Nothing......

Kate Moss was quoted at one point in her life as saying " Nothing taste as good as skinny feels"  I admittedly lived by this mantra as I fell back into the eating disorder last year.  Each time I would reach for something, anything, to fill my empty body,  I would repeat this myself.  I would repeat it over and over again until the shame of eating became stronger then the hunger rising up in my gut.  It worked!  More often than not I would walk away feeling strong in my resolve to restrict my food and work off what I did eat,  but in turn I was weakened by the hunger radiating through my body, and eventually my soul.

I felt myself drifting back into this mantra briefly today as my body ran out of steam and I hit "THE WALL"   I am so tired physically.   I have literally exercised hard every day for the past 33 days.  And I wonder why my weight is back down and I am encroaching on my own muscles once again for fuel, my eye is twitching and the tension that once settled just into my shoulders has worked its way through my neck and into my head?  I promise myself that today I am just doing an easy yoga class, then I am resting.  Oh yeah, I can do this, but can I do this and eat?  I mean eat according to my meal plan from the nutritionist?  Eat normally in front of my mother-in-law at lunch?  She is a tough one for me to eat around as she has never even acknowledged that my body had drastically changed back into the anorexic woman she saw enter in patient 20 years ago.  Such typical anorexic thinking.  Somehow me not eating lunch will cause her to take notice of me and my suffering.  Yet, I find my self, even with out the strenuous exercise hungry.  Frankly, I am a little irritated that my hunger pokes at me , not like a child trying to get her mother's attention, but like a battering ram powered by hydraulics. I try the mantra that carried me through the past year.   "nothing taste as good as skinny feels, nothing tastes as good as skinny feels. nothing tastes.....nothing."

Then it hits me by tasting nothing, I had allowed myself to become nothing.  And then, by the grace of Jesus Christ, I remembered what skinny felt like.  Initially it felt comforting, soothing, powerful, almost a state of euphoria settled in.  I was in control.  Then with out warning it twisted and turned on me, forming a knot that hung like a noose waiting to strangle the life out of me. That is what skinny feels like.  It feels like a death sentence.  It sucks the life out of your body and your soul.  I am not sure which it comes for first, but it comes; devouring you when you should be devouring sustenance and gorging yourself one life. The abundant life God desires for you.  John 10:10 " The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I came that they might have life and have it abundantly: ( NASB ) ( 1995 )

Skinny doesn't feel good. It is the thief!  It may for some distorted reason feel safe, but it is not good.  It doesn't feel good to go to sleep each night wondering if you will wake in the morning, so consequently you hardly sleep at all.  It doesn't feel any better wondering if your body will give out during the day as you workout to burn the little you have taken in. It doesn't feel good to shake and see blackness as you stand because your blood pressure is so low it can't keep up with your movements, to feel acid burning in your stomach because there is nothing there to digest, to wretch and purge the smallest of meals as your eyes water and small specks of blood leak from their capillaries. It is agonizing to sit with your boney ass in any chair for any length of time without shifting and moving to keep the pressure from forming bruises. It is terrifying to be sent of to a cardiologist for further testing because your heart beats irregularly and at a slow pace. You remember how your bones and veins protrude, and how being hugged sometimes hurts those bones.  You remember your son pulling out of a hug remarking how your back feels like skin and bones.  Then you wonder how you will explain your slow death march to your children.  It doesn't feel good to be treated as a child following someone else's guidelines designed to keep you alive. You feel even smaller than your physical presence. Weighing in, checking off meal plans, baring the ugliest parts of your truth to doctors, a therapist, a nutritionist, your pastor, and the other practitioners you see in search of wellness.  Somehow there was less shame in this the first time around.  You were young and lacked any cognisant awareness of what you were doing.  This time you know, on a base level, what you are doing.  And there is a sense of shame and  humiliation that you are now turning not to older wiser people for treatment, but your peers. Now you are older.  You should be wiser, but......

I allow the memory of what being  really skinny really felt like to speak.  I Allow it to speak louder than the mantra.  I allow myself the permission to take the break my body needs today and to eat.  Like a good little girl ( insert sarcasm )  I do just as I am told.  I am not just tired, but tired of the fight.  As I pray for the strength to let go of my mantra God does answer.  Galatians 6:9 " Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up" (NIV)
Being that I am beyond weary, I can only assume He is my strength!

He also answers the question, "what does taste as good as skinny feels" ? Psalm 34:8 " Taste and see that the LORD is good.  Oh the joys of those who seek refuge in him!" (NLT).

And to Him goes the glory!