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.
If you missed the first three parts of my story, please go here, here, and here to catch up.
In January 1984 I entered pharmacy school and within the first year a wise professor recognized that all was not well with me. Dr. Vincent Lopez stopped me in the hall one day and asked me if perhaps I might need to seek counseling for an eating disorder. I truly believe my soul had been crying out for help and he heard the cry. He referred me to the pastoral counseling center at Georgia Baptist Hospital and I spent several months seeing Ms. Julene Job, a precious woman with experience treating patients with eating disorders.
The real breakthrough came one day when I was talking to Ms. Job about an upcoming birthday party for one of my suite mates and how there would be cake. I have always loved desserts of all kinds. Obviously Ms. Job recognized that I would not dare allow myself to eat any of the cake because….’that will make you fat’. In what I call a ‘hinge’ moment, she looked at me and asked, “Will one piece of birthday cake cause you to blow up like a balloon and be fat?” My answer, “No, I guess it will not.”
The light bulb went on in my sick little mind and my first steps out of the depths of starvation began. I went to that party and I ate that piece of cake and did not blow up like a balloon. Suddenly I saw that perhaps I could eat more than 600 calories a day and not be fat.
I know this all sounds ridiculous to you. It all sounds ridiculous to me too, but it was the road that I traveled. I wish I could tell you that I never worried about my weight again, but I cannot. Yes, that was a first small step, but I continued to struggle with feeling fat and wrestling with food issues and control. Over the course of the next few years I gained up to about 110 pounds where I stayed for many years.
In 1994 I heard about Jeff VanVonderen’s book, Tired of Trying to Measure Up. I bought it, read it and once again experienced a ‘hinge’ moment. I realized that I had spent many years trying to measure up to the standards of other people, when in fact, God loved me just like I was. For heaven sake, HE. MADE. ME. My dislike of my body and my focus on my body image was a slap in the face of God, telling Him that His creation was not good enough for my standards. My reading of “Tired of Trying To Measure Up” brought about a moment when I took another step toward wholeness. I ceased weighing myself a dozen times a day and I began to look better. At that point I weighed about 112 pounds and I liked myself at that weight—for the most part. I still had times when I felt fat, especially when I was in the middle of a stressful situation. Yet, I was able to reason and remind myself that I was not fat. In the late 1990’s I gave up weighing completely. It just was not a healthy activity for me. As long as I could fit into my clothes I knew that I was ok.
Fast forward to 2009. Do I still struggle with anorexia? Yes—and no. No, I do not starve myself any longer. I eat three meals a day and try to maintain a healthy weight of around 118 pounds. I weigh occasionally. Yes, I struggle with the mental aspects of this eating disorder. As I have approached middle age and begun to experience the changes to my body that come with middle age, I find myself once again doing battle in my mind. I simply try to keep reminding myself that my body was never intended to look 25 forever. Things move, change, sag and expand….it is just the consequences of living in a fallen world.
Will I ever, on this side of eternity, not struggle with body image? Of course I would love to be free from the mental struggles that come with this disease. I can’t say for sure, but my feeling is that this struggle will follow me to the grave. Not because I lack faith in God to remove it, but because I believe it is my ‘thorn’ that God allows, keeping me focused on Him. Each time I focus on my weight or my body, I am reminded of the fact that that focus is nothing more than idolatry…making my body my god. When my body is my god, then Jesus is forced off the throne of my life and I so do not want that.
Recently I did Kelly Minter’s wonderful Bible study, No Other Gods: Confronting Your Modern Day Idols. The focal scripture in this study comes from 2 Kings 17: 33 and 41:
“They worshiped the Lord, but they also served their own gods. Even while these people were worshipping the Lord, they were serving their idols.”
I have lived these verses for a large part of my life. Worshipping the Lord who died for me, yet serving the idol of body image. Satan knows this is my Achilles heel and he wields this weapon mightily against me. Yet, I believe God when His Word says that “though we walk in the world, we do wage war according to the world. For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds.” So, I wield the weapons of prayer and Scripture against this enemy and I find myself winning because of them. What Satan intended to kill me has only drawn me closer to Jesus, my shield, my glory and the lifter of my head.
Thank you for taking the time to read about my journey. I hope my telling of my story will somehow help someone else in their journey with an eating disorder.
