppose are the women queing up for the little booths? It ain't the older women! I have observed (more like noticed out of the corner of my eye, you understand) that the older women will get as naked as the day they were born in front of one another. These are not nubile young hardbodies. These are bodies that have worked hard, borne children, known love and I'm guessing in many cases known loss. The skin is stretched, the bellies are often ample, the breasts are not where God first put them. The legs bear varicose veins and stretch marks, and just about every one of them has the little extra mudflaps under the arms. But there is a confident matter-of-factness about them. They are real and unabashedly natural. They are gorgeous.

My reasons for joining HD are not purely vanity, although I admit to not feeling gorgeous myself lately. But I have been concerned about my own health and fitness and how my not putting my physical body in a priority near the top of the list has started to impact the ways I am able to serve (or not) my family and my congregation. And I have noticed my own need to relieve stresses that come with the kind of emotionally adn spiritually demanding work I do every day.

Plus, wouldn't it be nice to be able to fit more comfortably in the seat when I fly back to Semi-Famous in October?

I long for the body confidence of those older women. I see in many of them my future. I want to be able to get up each day, do the things that are asked of me, and then at the end of the day look myself in the mirror and be grateful for what God has given me.

I think a water class starts in an hour...I'm out of here...