The Courage of Magda

News of Magda Szubanski’s weight struggle broke just before Christmas 2008 and already she’s lost ‘a three year old,’ a.k.a. sixteen kilograms. One of Australia’s most famous faces, here and overseas, was by her own admission ‘slowly killing herself.’

Yet, the weight loss was only the tip of iceberg. She said on the current affairs program only tonight that ‘therapy’ was needed; she’s dealing with deeper issues.

What was needed most was honesty, and to get past a life of denial. I heard it said once (from a source I honestly can’t recall--but by someone afflicted with obesity) that seriously overweight people cannot possibly be happy. Having had a weight problem at one time or another in life I can attest to being unhappy, but I can’t relate with people who’ve got or had serious overweight problems.

Magda was seriously overweight and seriously unhappy; she empowered herself with honesty and courage.

To be that brutally honest and go onto National television, stating emphatically the sins of her life took amazing courage; a courage that brings a blessing of freedom from the unsaid thing that was always previously denied. Everyone else could see what she didn’t want to--what she couldn’t face.

Well, now she can!

It all boils down to the old, ‘You tell on the sin or the sin will tell on you,’ business. In other words, if we pretend something’s not an issue in our lives and it really is, it won’t go away; it just gets slowly and steadily worse until we eventually do something about it. We can’t get away from it.

Denial is the worst form of life; in fact, it’s the very essence of spiritual death--a form of voluntary blindness.

Let’s murder our denial.

Copyright © 2009, S. J. Wickham. All Rights Reserved Worldwide.