Romans 12: 1-2: (NIV) Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.
Thank you for stopping back by for another piece of my story. If you missed the first part of my journey with anorexia, please go here and read it before you begin this post.
I have very few memories of my childhood. I am not sure why that is because I had a wonderful childhood with nothing that would be classified as a major upheaval or upset. My parents loved my sister and me and we were the center of their worlds. Their marriage was strong and they were each other’s best friend until the day my Daddy went home to be with Jesus in 2004. Daddy provided for us well and Mother was the perfect stay at home mom. They were always at our dance recitals, piano performances, band contests and whatever else we participated in. We were in church every Sunday and Wednesday and had extended family that was very involved in our lives. Really, we were very much a “Leave It To Beaver” family.
One of the memories that I do have is of a time that Leslie and I were out to dinner with Daddy and Mother on a Saturday night at Earl’s Restaurant in Blue Ridge, Georgia. I could not have been more than eight years old at the time. We were sitting at a long table with our friends, The Stepps, and I accidently turned my milk over. My Daddy looked at me and made it very clear that my mishap was not acceptable. I don’t recall the exact words, but the message was ‘straighten up and act right’. I recall feeling incredible shame that I had done something to displease my Daddy and heaped on top of that shame was the notion that I needed to act like an adult, despite the fact that I was not one. I vividly remember looking at Daddy with tears in my eyes and saying, “I didn’t mean to spill it.”
In his book “Tired of Trying To Measure Up”, author Jeff VanVonderen says something that spoke to me in the deepest part of my soul. In chapter 7, which is entitled ‘I Feel as Though It’s Never Enough’, VanVonderen talks about the life of a shame-based person and how there are always outside sources who deliver shaming messages about the person. These shaming messages could come in the form of words, name calling, rejection, put-downs, favoritism, perfectionism, and many other things. VanVonderen says, “simply making a mistake or being corrected in public can cause feelings of shame.” When I read this, I suddenly understood why the memory of being corrected so publicly by my Daddy that night is one that has stuck with me all these years.
“An individual in a shame based system”, according to VanVonderen, “is given the message that he is defective and inadequate as a human being.” VanVonderen goes on to say that the shame based person sees life through a shame-grid. That person ‘accepts that the outside source is a reliable, legitimate place from which to find out about yourself’. Obviously my parents were very legitimate sources from which to learn about myself. All those years of being told that this food or that food would make me fat came from an outside source who loved me and so it was natural for me to believe what I was told.
The problem arose when I chose to hear the messages from the outside source in a much different way than they were intended. “That will make you fat” translated in my mind to “you are fat”. “Straighten up and act right” translated to “you can act better than that”. Ultimately, the message that embedded itself deep within my psyche was “you can control what you look like and how you act—now do it”.
VanVonderen says that a person who lives in a shame grid ‘interprets words and actions to mean more than what they really mean; in other words, [they] readily assume that people see [them] as a lesser person’.
Allow me to detour from my story for a moment and share with you from chapter two of “Tired of Trying to Measure Up’ some of the traits of a person who lives in a shame grid.
“You use a lot of negative ‘self talk’.
You don’t allow yourself to make mistakes (or admit them). When you’ve been taught that performance is the way to be valuable and acceptable, mistakes bring shame.
You are over-responsible.
You martyr your own needs.
You don’t trust your ‘radar’.
You set up inappropriate boundaries.
You act like a victim.
You tend to ‘code’ when you communicate.
You suffer a lot of stress-related illness.
You can’t have guilt free fun.
You act in ways that seem contradictory.
You can’t deal with gifts very well.
You sabotage your own success.
You procrastinate.
You are possessive in relationships.
You have a high need for control. Since your sense of well-being and security is based on externals, you’re preoccupied with the status of things and the behavior of people. Every time things or people don’t look or act the way you need them to, you fix, correct, adjust, improve, remedy, solve, reform, remodel or punish. This goes beyond the usual adult responsibility to guide: You need things to be ‘just so’ in order to be able to relax. But that time never comes.”
Tired of Trying to Measure Up by Jeff VanVonderen pp23-28
I found myself in several—not all—but several of those. I do have a high, very high need for control. I have never been good about allowing myself mistakes or even admitting them. I have been over-responsible most of my life and suffered a great deal of stress related illness, such as stomach problems and anxiety. I don’t deal well with gifts and I do act in ways that seem contradictory.
Join me tomorrow I continue to write about my journey. 
