So I totally stole this off one of the most amazing women I know: talented and funny, inspirations, warm and engaging....that lives in our ward. She has been handed trials that few of us would want to tolerate and yet she is doing it with grace and perseverance and laughter..... my hat is off to you dear sister!

But I thought this paragraph was so awesome that I wanted to reprint it and share it with all of you (ok maybe the two of you that read this.........and to remind us to be kinder to ourselves! And realize we as women have amazing abilities to give life (and laughter!) and that does take a toll on our bodies...but it is wonderful change.....that we should embrace and be happy with it...or at least content! Our husbands are happy with our bodies and I know Mack always says that most amazing things that make me wonder if he is sane when he says them...but he does and I love him all the more for loving me...faults, curvy body and all.....

So I vow to be and live healthy..but to enjoy the chocolate cake and cookies..every once in awhile (okay everyday...but that is why I go running!) To teach my kids that there is a watchful balance in life in all things........

So have your cake and eat it too...then just go walk it off! preferably with a good friend!

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"Not long ago, I got in trouble with my wife. I was lying on our bed watching TV when the bathroom door opened, and I caught a post-shower glimpse of Jody as she was about to wrap herself in a towel. 'Dear God,' I said, 'you're beautiful.' This was my first mistake.

'Aaaggggh,' Jody growled dismissively, mumbling how she hated--hated--what the years had done to her body.

'I love your body,' I said. 'It's more beautiful than the day I met you, ' referring to a luminous fall afternoon 35 years ago.

'What did you say?' she snapped, turning on me so fast her towel fell.

'I said, 'I love your body,'' I replied, simultaneously drinking her in and replaying my comment in my head, looking for the insult, the source of the trouble.

'No, no, the other part,' she said, grabbing her robe.

'The 'it's more beautiful than the day I met you' part?'

'That! That's a terrible thing to say.'

'But I meant it to be nice.'

'Exactly!' she said. 'Look I can deal with what's happened to my body,' she said as though she has the character to face tragedy. She rolled on, cataloging the horrors time had visited upon her--her thickness through the middle, her arms being more like wings. Her neck was, she claimed, well not good. No body part had com through unscathed. Apparently, even her knees had been devastated. "Say I'm still beautiful if you want. But don't say I'm more beautiful than when I was 22. It's an obvious lie designed to reassure an aging wreck. I'm not so pathetic that I need you to lie to me!'

As she enumerated the erosions of time, I struggled to jibe her version of her body with the one I saw before me. 'First of all,' I replied, 'I'll thank you not to refer to my wife as 'an aging wreck.' And second, don't tell me how to think about your body. I repeat, you are more beautiful than the day I met you.'

She was not convinced.

'Hey,' I said, throwing up my hands. 'I've got better things to do than try to persuade a beautiful woman she's stunning. If you want to get nostalgic about things that used to be merely perky and are now extravagantly beautiful, hey knock yourself out. But it's unseemly for you to have so much,' and here I gestured toward her body, 'and yet to want for more. That's not right, baby.'

I said something about how her body has ascended over time from naive to womanly, how it had been burnished by everything she knew, by her history, by her history, by her ability to inhabit a moment with her husband. Jody got still and quiet in that way that people do when they've actually heard another human being. 'So you do ahead and think anything you want about your body. But don't tell me how to think about it,' I said. 'Besides, I'm the expert on your body, not you. I've got a much better view, and have no interest in finding the flaws in a masterpiece.'

Jody, still silent, crossed the room slowly, kissed me gently on the brow, and then she kissed me again."

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by HUGH O'NEILL, the author of A Man Called Daddy, writes a fatherhood column for Best Life magazine.