Lamentations 3:58 "You Lord took up my case and redeemed my life"
Romans 8:26-27 " In the same way the Spirit helps in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for,but the spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words can't express. And the father who knows all hearts knows what the spirt is saying, for the spirit pleads for us believers in harmony with God's own will"
I know that it is not God's will for me to be sick, yet there is something in me that feels like I need to stay here on the fringe of sick and well. A part of me that believes that I am nothing without the eating disorder, that there is somehow strength in my frailty and small frame. This is the last part of of the illness I fight to hold onto, or let go of and give to God. I have allowed my mind to grow, my emotions to felt and revealed, and my spirit to be filled by the Holy Spirit, but this I hold back. I am reassured that He is indeed strength in my weakness, and He intercedes for me when I have know idea how to pray or what to pray. By praying in the spirit he bears witness to my soul and reveals himself to me.
My body still rebels, at times, as I continue to eat by faith even when I am not hungry or when my gut is hurting. I still keep myself small enough, but I am so much stronger physically than I was two years or even a year ago. It is interesting how this time around I am not obsessed with counting calories, diets, or thinking about food all the time. I am just not hungry or aware of my hunger(most the time). It is as though the anorexia was hard wired into my brain many years ago and once I decided to tap into that line I didn't have to work at the eating disorder. The energy flowed effortlessly out of that wire flooding my mind body and spirit to enable me to literally fadeaway with out even thinking about it.
So now, in order to maintain the ground I have gained I must think about it and eat by faith. I have done two triathlons in the past few weeks. I placed in both of them as my physical strength begins to return. It is a fine line I walk being strong enough to compete, but small enough to.....I am not sure. I am also aware that it is a fine line I walk between training out of passion for the sport and compulsion to stay small. I have been there before allowing the eating disorder to sabotage my high school swimming career. I loved the sport and was competitive, but over a short period of time my passion became my compulsion. I used the swimming to feed the eating disorder while I wasn't feeding myself. As I faded away my compulsion grew and the passion for the sport slipped away. I was no longer able to keep up with the team and my coach had to let me go I love competing in these triathlons. God is my strength in my weakness and trusting in this, I eat by faith not wanting the eating disorder to sabotage my passion or my life.
I falter time and time again as I do eat by faith, and ignore His still small voice and purge what I take in. Yet it is fewer times, and not as often. It is also less of what I take in. Meaning that it isn't the
whole meal, but just enough to remind myself that I could if I wanted to and little enough to tell the
Eating Disorder that I really am in charge. It can have less and less of me and I can have more food and more of me in mind, spirit, and eventually physically. I feel some remorse, and guilt when I do this; however I don't allow myself to go into self-loathing any more. Even as I pretend I don't hear His voice telling me "stop undoing what I am trying to do" He groans for me he redeems me, He loves me. The condemnation isn't from God. He wants to scoop me up and put me back on track. Satan, however, would prefer to see me walk down the path of powerlessness and self-loathing.
Growth! It is hard for me to measure my growth in overtaking this illness because the only tangible measurement of my growth, my weight, falls below the bar that has been set for me. The intangibles of emotional and spiritual growth are difficult for me to measure and see. I have set my own bar so high and it is constantly in flux. I must turn to others to point out my growth. I turn to those that I have entrusted with my pain, my struggles, and my truth which at times is very ugly and disturbing. It is humbling and scary to not see yourself clearly physically, but even more terrifying to not see yourself at all from the inside out. So I turn to those I have entrusted with all of me to show me how I have grown. Little by little I see the growth that they see in me, and I almost believe it.
So for now I am trying to be content with the growth that isn't actually measurable by a scale; growth that is coming from the inside out, and that someone greater than I could ever imagine is pulling for me and interceding for me with groans I can't begin to comprehend.
Friday, August 16, 2013
Monday, August 5, 2013
And He Will Rescue Me Again...
2 Corinthians 1:10 (NLT) "And he did rescue us from mortal danger and he will rescue us again. We have placed our confidence in him and he will continue to rescue us"
So, before I even begin I want to make sure that my readers know that the quote I am using is from the book Gaining:The Truth About Life After Eating Disorders by Amiee Liu and is from a study done in London by Janet Treasure using a method called functional magnetic resonance imaging. It can be found on pages 86-87 of Gaining:The Truth About Life After Eating Disorders.
I wake up this morning feeling down, and restless. I sit for a moment before even getting out of bed trying to figure out what has triggered this empty listless feeling rising from within me before I even rise to face my day. It is a sense of dread, a loss of time; time lost to the eating disorder and fear that I am running out of time to recover and come back once again from the eating disorder.
I believe what has set of this cascade of fear of loss time and running out of time comes from reading, for me, two powerful paragraphs from the book afore mentioned Gaining. " The longer a person has been ill, the stronger the response of the frontal region, which also dispenses moral judgment such as guilt" Treasure is speaking of the eating disordered brain's response to food being displaced from the area of the brain that should be responsible for response to food. "When people return to normal eating habits., however, multiple areas of the brain spring into action to override the disordered response to food. This patching, Treasure said acts as a brake on the impulse to suppress the appetite. The more time that passes without relapse, the stronger more permanent the patch becomes. It cannot, however, produce a truly normal appetite response. Even after decades after their list fast or purge, former anorexics and bulimics will respond to the sight of layer cake with a complex mix of attractions, resistance, guilt, calculation, permission and release."
This quote has been weighing (no pun intended ) on my mind for the past few days. I suppose the weight of it is what has now brought me to the this sense of pain and sorrow. If I was truly recovered for 20 years, why did my "Patch" unravel so easily in such a short amount of time? Why didn't this carefully constructed patch that I worked so hard create, hold like it was supposed to? Why didn't it hold its place protecting me from, well, protecting me from myself. I find myself fighting back the tears all day long as I ponder this. What did I do wrong that this "patch" didn't just fray around the edges, but became completely unstitched. This isn't fair! Was it not enough to have had the eating disorder in the first place? Now, where others recover and their brains adjust, mine remains flawed. Even the way I go about the eating disorder isn't right. I find my self asking the question, " Was I ever in recovery?"
I feel like I have flaws on top of my flaws. I try to remind myself that I am human, therefore I am flawed. I remind myself that the illness, flaws and all do not need to define me. It isn't a statement about my character. I am still compassionate, sensitive, thoughtful, kind, generous, honest, open, a prayer warrior, even with the flaws. Still I wonder why didn't my "patch" hold? Did little pieces of it fray each time I restricted or purged over the past twenty years? Was it that this time I din't leave enough time between the behavior to weave it back together.
I begin to think in a rather circuitous direction. If the "patch" was meant to hold, did it fail me and allow the eating disorder back in, or did becoming eating disordered again (which theoretically shouldn't have happened after twenty years) cause it to unravel? My brain hurts as I try to analyze the theory and myself.
How can I make sense of this? How can I understand why God brought me through this journey only to send me back through it once again? I look to God's promises. I think of my pastor and his faith in my complete healing. I spent much of the day praying, seeking, and crying out to God. I hear him say a couple things to me. If I knew why, would it really change anything about the current journey? Probably not, but I would sure like to know the end of the story. Then I see 2Corinthians 10:1 and believe that he did indeed rescue me before, and he will do it again. God won't give up on me, as long as I don't give up on myself. Genesis 28:15 "I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you."(NLT)
I still look for meaning in this illness, this relapse. I need something other than the fact that we live in this fallen world. 2 Corinthians 1:4,6(NLT) "God comforts us in all our troubles so that we can comfort others. When we are weighed down with troubles, it is for your comfort and your salvation! For when we ourselves are comforted, we will certainly comfort you. Then you can patiently endure the same things." Ah, but does patiently mean gracefully? I am rather clumsy even as I endure. I guess God will use my less than graceful passage through pain and suffering as well.
I want to curl up and fadeaway, but I will fight because I know it will be for his glory. My God knows the end of the story. He sees the beautiful stained glass mosaic that he continues to create out of the broken pieces of my life. I picture God's stories told through the stained glass windows of a church and envision He will be revealed as he shines through the window of my life. So although still down and tired; I am not out of the fight.
So, before I even begin I want to make sure that my readers know that the quote I am using is from the book Gaining:The Truth About Life After Eating Disorders by Amiee Liu and is from a study done in London by Janet Treasure using a method called functional magnetic resonance imaging. It can be found on pages 86-87 of Gaining:The Truth About Life After Eating Disorders.
I wake up this morning feeling down, and restless. I sit for a moment before even getting out of bed trying to figure out what has triggered this empty listless feeling rising from within me before I even rise to face my day. It is a sense of dread, a loss of time; time lost to the eating disorder and fear that I am running out of time to recover and come back once again from the eating disorder.
I believe what has set of this cascade of fear of loss time and running out of time comes from reading, for me, two powerful paragraphs from the book afore mentioned Gaining. " The longer a person has been ill, the stronger the response of the frontal region, which also dispenses moral judgment such as guilt" Treasure is speaking of the eating disordered brain's response to food being displaced from the area of the brain that should be responsible for response to food. "When people return to normal eating habits., however, multiple areas of the brain spring into action to override the disordered response to food. This patching, Treasure said acts as a brake on the impulse to suppress the appetite. The more time that passes without relapse, the stronger more permanent the patch becomes. It cannot, however, produce a truly normal appetite response. Even after decades after their list fast or purge, former anorexics and bulimics will respond to the sight of layer cake with a complex mix of attractions, resistance, guilt, calculation, permission and release."
This quote has been weighing (no pun intended ) on my mind for the past few days. I suppose the weight of it is what has now brought me to the this sense of pain and sorrow. If I was truly recovered for 20 years, why did my "Patch" unravel so easily in such a short amount of time? Why didn't this carefully constructed patch that I worked so hard create, hold like it was supposed to? Why didn't it hold its place protecting me from, well, protecting me from myself. I find myself fighting back the tears all day long as I ponder this. What did I do wrong that this "patch" didn't just fray around the edges, but became completely unstitched. This isn't fair! Was it not enough to have had the eating disorder in the first place? Now, where others recover and their brains adjust, mine remains flawed. Even the way I go about the eating disorder isn't right. I find my self asking the question, " Was I ever in recovery?"
I feel like I have flaws on top of my flaws. I try to remind myself that I am human, therefore I am flawed. I remind myself that the illness, flaws and all do not need to define me. It isn't a statement about my character. I am still compassionate, sensitive, thoughtful, kind, generous, honest, open, a prayer warrior, even with the flaws. Still I wonder why didn't my "patch" hold? Did little pieces of it fray each time I restricted or purged over the past twenty years? Was it that this time I din't leave enough time between the behavior to weave it back together.
I begin to think in a rather circuitous direction. If the "patch" was meant to hold, did it fail me and allow the eating disorder back in, or did becoming eating disordered again (which theoretically shouldn't have happened after twenty years) cause it to unravel? My brain hurts as I try to analyze the theory and myself.
How can I make sense of this? How can I understand why God brought me through this journey only to send me back through it once again? I look to God's promises. I think of my pastor and his faith in my complete healing. I spent much of the day praying, seeking, and crying out to God. I hear him say a couple things to me. If I knew why, would it really change anything about the current journey? Probably not, but I would sure like to know the end of the story. Then I see 2Corinthians 10:1 and believe that he did indeed rescue me before, and he will do it again. God won't give up on me, as long as I don't give up on myself. Genesis 28:15 "I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you."(NLT)
I still look for meaning in this illness, this relapse. I need something other than the fact that we live in this fallen world. 2 Corinthians 1:4,6(NLT) "God comforts us in all our troubles so that we can comfort others. When we are weighed down with troubles, it is for your comfort and your salvation! For when we ourselves are comforted, we will certainly comfort you. Then you can patiently endure the same things." Ah, but does patiently mean gracefully? I am rather clumsy even as I endure. I guess God will use my less than graceful passage through pain and suffering as well.
I want to curl up and fadeaway, but I will fight because I know it will be for his glory. My God knows the end of the story. He sees the beautiful stained glass mosaic that he continues to create out of the broken pieces of my life. I picture God's stories told through the stained glass windows of a church and envision He will be revealed as he shines through the window of my life. So although still down and tired; I am not out of the fight.
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