Luke 8:13 " The seeds on the rocky soil represent those who hear the message and receive it with joy. But since they don't have deep roots, they will believe for a while, then they fall away when they face temptation.
John 15:5 "I am the vine you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. This is to my father's glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples"
My Lord continues to challenge me to consider my roots. I feel he has a purpose in bringing these verses to my attention. Although rooted in my faith are my roots really rooted in Jesus and his unconditional love for me. Do I trust him enough with my life to surrender the eating disorder fully into his hands? I want to to surrender it I really do, but with my roots in the lies still deeper than his truth, I find myself falling away and back into the siren's call of the eating disorder. This is really just my way of saying, "God I am scared of who I am without it. I don't trust you with my future in those moments I fall away. I don't trust you with my weight, my food, or trust you to comfort me." I am starting to see that what was originally my "Fuck you!" to my family, whoever, is probably how God see's it as well. He died for me on the cross for me and I am deliberately rebellious. I sin against God and sin against myself. The reality of this breaks my heart, even though I firmly believe this is an illness, I know the remedy and it includes trusting the Lord. I believe Jesus took my sins to the cross and that I am forgiven through confession, PERIOD! What I want is not just to be forgiven, but to show his glory and bear much fruit.
I have taken so many steps toward recovery and trusting the Lord and like a loving parent I believe he knows that we can tackle this together because he is beginning to stretch my faith and my comfort level with my weight, my food, and my hunger. I roll over in my cottage bed and look out at the
remaining few inches of snow coating the hillside. I am so grateful for my place of refuge after my last few days of entertaining and cleaning up the aftermath of our Thanksgiving feast. A feast that I did not purge! I want to just sit in my chair, write read God's word and sip on warm cups of coffee, and write. I am ok for an hour or so then my eating disorder starts in on me. "You need to get up and go to the gym. Your weight is already up. Here is your choice run or restrict!" I talk back to it. "Why do I have to chose? Why can't I just sit in my jammies all day drink coffee and write?" It answers sounding a bit like my mother "Get up and do something productive. You aren't going to just sit around the house in your jammies all day." I keep trying to write and read. The eating disorder gets louder and louder, and I realize (from past experience) it will start off as a whisper then grow into a deafening scream taunting me for not running calling me fat, lazy, and undisciplined. I know that in order for me to really enjoy being with my husband, decorating the cottage and even eating without purging I must get out of my cozy cocoon and head to the gym. I hate the eating disorder's voice, but I know that by working out I can quiet it, and manage it. I also hope that one day I won't have to workout, but just turn to it like my second grade teacher would do to me and say "Ssh! You are a nothing more than a nuisance. Now go sit down I have work to do." In this case the work I have to do is life and bearing God's fruit.
Yet, I am not quite ready to just tell it to shut up and sit down, besides I wake up today starving, and it scares me. I am not used to feeling the physical hunger from my belly. What is this strange sensation rising from my gut? I realize that I probably hadn't eaten much on the road yesterday. I had some apples, a banana, some nuts, and picked at a fast food salad. Ok, so maybe that is where this intrusive hunger is coming from? I don't like it all, and feel nervous as I realize my hunger and the eating disorder are now doing battle for the first time in years. The restricting was easy as I literally felt no hunger, but now..... I feel it. It is unpleasant, and annoying. I can no longer say I honestly forgot to eat, but that I chose not to eat. Small steps are still steps, I remind myself as I give into working out, but I grab a protein bar and sports drink as I head out the door. The nourishment is what my body craved, and what my soul needed. Despite the fuel, I am feeling spent and nauseated as I finish my run. The eating disorder begins to speak to me again "how can you still be hungry? How can you need more? Look at your tri-athlete friends on Facebook they make you look like a beast!" "Ok, I hear you. I have had enough food for this morning. I will go home, shower and head out to furnish the cottage." Really, I am so sick and tired of all the moments of my life that this internal dialogue intrudes upon.
I shower and dress, trying on my jeans of course, fighting the hunger I feel once again coming out of nowhere. Why can't it just leave me alone like it has done for the past few years? Doesn't it realize how I am terrified by its presence? I try to ignore it as we begin to power shop to furnish our home, but by the time we get through the first stop, my hunger moves through me in waves a nausea that feel as powerful as the ones crashing into the pier I can see from the car window. Admitting I am hungry feels like admitting defeat, so I wait for Kurt to mention lunch. He is engrossed in our mission, and I am irritated that my hunger continues to swell and crash, swell and crash, threatening to knock me over by its sudden furry. I feel now like I am going to pass out. What the fuck, why now? Where has it been hiding the past few years? I touch Kurt gently on his knee because that is about all the energy I have left to do, and say "Should we get lunch? Have you eaten?" I ask him. For some reason I want this to be about his hunger and not mine. "Cookies," He says. "In other words you haven't really eaten," I respond with a joke and a smile. "is it okay if we stop to eat? I am kind of, well a little, ok really really hungry." I say it in almost a stuttering whisper like a child confessing something covered in shame. Those of us with eating disorders understand this conundrum. Admitting to hunger is tantamount to admitting defeat, just as being told you look good means to us, you've gained weight.
I hear God saying "remain in me and you will be ok. Listen to your body pay attention to it nourish it." I decide I can, no need to nourish it at this point, but can I give myself what I want or just something safe that it needs. I ask myself what if what I want and need could be the same thing. Would that be ok? So, just like the pizza, I decide to trust God to hold my hand as I walk on the edge of my comfort zone. I order the luscious velvet textured tomato bisque, and the salty sweet ham and swiss cheese grilled sandwich slathered in honey mustard. I eat it consciously and slowly savoring each bite because I am not sure when and if I can do this again, but for this moment I listen to my want and need and tell the eating disorder to shush and take a seat.
Monday, December 29, 2014
Sunday, December 14, 2014
Roots
Colossians 2:7 (NLT) "Let your roots grow down into him, and let your lives be built on him. Then your faith will grow strong in the truth you were taught, and you will overflow with thankfulness."
God seems to be speaking to me about being rooted in him, his the love, and his truth about who I am in him. He wants me to put my faith in him and not the eating disorder which grew out the lies about who I was, or wasn't, and the chaos of my youth. Those roots are strong, deep and difficult unearth. It is like weeding my garden. I often think the weed is gone, but it eventually grows back because I didn't get it by the root. It doesn't help that the weeds of lies and God's truth are fighting for the same fertile soil. Even as I enter into this season of thanks for my abundant blessings and Jesus' birth, I realize how quickly God's truth can be choked out by the lies sprouting through the surface eager to stop me from growing in him.
As my mom calls me the day before Thanksgiving to try to manipulate me into not writing about my eating disorder because it will expose her, I find myself getting pulled back and believing that if I had been a better daughter, she wouldn't have had to smack me. If I had been brighter she wouldn't have had to go to conferences with teachers. If I had been less selfish, she wouldn't be living in a nursing home. A good daughter would invite her mother to live with her. If, if, if, the list could go on and on. Although she tells me that the problem was really with her and not me, my roots grew deep down into the soil of the lies that were taught to me as truth. I say to her, with tears spilling down my cheeks "tell that to the three year old toddler, six year old little girl, and twelve year old adolescent already buried in guilt and shame that it wasn't her fault!" "Tell that to the young woman trying to raise her boys while you told her she wasn't a good mom." "Tell that to me today as you still strike at me with your words instead of your hands." I can almost hear the roots of my soul and spirit reaching and stretching into the mucky soil of lies, instead of the nourishing fertile soil the truth of who I am in God.
I tell her I wished I had died in the eating disorder taking her shame and guilt to
my grave. "Please don't say that," she says. "Why not?" I reply, "then you would have nothing to worry about, not a book, not my illness, not my life." "Because I do love you and it would crush me to have something happen to you." All I can think of is the freedom that could come of not carrying the crushing burdens I was never meant to carry. It is this freedom that caused me contemplate life and death.
She is worried that she will be prosecuted for child abuse and thrown in jail. I have no desire to prosecute her or seek revenge through my writing. I really believe that as teen parents, they did the best they could raising twins. My goal is to tell the story of my eating disordered life, one that took me to the brink of death more than once. Unfortunately, it is rooted in my childhood and the lies I believed was my truth. I am finished lying and being lied to about who I am. It is so very strenuous to reach down deep beneath the surface of my soul and spirit to kill off the roots of the lies and allow new roots to form deep into God's soil of truth that can allow me to bloom and grow instead of fade away. How do I kill off something that is continually being planted and replanted?
I am beginning to trust that the only way to do this is to keep turning to God, knowing him and knowing who I am in him and him alone. I must turn away from the one the sows the seeds of lies. With out seeds there can be no more roots. I must turn back to the one who sows the seeds of truth, back to the Lord. He is the one that can take my faith, which at times is the size of a tiny mustard seed, and sow it in the fertile soil of truth and love and allow these roots to grow down deep into him the I can bloom into the daughter he created. A daughter with strong roots and many branches that reach to the sky in praise regardless of my circumstance, producing fruit. Jeremiah 17:8 "They are like trees planted along the riverbank, with roots that reach deep into the water. Such trees are not bothered by the heat or worried by long months of drought. Their leaves stay green, and they never stop producing fruit." A daughter that knows he will never leave me or forsake me
It was never my desire to have a broken relationship with my mother. I remind myself that I am not the one who broke it, but it was in her breaking of my spirit that the relationship began to fray like a rope being exposed to the push and pull of friction. As a child, their was an anchor at the end of that fraying rope never holding me safe, secure, and steady. It would hold, sometimes for a period of time, but I never knew when it would break free. I always felt like I was adrift all alone and somehow I was responsible for the anchor breaking free. If only I were stronger, better, not so sensitive.... Survival took precedent over producing fruit, or in my case eating fruit. My eating disorder became my life raft in which I could float away from the storms of my so called life. And just like one can get lost at sea even in a life raft, I became lost in the eating disorder not once, but twice.
As I enter this Christmas season, I remind myself daily that I do not need to remain lost and rooted in the lies of my youth, but found in his truth. My identity is not rooted in my eating disorder, but in His truth and His great love for me. Jesus was born to die....for me! Romans 5:8 "But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners Christ died for us" (NIV)
God seems to be speaking to me about being rooted in him, his the love, and his truth about who I am in him. He wants me to put my faith in him and not the eating disorder which grew out the lies about who I was, or wasn't, and the chaos of my youth. Those roots are strong, deep and difficult unearth. It is like weeding my garden. I often think the weed is gone, but it eventually grows back because I didn't get it by the root. It doesn't help that the weeds of lies and God's truth are fighting for the same fertile soil. Even as I enter into this season of thanks for my abundant blessings and Jesus' birth, I realize how quickly God's truth can be choked out by the lies sprouting through the surface eager to stop me from growing in him.
As my mom calls me the day before Thanksgiving to try to manipulate me into not writing about my eating disorder because it will expose her, I find myself getting pulled back and believing that if I had been a better daughter, she wouldn't have had to smack me. If I had been brighter she wouldn't have had to go to conferences with teachers. If I had been less selfish, she wouldn't be living in a nursing home. A good daughter would invite her mother to live with her. If, if, if, the list could go on and on. Although she tells me that the problem was really with her and not me, my roots grew deep down into the soil of the lies that were taught to me as truth. I say to her, with tears spilling down my cheeks "tell that to the three year old toddler, six year old little girl, and twelve year old adolescent already buried in guilt and shame that it wasn't her fault!" "Tell that to the young woman trying to raise her boys while you told her she wasn't a good mom." "Tell that to me today as you still strike at me with your words instead of your hands." I can almost hear the roots of my soul and spirit reaching and stretching into the mucky soil of lies, instead of the nourishing fertile soil the truth of who I am in God.
I tell her I wished I had died in the eating disorder taking her shame and guilt to
my grave. "Please don't say that," she says. "Why not?" I reply, "then you would have nothing to worry about, not a book, not my illness, not my life." "Because I do love you and it would crush me to have something happen to you." All I can think of is the freedom that could come of not carrying the crushing burdens I was never meant to carry. It is this freedom that caused me contemplate life and death.
She is worried that she will be prosecuted for child abuse and thrown in jail. I have no desire to prosecute her or seek revenge through my writing. I really believe that as teen parents, they did the best they could raising twins. My goal is to tell the story of my eating disordered life, one that took me to the brink of death more than once. Unfortunately, it is rooted in my childhood and the lies I believed was my truth. I am finished lying and being lied to about who I am. It is so very strenuous to reach down deep beneath the surface of my soul and spirit to kill off the roots of the lies and allow new roots to form deep into God's soil of truth that can allow me to bloom and grow instead of fade away. How do I kill off something that is continually being planted and replanted?
I am beginning to trust that the only way to do this is to keep turning to God, knowing him and knowing who I am in him and him alone. I must turn away from the one the sows the seeds of lies. With out seeds there can be no more roots. I must turn back to the one who sows the seeds of truth, back to the Lord. He is the one that can take my faith, which at times is the size of a tiny mustard seed, and sow it in the fertile soil of truth and love and allow these roots to grow down deep into him the I can bloom into the daughter he created. A daughter with strong roots and many branches that reach to the sky in praise regardless of my circumstance, producing fruit. Jeremiah 17:8 "They are like trees planted along the riverbank, with roots that reach deep into the water. Such trees are not bothered by the heat or worried by long months of drought. Their leaves stay green, and they never stop producing fruit." A daughter that knows he will never leave me or forsake me
It was never my desire to have a broken relationship with my mother. I remind myself that I am not the one who broke it, but it was in her breaking of my spirit that the relationship began to fray like a rope being exposed to the push and pull of friction. As a child, their was an anchor at the end of that fraying rope never holding me safe, secure, and steady. It would hold, sometimes for a period of time, but I never knew when it would break free. I always felt like I was adrift all alone and somehow I was responsible for the anchor breaking free. If only I were stronger, better, not so sensitive.... Survival took precedent over producing fruit, or in my case eating fruit. My eating disorder became my life raft in which I could float away from the storms of my so called life. And just like one can get lost at sea even in a life raft, I became lost in the eating disorder not once, but twice.
As I enter this Christmas season, I remind myself daily that I do not need to remain lost and rooted in the lies of my youth, but found in his truth. My identity is not rooted in my eating disorder, but in His truth and His great love for me. Jesus was born to die....for me! Romans 5:8 "But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners Christ died for us" (NIV)
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