How To Get Rid of a Pumpkin

One of my favorite books to read with my girls is called Too Many Pumpkins by Linda White, illustrated by Megan Lloyd.

It’s a book about a woman named Rebecca Estelle, whose complicated past with pumpkins leads her to despise them, until one tumbles from a truck and smashes to pieces in her front yard.

Rebecca decides that she will bury the remains of the pumpkin in order to get it out of sight. The only problem is that, by burying the pumpkin, Rebecca succeeds only in planting its seeds, and by springtime her yard is all but taken over by new pumpkin vines. When she tries chopping up the vines, all she does is prune the plant and make it produce even more pumpkins.

By the end of the book, Rebecca realizes that she has misjudged pumpkins, and she comes to love them. Don’t you love a happy ending?

This is really a great read. It’s pumpkin-tastic.

Rebecca Estelle’s mistake was that she saw burial as a means of disposal.

For most living things, burial is the end.

For a seed, however, burial is only the beginning.

Putting Down Roots

I have never been especially self-conscious about my weight. Even when I tipped the scales at more than 400 pounds and could no longer fit in standard theater seats–or, come to think of it, regular-sized chairs of any kind–I didn’t see myself as less of a person due to my weight. And neither should you.

I know that many people snickered about my weight behind my back when I was at my heaviest. But that thought still doesn’t make me angry. In fact, I would probably have laughed along with them at the time.

It’s not that I possess a superhuman forgiveness gene. I simply do not care about what other people think of me. I never have. How I am perceived by others has never played that big of a role in my own sense of self-worth.

But, myself aside, I understand that jokes aimed at overweight people have the potential to cause a great deal of damage. I know some people who carry deep scars from a lifetime of unkind words about their weight.

Let Your Vines Grow

If you still feel the sting of harsh words about your weight years after they were spoken, I would like to challenge you today.

Those words, those insults, those derisive laughs were all intended to bury you. Those who spoke them thought to marginalize you, to discard you, to make you of little consequence due to your weight.

But you are like Rebecca Estelle’s pumpkins.

Those unkind people weren’t burying you, you were being planted, because they had no clue what you are made of.

You are worthy of love.

You are worthy of kindness.

You are worthy of respect.

If you are eating yourself to death as I was, then you need to change your lifestyle. Make your health a priority. Take care of your body, and start today.

But don’t ever, under any circumstances, let anyone make you believe that you are less of a person due to your weight.

Instead, use the dirt thrown at you by others to plant yourself. In time, you will fill their yard with your vines.