Out of my distress I called on the Lord; the Lord answered me and set me free. Psalm 118:5
I make no secret that I’ve been battling an eating disorder in one form or another since I was 11. These last several months have been particularly brutal in many respects, and, as a result, I’ve been brutal with myself. Every mistake and misstep sends me into a shame spiral that only pushes me deeper into the feelings that drive me to medicate with food in the first place.
My relationship with food and whatever size my body happens to be at any given moment has held hostage my sense of self-worth for as long as I can remember. I have been at war with my body for most of my life and the mental and emotional energy that takes is exhausting.
There are times in my life when I’ve experienced reprieve from the internal struggle. During two of those exceptional periods in my life, I experienced the chain-breaking freedom that only comes from being fully surrendered to God. I call those times “living in the rapids” because it was like I stepped into alignment with the Lord and was swept away into the waters of anointing in so many areas of my life. It was only through daily communion with the Lord and reliance on Him for the strength and discipline needed to live healthfully – spiritually, mentally, relationally, and physically – that I was able to lay aside this particular drug of choice to live in that Philippians 4:7 kind of peace. More than that, those were the times in my life when I experienced and really soaked in His deep love for me. As if that wasn’t enough, I quickly reached my lowest weight and the best physical health I’d experienced as an adult as a byproduct.
So, what happened? I did. I happened. Old patterns of coping with stress and the insidious need to prove my worth crept in. My need to earn love and affection pulled me out of “the rapids” because I struggled to embrace the truth and to live from a place of knowing I am unconditionally loved. It’s something I still struggle with.
I’ve been leaning into the hard and holy process of dismantling the lies that have been woven into my belief about my value and I have found that their genesis is that they were unintentionally communicated to me by people who could only see me through their own broken lenses but were people I loved and trusted just the same. Eventually, that early messaging shaped the way I showed up in the world and rippled into adulthood. For me, that looks like neglecting to care for myself because other people’s words and actions led me to develop a distorted identity that says I’m not worth taking care of.
As I’ve become more aware of that lie, I’m determined to unearth it and, no matter how hard that process, I need to get this revelation if I’m going to live in the fullness of all that God created me to be. If I don’t recognize and live congruent with my God-determined value, then I’m doing a disservice to Jesus’ sacrifice and compromising the potential that God has placed inside me to carry out His kingdom work here on earth.
I want to be clear that this is not an altar on which I am laying blame. Rather, it’s an acknowledgment of an understanding that I must have of the original wounds in order to submit to the process of facing them and healing from them. Only then will I finally be able to lay down the weapons that I use against myself and reclaim my peace.
My wholehearted prayer is that God will help all of us struggling with similar issues to see ourselves the way He sees us – loved, redeemed and of irreplaceable worth – because it’s far easier to take care of something that you know has great value and, if we start caring for ourselves because we belong to God, that’s when we will see real, lasting changes in our lives, not just our bodies. Lord, help me to, once again, live “in the rapids”.
“A big part of being an adult is unlearning a lot of the sh*t you were taught by people who didn’t know what they were doing either.” -Amanda Oleander
Until next time,
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