My Body is a Temple: A Decrepit, Crumbling Ruin

My body is a temple? More Like a Crumbling Ruin

Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own;  you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies.  (1 Corinthians 6:19-20, NIV.) The Bible tells me my body is a temple. I’m not quite sure how to take that. I think, in my case, my temple is more of a crumbling ruin.

I Honor God With My Body By Getting Out of Bed

I try to honor God with my body (as if He would want it), but every morning I awake to snap, crackle, and pop. No, I’m not talking about my breakfast cereal. I’m talking about my body when it tries to get out of bed. At first, it was just a little creak every once in a while. Now my body plays the whole percussion section of the orchestra all by itself. It’s amazing I’m so creaky, yet like the little Energizer Bunny, I keep going. Well, perhaps the Energizer Bunny is not the best example. In my case, it’s more like the decrepit tortoise who keeps plodding along in the middle of the road before someone runs him over, rendering him street pizza. I just haven’t been run over yet, although sometimes when I wake up, my body feels so worn out I wonder if I’ve died and nobody bothered to tell me. So I faithfully check the obituaries every morning to see if I’m in there. If not, I go about my day.

What Happened to My Temple?

But seriously, how did my body manage to get so old? On the inside is a thirty-year-old screaming, “What the heck happened?” I used to have excellent vision. Now I need my glasses to read the headlines in the newspaper. To add insult to injury, I need my glasses to find my glasses. Blast it, I know it’s a conspiracy because they are never where I left them. I’ve become my mother! I remember rolling my eyes when she was forever hunting for her glasses. I suppose that’s karma coming back to bite me. But I refuse to wear my glasses around my neck on one of those old people chains. I still have some pride.

And where did all those wrinkles come from? All of a sudden I look like a blasted Shar-pei dog! No amount of Oil of Olay is going to fix that, no matter what they advertise on TV using twenty-two-year-old models. Plus the sagging skin. Even though I’m thin, I still have wobbling triceps on the back of my upper arms. My son was kind enough to point them out to me the other day as he jiggled my flabby flesh. What’s up with that? And my poor knees look like those of a baggy elephant. Am I destined to never wear sleeveless tops or shorts for the rest of my life? On the other hand, if I wear long sleeves and pants I might be able to give the illusion I’m not an old sagging woman. But then what do I do about my face? Botox? With my luck, I’d be left with one droopy, paralyzed eyelid making me look like I’m perpetually inebriated. Besides, who can afford hundreds of dollars to have poison injected into their face? (Apparently a lot of people besides me.)

My Temple Has Collapsed

Plus, for some reason, I no longer have a waist. I have to hitch my pants and skirts up to my armpits to keep them from falling down. When did my waist disappear? Or did other parts of my anatomy which will remain nameless just sink down to cover up my waist? Sigh.

I tried to go to the gym to tone up. That didn’t go so well, either, as I ended up falling down the stair stepper. Then there’s the decrepit tortoise in me who wants to take a nap in the middle of the day even if I got out of bed at eleven a.m. At nine p.m., I can forget about doing anything productive. Or, for that matter, anything unproductive. I’m kaput, unable to move and unable to keep my eyes open. Just the other night my husband and I had a rare date night. We had a nice dinner out, came home at 8:30, and fell asleep by nine. On a Friday night! I can’t possibly be the same woman who stayed out into the wee hours of the night several hundred years ago.

Rather than feeling like my body is a temple, I tend to gravitate toward Romans 7:18: For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. (ESV). I won’t even go into the loss of my mental faculties. I can’t remember what I was going to say about them anyway. Getting old is the pits! I’m furious at my body for betraying me like this, especially when I have been so good to it over the years by rewarding it with chocolate!