Letter from Amanda Martinez Beck

Dear sisters,

I was in second grade when I wrote down my first story. I remember it well, the feeling of the plush green carpet beneath my feet as I made my way into my father’s wood-paneled study. His massive leather-topped desk held my wide-ruled notebook paper and sharpened #2 pencil. I scooted the desk chair up as far as my eight-year-old legs could manage and I began my work. Thirty minutes later, it was done: a sketch and accompanying short story titled “The Adventures of Hamburgerman.” The illustration was reminiscent of the McDonaldland mainstay Mayor McCheese, and the narrative told of a heroic half-man, half-hamburger who rescued humans from an untimely demise.

Two decades later, I came across this short manuscript among a stack of childhood papers and I was both impressed with my younger self and embarrassed. My handwriting, my creativity—these were to be lauded and held dear. I should have been so proud, but instead I felt ashamed, as I heard a small voice in the back of my mind accuse me with familiar words… “Oh, Amanda…always thinking about food.”

That’s not why I wrote my first story, but shame about my body kept me from seeing the truth.

I felt a similar shame when I thought of the story of my decision as a three-year-old to follow Jesus. My family and I attended a Bible church where communion was distributed weekly, in the form of grape juice and crackers. I was adamant on being admitted to the ranks of church juice-and-cracker snackers, and that led to my “accepting Jesus into my heart.”

“Oh, Amanda...always thinking about food.”

It took me a long time to realize that the voice inside my head speaking those accusing words—that voice wasn’t telling me the truth. There was a deeper story I needed to listen for.

I listened deeper, like I used to listen to my father’s heartbeat as he held me. And what I heard when I listened was a deeper story, one rooted in my hunger for true food and true drink.

The Holy Spirit showed me that this longing had been evident my whole life. God used my natural desire for juice and crackers to draw me into relationship with him, so that he could feed me with his body and blood, soul and divinity, one day.

Years of longing for communion with our Lord in the Eucharist led me to the door of the Catholic Church, and I was received into full communion in 2015. Seen this way, the story about my original conversion turned from one that brought me shame to one that elicited deep joy for me. But I needed to hear a deeper, truer story than the ones that the voices around me demanded I hear—that I was too big, always hungry, too much.

As a Christian in a larger-than-average body, I long held that my body was in need of the harsh criticism it received, both from the culture at large and my own inner voice. But the Catechism of the Catholic Church showed me that I was listening to the wrong story about my body.

Indeed, I am “obliged to regard [my] body as good” (CCC 364) because I possess the dignity bestowed by bearing God’s image in my body and soul. St. Lawrence taught me to relearn what my body’s weakness is saying—it does not say I am a failure but a treasure of the Church. St. Thomas Aquinas led me to consider the goodness of a body from the view of its purpose—relationship—rather than an arbitrary physical standard like thinness.

I’ve heard so many stories since then, of my own making and of others’ experiences. I have learned that we must ask questions of the stories we tell ourselves—“What is truth? Where is the beauty? How does this press me toward the good?”

I ask these questions as I ask God for wisdom, guidance, and tenderness of heart so that I may resonate and reverberate with the story-song that God is singing by his Spirit through his Church. I see the need for deeper stories to be told in the Church, and I want to help and I’m willing to lead a battalion of the storytelling faithful against the evil one. As St. John says in Revelation, we overcome him by the Lamb’s blood and our stories!

But practice—it takes practice. And courage, too, to be still and invite others to do the same. And in the stillness, we can quietly ask the questions, challenge the stories, listen even deeper, the stories we write on the page and with our lives echo the deeper truth. The deeper truths, the deeper stories help us win the war.

Sincerely,

Amanda

About the Writer: Amanda Martinez Beck

Amanda Martinez Beck is a storyteller and fat activist on a mission to help people embrace the goodness of their bodies. She is the co-founder of the Ruah Storytellers Podcast, which exists to amplify the voices of Catholic women through audio storytelling. In addition to co-hosting the Fat & Faithful Podcast, she is the author of Lovely: How I Learned to Embrace the Body God Gave Me. Follow her on Instagram (@your_body_is_good) and visit her website to learn more about the Good Body Initiative.