Captain Reverend Mother

The lifeguard threw me into water before I could think to be afraid, and I have been swimming with and against the current ever since. My mother’s insistence that I swam to “keep my figure” felt like code for something I could not then name. The pool became my first relationship with intentional movement, with the radical idea that our bodies need tending rather than neglect. Even then, my body seemed to know what it needed, even when my mind had not caught up.

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Weight training started at fourteen, probably explaining why I developed such an intimate relationship with controlled suffering at a young age. College brought the freshman fifteen, along with a boyfriend with strong opinions about my expanding waistline and Frances from the soccer team with her perfect legs.

I started bodybuilding during those college years, training with the football team. After losing weight through some ridiculous diet to support my roommates and waiting for his approval during a Panama City trip, he instead pontificated about European borders and World War II. That moment planted a few more seeds of self-scorn in soil of which I was unaware.

The shame grew uglier. Bulimia felt almost reasonable when I worked at Copeland’s and found myself addicted to their biscuits. My body was purging more than food. It was ridding itself of Frances’ superior gams and every impossible standard they represented. The disorder was mercifully short-lived, resolving when I left my junior year to study abroad. The boyfriend and I broke up around the same time. He eventually went on to marry Frances, which seemed fitting.

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Graduate school ended with a rare lymphatic cancer diagnosis that rearranged everything. The lymphatic system’s job is to clear out the garbage in our bodies, and mine developed cancer that appeared on my cheek—garbage everyone could see that I literally had to face. Instead of going into the Navy, my body became a science experiment. Beth Israel’s world-famous pathologist dropped everything when I had an appointment and brought scores of medical students to observe my case. When he walked into my room, I would sing, “Every Time You Go Away,” emphasizing the line about taking a little piece of me with him. That man had no sense of humor about my musical commentary.

I was given a ten percent survival rate. My body, being the overachieving miracle it is, accepted the challenge. Two years into recovery, I pondered my master’s thesis about providing spiritual responses to cancer patients, and I realized I should have written about the spiritual implications of winning the lottery, given that I was living my thesis.

After that detour, I headed to Hawaii for residency in 1999-2000, where I continued physical training with renewed gratitude. Running, surfing, and swimming daily sculpted me into peak condition. I was pretty smokin’ at the turn of the millennium, so much so that Baywatch invited me to sit in the background as an extra. My body was a canvas worth displaying, strong enough to be objectified, powerful enough to remain undiminished by the gaze. Inhabiting flesh that refuses to apologize for taking up space felt quietly revolutionary.

In early 2001, I restarted the process to follow my call to become a Navy Chaplain. After all, this was God’s design, not mine. The Navy required a medical waiver for cancer history. During the medical examination, I stripped down to nothing while the doctor was supposed to examine my body. Instead, he seemed to be checking me out more than conducting a medical assessment, then cleared his throat in that way men do when they get caught ogling and bumbled out something about my excellent condition to save face. The approval meant acceptance into naval service, and I recognized God’s hand in the whole process.

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In 1996, my oncologist said it was unlikely I would have children, though my body knew otherwise. I always assumed I would start a family at thirty-eight, my mother’s age when I was born. Ten years of reproductive technology later, I had my second child at nearly forty-eight. Once again, my body scoffed at medical probabilities. Birthing children resulted in pelvic floor reconstruction, another adventure my body navigated with characteristic stubbornness. Now I can bounce alongside my boys at trampoline parks without the sort of unfortunate occurrence that makes motherhood occasionally undignified.

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By fifty-five, bodybuilding called with final urgency. “It’s now or never,” my inner soundtrack sang. Putting my body on display after everything it had endured, after the beautiful havoc of childbirth had reshaped its landscape into something entirely new yet somehow more magnificent? Audacious!

November 2023 brought my first and only competition. I won my category, which sounds impressive until you learn I was the only person in my classification. The crushing disappointment came when the officials did not bother to evaluate me at all. There I was, having worked my butt off, literally, for a year, standing there in what amounted to dental floss and sequins, for what? In the end, it was for the sheer satisfaction of staying upright in five-inch heels.

Shortly after, my six-pack mysteriously became a seven-pack. That extra bump was a hernia, my body’s declaration that enough was enough. Perhaps my body was tired of carrying the weight of proving itself worthy to boyfriends who preferred other women’s legs, to doctors, to the military, to judges who would not judge. Surgery followed in March 2025, ending a bodybuilding career that had been four decades in the wanting, two years in the having, and less than 60 seconds in the spotlight.

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My body has been a most reliable ally, refusing to listen to doctors who declared it doomed, convincing the military to embrace a survivor, enduring a decade of reproductive technology to create life when conception seemed impossible, defying the odds of bearing children after thirty-eight, which becomes even more remarkable at forty-eight, and competing on stage at fifty-five because why the heck not. When everyone else doubted, my body held its own truth and lived accordingly.

Every body has a story written in scars and stretch marks, each mark a testament to survival and triumph. Our bodies are autobiographies composed of muscle and bone, chapters written in flesh that tell the stories of choices made, challenges faced, and victories claimed. They deserve the same reverence we would offer the most sacred text we have ever read.

Just keep swimming…

Thrown in before I could be afraid…and still swimming.