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.
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