Happy Easter and aloha from Hawaii! For the last two weeks (and one day more!), I am with my family on the island of Oahu for vacation. This has been a long-awaited trip – in part a year-delayed anniversary present from my parents to celebrate my 15th anniversary of ordination to the priesthood! That milestone took place last year (2024), but with the Archdiocese of Seattle’s Partners in the Gospel program shuffling all of us priests around, it was agreed that putting things off a year would be a more prudent (and needed!) time to get away.

If you follow me on social media (Twitter/X or Facebook), you’ve likely seen my daily posts of photos out here. I’m no great photographer, but I love documenting my trips – in subsequent years they help in recalling fond memories with friends & family, as well as more concrete remembrances of notable places, events, or just beautiful moments. As you might imagine, Hawaii has no shortage of any of these!

While I am without a doubt having a blast here on the islands – a homecoming of sorts, as our family was stationed here for several years during my father’s time in the Navy – I’ve found myself prompted to more directly confront a particular (if common) struggle that comes with beaches: insecurity about my body, my weight, and – in the worst moments – how that negatively affects my own self-confidence.

The sad fact is that I am pretty seriously overweight. Based on the BMI (Body Mass Index) standard, I am securely in the unflatteringly named ‘obese’ range. This is easier to ignore when I’m fully vested at Mass or simply dressed normally….but when wearing just a swimsuit, well, not so much. And when on the beach, it isn’t hard to find many well-physiqued guys of a wide variety of ages with whom the comparison game is easy to engage, albeit internally. Whatever insecurities I have – and there are not a few! – are easily inflamed when it’s time to take off my shirt.

Over the years, particularly during an especially rough period of struggling with self-esteem and depression, I’ve learned that when these things rear up, the only way forward is to bring them to the Lord: ‘Jesus, this part of me and my life hurts – please heal it!’. What I want is for Him to make me just the right weight…..with six pack abs and muscular limbs, please! What I get is something more profound: the reminder that the Lord loves me as I am, without condition or expectation of change.

And of course I know this, intellectually speaking. But the level of self-hatred that I am tempted to permit or even indulge in towards various aspects of myself speaks to a refusal to accept this in my heart. How timely that Saint Catherine of Siena’s memorial (April 29) should land in the middle of this trip! Unprompted, this quote came across one of my feeds: “What is it you want to change? Your hair, your face, your body? Why? For God is in love with all those things and he might weep when they are gone.” And this sentiment applies everywhere: to a belly that more resembles a barrel than a washboard, to thighs that are perhaps more reminiscent of jello than pistons, to chests and arms that are miles away from the proportions of da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man. I’ll bet that you’ve got parts of yourself that you can immediately identify as sources of shame or sorrow – God loves those parts of you as much as anything else….maybe more!

I had a realization a couple of days ago that kind of floored me. As a guy who is not just wide but tall, every shower and every bathtub is simply too small. Given the dearth of opportunities to do so in rectories (or the frigid waters of the Pacific Northwest) one of my favorite things to do in the ocean is to simply float. As you might guess, I’ve been jumping into the water here in Hawaii as often as I can! Who has enough body fat to lay back comfortably in the water without any effort or assistance, bobbing easily in the water beneath the sun with arms resting on his belly without need to paddle, swim, or otherwise stabilize himself? This guy! The activity I enjoy most – floating beneath the sun in the best-sized pool available on the planet – is made possible by the very things of which I am so often critical.

When taking a fuller inventory of the goodness of my body, I start to realize just how blessed I am. I can walk and run at will, I can lift and bend fairly flexibly, I can see and hear, I can feel from head to toe, I can enjoy the taste of food & drink at any time – the list goes on and on. And that’s before I start comparing my good fortune against so many who suffer deficits in their senses, limbs, or general health. My body is doing pretty darn great – and is a huge blessing to me every moment of every day.

But even if my body wasn’t doing so hot – and the recent struggles of a dear friend have punctuated this eventuality quite poignantly (please pray for Francine & Thom) – my value and identity remain the same: a beloved son of the Father, a friend of the Lord, a man chosen by God to be His own. There is no part of me that can diminish those truths, nor any part that makes them more true than they were from the moment He brought me into being.

One of the gifts of the internet is a greater realization of what C.S. Lewis speaks about in his book The Four Loves: “The typical expression of opening Friendship would be something like, “What? You too? I thought I was the only one.” I remember that feeling some ten years ago when I came across a reflection from Simcha Fisher on this very subject (albeit from the feminine perspective), herself referencing a secular commentary of the same sort. Just this week a similar affirmation came in the form of a webcomic by Matt Czap

Whether it’s at the beach or in the privacy of our own home, may we take the time to allow God to love every part of us – and in doing so, learn to love ourselves & each other as wholly as He loves us.