Thinking/Over Thinking

Thinking/Over thinking

I returned from Walloon Saturday after a week of being with guests.  I have realized that summer is great, beyond great and fun, but winter is a different story.  I, after years of believing I was an extrovert, I admit that I am indeed......an introvert.  I love being with people, especially those I love, but lacking the ability to find a quiet private space to write, to read, and talk to God made me a little unsettled and anxious.  I even cancelled my phone appointment with my therapist because there was no place for me to speak privately for an hour.  Yet, I needed to touch base with her because I was beginning to  to slip again into the little pressure release purging and I wanted it to stop there and not take on a life of its own.  I didn't want it to suck me back in with guilt, shame and the voice of Satan saying "go ahead, purge, your almost fifty, you will never get out of this."  We talked briefly, then I was on my own.  Well I knew I wasn't truly on my own as I had the Lord with me and had e-mailed my pastor a prayer SOS!!!  I am so tired of being  dependent on my therapist and my pastor.  Romans 12:12 "be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer."  I know God's timing is perfect, but I am so tired of fighting this.
So, affliction, he is refining me through affliction, but I am running out of patience.  I finally check in with my friend, the scale, and am truly surprised to see that my weight still hovers around 114lbs-115lbs.  I am both relieved and disappointed. There is part of me that thought  if my weight did go up a little it would mean that I had survived the extra pounds and my life didn't come to a halt.  And maybe, just maybe, I would be able to try and become comfortable in my body with the weight.   I try to explain this to my therapist.  She acts like I am crazy to even entertain the idea that I could have been okay with it. "Thanks for the vote of confidence" I think to myself!

 I had prayed for God to confirm whether I am seeing and feeling my body accurately.   So, this and the fact that I take back a Christmas present that I had asked for in a size medium only to exchange it for an XS indicates that I just don't see myself with any accuracy.  Fuck!  How do I change this?  Is it possible that I do see myself accurately, but don't like what I see?  Or do I really just not see it?  I am so confused and frustrated.  I sit here trying to think my way out of this whole skewed body image.  I feel like Winnie the Pooh taping my forehead over and over saying "think, think, think"  My attitude today morphs into Eeyore and I feel like the whole world is against me.  Okay, not the whole world, but I do leave my therapist's office once again feeling so defeated and sounding defensive.  She says she believes in me, but she doesn't seem to believe me.


Every year except the past two years part of my pre-skiing fuel has been a huge glass orange juice mixed with cranberry juice.  It helped hydrate me, tasted great, and give me a little boost of energy.  I gave up my pre-ski potion once I stepped onto the slippery slope of the eating disorder.  I tell her how this year without even thinking about it I, before I left to ski each day, I had my pre-ski potion.  Instead of seeing it as a sign that I was evolving through the eating disorder, she brings it back to habits and rituals, and how I need routine.  This is true.  I like routine.  Is that a bad thing?  My point was that I had what I wanted and needed without the great anorexic want vs need/how many calorie debate.  If she saw this is a step forward, I sure didn't catch it.

I entered the room drinking a Vitamin Water the purple one because of the potassium.   My feet and legs had been cramping when I swam earlier, so after a hot yoga class, it would be wise to replace some fluids and minerals.  She was drinking an orange one.  I asked her if it was as bad as the purple one I was choking down.  She thought there was something wrong with the fact that I continued to drink it even though I didn't like it.  "Well, it was what I had" I said.  "you could have dumped it for some water" was her response.  Somehow I was thinking that by drinking something that I needed even though I didn't love it was taking care of my self.  "You said the same thing about the protein shakes, yet you still drank them?"she seemed to ask as a question.  "Again I was just trying to comply with my meal plans."  I am starting to feel a little damned if I do, damned if I don't.  She even suggests that I allowed my self chips instead of pretzels because me weight was "safe"  Can't I get just a little positive
feed back (no pun intended) for my food choices  possibly evolving past the eating disorder??  Do I  get credit for eating the sandwich I packed even though I briefly thought about all the carbs I had already had today. Nope!  Six months ago I would have had a running debate about it and probably not have eaten it.   But she does point out that I had any second thoughts about it.

I try to get some kind of clue as to what she is expecting of me.  Where if anywhere in recovery does she think I am?  I ask because I had just spoken to a group of senior high girls about eating disorders and that was one of their questions.  "are you over this?"  I explain to her that it was hard for me to do this year because some of there questions were more personal, and because of my continued reading and research yield answers that may not be as palatable as it is simply our cultures fault.  "You can say no if it is going to set you back or unsettle you" She tells me. No shit?  Really?  I do know I can say no, but I believe that God puts you through what he will use you through.  I also think that he calls us to step out of our comfort zone in faith.  And yes I do realize the irony of not fully stepping out in faith with my weight, yet fully stepping out in faith to speak about it.

I ask her if by defining myself as anorexic, or an anorexic but in recovery means I hold onto the behaviors because that is how I am defined or  am I defined as anorexic because of the behaviors?  She looks perplexed, and I am continuing to grow increasingly frustrated.  The more I do my Winnie the Pooh impression, the more my head begins to ache.  I just want to go home.  I keep reminding myself how far I have come in the past 6 months, and the few positives I hear her say, but maybe it is because of that Perfectionistic temperament, I focus on where I am falling short, rather than succeeding.  If I continue to define my self as Liz an anorexic in recovery,  then I feel like it will always continue to be who I am.  She asked me what I meant or how I would define myself.  I am so defeated and discouraged by self doubt, I am unable to get out that this is what I mean.

I leave the office and by the time I pull out of the drive way, I am feeling the sting of tears welling up and then cascading down my cheeks.  Now what?  If the changes I have tried to make with my food are meaningless or still part of the eating disorder, where do I go from here?  Home is where I know I am physically going and I can't decide whether to write, take a nap, or bum a smoke off my friend.  Am I supposed to feel this shitty after therapy?  Maybe, maybe not, but what the fuck do I know; she is the professional and I am just a fucked up client with, right now, a bad attitude missing her daddy.  I try to cry it out and work it out before Kurt comes home.  He has such a hard time with me falling apart.  It isn't like I will spiral out of control (anymore), but I believe that is his fear.

I call Rich which leads to a few more shedding of tears.  He tells me to really start praying that God would open my eyes to see myself accurately, and the revelation of the root of my fear of the weight.  I open my journal and piece of my writing falls on the table.  "Yet it is these moments of strength that I panic. 'who am I with out the eating disorder?'  And then I read who God says I am.  1 Peter 2:9 (NLT) "But you are not like that, for you are God's chosen people.  You are a royal priest, a holy nation, God's very own possession.  As a result, you can show others the goodness of God, for he called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.  So there is at least one answer of where the root of my fear is deeply embedded, but also who I am.  I am his chosen one.

One look at me and Kurt knows I have had a bad, no, terrible day.  I can't conceal it, even though I once again try to choke back my tears and steady my voice before I turn to see him come through the door.  One lone tear sliding down my cheek becomes a flood.  I hate having him come home to me like this, and on top of it all I have totally lost track of time as I have become engrossed in writing and talking with God.  I haven't even thought of dinner let alone prepared anything. Is it really 6:45 PM already?  By now I am knee deep in the whole gamut of emotions and attitude so now,  sarcasm.  I like it and I am good at it.  I can be sharp and funny with it, or bitter and caustic.  "Oh wait, if I didn't have an eating disorder I wouldn't have lost track of time and forgotten to make dinner!"  I think, remembering something my therapist says to me today.  "Right,"  I think aloud, "I would make time for it other wise.  Oh come fucking on!  Seriously?  All the people I know have days like this and lose track of time and when to eat, and most of them have no known food issues."

We end up at the club for dinner.  I am not sure I have much in me for talking and am as irritated as glad that the old people behind us are talking so loudly that a real attempt at conversation would have been futile.  I am determined to eat a decent meal an keep it in despite my mood.  To do other wise would just offer up more proof that I am way sicker than I believe I am.  And I know I am right!!!

Broken

Broken


Psalm 51:12 "Restore me to the joy of your salvation and grant me the wiling spirit to sustain me" 17"My sacrifice is a broken spirit; a broken spirit a contrite heart you, God will not despise"

My sacrifice is one of a broken spirit one that was broken in my youth and has continued to break apart as I allow the eating disorder to chip away little pieces of it. It still serves a purpose in my life.   God is still at work using my brokenness to form his masterpiece.  Just as an sculpture sees his masterpiece in a misshapen piece of marble, God sees me, his masterpiece, in the chunk of gunk I call my life.  Where God allowed the eating disorder to initially carve away big chunks of my spirit, now it is just chipping away at me a little here and a little there.  Like the artist begins to break off big pieces of marble to rough out what he sees in his minds eye, so God has done through the eating disorder and I like to think that now is the time for him, like the artist, to continue to allow the eating disorder to chip away small pieces of me, not to shame me or destroy me, but to refine me. Isaiah 48:10 "See, I have refined you, though not as silver; I have tested you in the furnace of affliction" (NIV) Isaiah 48:11"I will rescue you for my own sake, yes for my own sake! I will not let my reputation be tarnished and I will not share my glory with idols!"

As I entered the Holidays the seductive call of the eating disorder started as whisper in my ear "it would be ok to just purge a little, after all you probably have taken in more food and drink than you need. So, releasing some of it what be ok."  I came back at it with my new mantra "PURGING ISN"T AN OPTION!" "Oh yes it is."  The eating disorder spoke back to me, only this time it spoke louder, then louder still, until it began to drown out my new mantra.  I listened for the mantra, but I could no longer hear it over the crescendo of the eating disorder.  I asked for Jesus Christ to strengthen me, but I am not still enough or quiet enough to hear him.  So, despite long runs and eating modestly, my body felt thick, disgusting and foreign to me.  I see that it reflects how I feel in my family.  I feel like a foreigner among my extended family, and the darkness of my mother begins to weigh on me.  It would all be ok if I would just fall into the role I have played in my family before I began to change and evolve into the person that God is creating me to be.  I kind of like who I am becoming so I don't want to play the role anymore, but the pain and darkness that surrounds me becomes more than I can tolerate and I purge. 

Ah! Back to the familiar once again. It isn't just the little purge I had planned like letting off a little steam from a pressure cooker.  No, it is a full-blown purge expelling not just the food and drink that I have swallowed, but the grief, pain, and darkness I have choked down.   All of it was sitting in the center of my gut and soul churning like a bitter potion I had been forced to swallow and the only way to not be poisoned by it was to get it out; ALL OF  IT!  Although I had purged numerous time since my father's death, it had been a very long time since I had purged with such desperation, vengeance, and completely.  Some how watching the dark remnants of my food and drink swirling in the vortex of the basin as I flushed did just as I had hoped, and momentarily stopped the swirling of my emotions.  I should have been sorrowful or remorseful at the time, but somehow I felt that by emptying out the darkness, I had made some room to take in the light and energy of the family I, along with Kurt, had created.  I was elated!

The elation was, as it always is, short lived, and by the time my own beautiful family dispersed for the day,  I felt the shame and guilt begin to rise as I knew I had blown it once again.  I had let myself down.  I was sure I had let Rich and Laura down, and if my family knew they to would be disappointed.  My greatest sorrow was that I had let God and myself down by turning to the eating disorder instead of him.

I drag myself to the gym hoping that a hard pounding run would raise my serotonin enough to make it through the day.  Kurt and I are both as emotionally and physically spent as we had been when my father died.  We made it through the remainder of the day emotionally holding each other, and literally, physically holding each other up.  Thank God for my husband and his willingness to stay on this sordid ride with me.

Options?

Options?


Isaiah 58:11 "The Lord will guide you always; He will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land and will strengthen your frame.  You will be like a well watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail.

I last purged the Wednesday before Thanksgiving and for once I am  aware of why I default to the eating disorder.  I have faced so many changes in the past few months.  Some are happy and some are sad, but they are all changes that alter the road I am traveling.  Brad and Kelsey are now married and the wedding will always be one of the greatest days of my life.  Although I am still his mother and always will be, he now has a wife and a home of his own.  He is a good man like his father and we are both proud of the man he has become.  My dad is gone and like Obi-Wan Kenobie said in Star Wars "I felt a strange disturbance in the Force.....I fear something terrible has happened"  Something terrible has happened and the void he leaves behind feels as big as Space itself.

The uncertainty of the holidays looming before me leaves me feeling like I am approaching a bend in the road, and although I am confident that I am still on the road, I have no clue what lies around this bend.  The road I am on feels scary and unfamiliar.  I am feeling lost and out of control.  I need something to stay the same, something to feel familiar, so I purge.  It is something that feels familiar.  I don't plan to purge it is a spontaneous reaction that somehow comforts me.   When so much is changing around me this is the one constant I have always had to fall back on.  I hear God speak to me through this verse.  "Liz I will always Guide you.  I know you feel so very lost on this new road that unfurls before you, but remember I love you and you are not walking alone.  Keep your eyes on me"

Each time I purge I hate admitting it to Laura, Rich, and especially Kurt.  It is just one more piece of evidence that means I am still sick and not doing as well as I think I am.  I hear something on the radio about approaching marriage with the idea that divorce is simply not an option.  At first I find myself remembering that this is exactly how I had approached my marriage; divorce is not an option. Then a second thought pierces spirit.  Could it be that God is using this to relate to my purging?    I can no longer look at purging as an option.  I decide that this will become my  new mantra "Purging is not an option, purging is not an option!"  Finally I have something to replace the mantra the pulled me back into the black hole of the eating disorder, "nothing taste as good as skinny feels."

I speak this new mantra to myself over and over again these past few weeks as I am faced with parties, weddings, and holiday celebrations  all which include food.  I think out loud "really, the holidays, why did you have to pick now to change things up?"  If not  now, then when?  When am I going to do it?  So I approach the weekend fearfully as I have three nights in a row of eating out with little control of what kind of food I will be served, and purging is not an option.

The first night I find myself reciting the mantra repeatedly in my spirit.  I am somewhat careful about what I take in, knowing it isn't coming back out.  I am anxious and uncomfortable.  I am also admittedly somewhat distracted my vigilance around my food and honoring my promise to my self.  This is somewhat frustrating because I thought by surrendering the eating disorder and the purging, I would be more present and engaged in even  the fleeting moments of my day.  What if I lost track and consumed more than I had planned?  I try to rest in the fact that God is using this to strengthen my frame,  not just physically, but emotionally and spiritually.  I also rest in the fact that I am teaching an 8:45 am spinning class the next day.  Ah, it is always fun to make my students pay the price for my perceived gluttony.  I make it through and eventually settled in and pay more attention to the people than my food.

I wake the next day and see that I am fine and survived without relying on purging as an option.  I am fine.  Ok,  I am a little hung over from too much wine, but the friendship and laughter was worth it.  I choose not to step on the scale that tugs at me like a puppy playing tug-o-war.  The harder it pulls, the harder I have to pull.  I am tired of it winning, so today I pull away with everything I have.  I feel fine, I don't look any different than the day before, and I don't want some number on the scale to dictate my food for the day, or how I feel about myself.  My day is already going to challenging enough as I have to take my mother to get her cut just days after a horrid phone call from her.  I have great plans for my evening.

My second night out is to a wedding and yes there will be great food and plenty of it.  As I am getting dressed I wonder "can I really do this two nights in a row and not purge?"  I repeat once, maybe twice as I slip into my heels, "purging is not an option,"  I add a little post script to my thought "You still look skinnier than you feel."  I toss on my faux fur sweater and glance at my reflection and head out the door.  The wedding is beautiful and I become engrossed in their joy.  My face actually hurts from smiling.  I find myself talking to a few people who ask about, about the eating disorder, but don't really think about it. I am hungry and a grab a plate of a little of this a little of that.  I eat what I want and feel satisfied.  Purging doesn't cross my mind.  On the table in front if me 2 cupcakes appear.  I have a choice to make chocolate or vanilla?  I, of course, choose the chocolate.  Yes, that was my initial thought!  It wasn't whether or not I would have the cupcake, but what flavor did I want.  Something feels like it is shifting, and even though it is for the good as these words fall onto the page I realize it is scary.  Maybe I am taking this bend in the road too quickly?  Am I ready to change up the eating disorder since so much has changed already this year?

Maybe God has already strengthened my "frame" more than I realize.  The third night is at Stumps, my husband's men's club.  This is normally not an enjoyable night for me, but I go because it is important to him.  I hope that the old man that thinks it is a game to get a picture of me isn't there, and God spares me on this one.  Again I am at the mercy of whatever "down home" cooking that is put before me, and remind myself the "purging isn't an option."  I leave feeling full and proud that I somehow manage to not purge,  I lift my praise to Jesus Christ who must have strengthened me because I have made it through these days, achieving, for me what seemed impossible.

I am so close to recovery, I can almost taste it (so to speak).  I don't want to settle for "out of the woods" I want to live.  I want it gone for myself, but also to be a walking testimony of God's glory; That he has transformed my life into something worth living.  As I write this a wave of fear and sorrow washes over me.  Why the fear and sorrow?  It is the backwards glances and I realize how very close I came to losing my life to the eating disorder itself, or somehow taking my own life.  Either way I would be dying by my own actions.  Really that is what an eating disorder is, a long lonely walk down a road that leads to death.  First the spirit goes then, the mind, then finally the body succumbs beginning to feed on itself until it is no more.

The Scarlet Car

The scarlet car sits silently in my driveway.  I can sees it from my window, where I pray, where I write.  There is no one in the driver's seat.  There are no passengers.  It is my riderless horse, fireman's last call, and soldiers empty boots.  It is my father's car. I have allowed myself to look at it from a distance as it holds so much within.  It is solemn, sacred, and although empty, it holds precious memories locked behind its doors.  Most are joyful, but some are painful.

It is almost Thanksgiving and as I drive down to the lower driveway, I see the scarlet car.  I feel an unexpected wave of grief rise within me.  For a moment I wonder "why is my dad parked down here?" And as quickly as the moment comes I remember he is not here and he will never be here again.  I walk slowly past the driver's side, and pause for a moment brushing off the snow that sticks stubbornly to the glass.  I peek through the window and suddenly the car is filled with life.

I cannot even count the number of times I leaned into this same window smelling the sweet fragrance of the tobacco wafting  from a pipe dad wasn't supposed to smoke. I sees the packages of spearmint gum resting on the center console.  I close my eyes and inhale deeply.  I can almost smell them both on his breath as I did every Thursday when he came to take my boys to lunch.  I carefully instructed him on what they could eat and when to have them back to school.  He would grin and wave as the power window slid up and into place.  Then he would drive away with his special lunch dates.

I can see them laughing at silly jokes, and hear the laughter resonating through the frosted windows.  It was in the scarlet car that priceless relationships were forged.  I see the trips he made to school to deliver forgotten homework, medicine, or money for lunch because they new he would be there in a flash.  They knew that I, on the other hand, would have let them learn from their zero, or figure out how to eat lunch off their buddies cast offs.

I continue to gaze into the window and see their muddy footprints on the mats of the scarlet car after a lacrosse game in the rain.  Never once would dad complain about the dirt and grime they left behind.  They insisted on riding with him even when I was there.  I know it was in the scarlet car that they shared there hopes, their dreams, their fears and heartaches.  He was the confidant every child needed; knowing that Bop would share only if it endangered them or some one else.  It was an unspoken agreement between my dad, their grandfather, and each of the boys.

He in turn shared with them his successes, failures, and how to know God's love for each of them in a personal way.  It was in the scarlet car the he drove to our families' baptism in the neighbors pool, and to his own in Walloon.

The scarlet car, it was Santa's sleigh. Each year, as they read the Polar Express the boys would catch a glimpse of Santa through a frosted window much like the one I am looking through, and in the morning would find their jingle bell.  I wonder if the sleigh ever brought Santa to Ian, his youngest grandson and my tears begin to flow.

It was Bop that picked them up when they got sick at school, and Dad that brought his forty something "little girl" crunchy ice from Frischs' drive through when she was sick.  It was in the scarlet car that I revealed that I was sick again, scared, and this time I needed more than crunchy ice.  I needed him to step in and be the hero that I always thought he was, but it was too late.  His greatest asset had become his tragic flaw.  He had trusted and tried to help out the wrong people.  He confessed and asked for my forgiveness.  It was from this car that I exited with a tear stained face, and realized he had noting left to give.

Two years later with my hand on the scarlet car, I let it all go.  Then I sit and watch the snow melt, washing the scarlet car and I hear God speak.  "Come now let's settle this," says the Lord.  "Though your sins are like scarlet I will make them white as snow."(Isaiah 1:18)  And with that I scrape some snow off the roof of the car allowing it to melt in the warmth of my hand, remembering  that I too am forgiven and washed as white as snow.

Disrobing

Disrobing


Matthew 10:29-31 "Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground outside your fathers care.   And even the very hairs of your head are numbered.  So, do not be afraid; you are worth more than sparrows.

I have the strong sense that my days of growing darkness are numbered, as are my days of shrinking away leaving me just a shadow in the light as it shines on me.  As God speaks to me he confirms that it is time for me to step out into the light and allow myself to take up space and to shine. Just as he has numbered the hairs on my head so has he numbered the days of my darkness.

I left my last therapy session feeling hopeless, defeated, and though not intended, like a faceless being as she read her notes from the last session to me.  I got in the car and allowed my tears to flow as I asked God "What now?"  There is something I am missing, or that she isn't getting.   Then, as I was driving down the road I had a clear vision of God coming into the car and hearing the sound of a zipper, and it was in that moment that   I knew I no longer was holding onto the hate and self loathing that I had carried around for most my life.  It was if I physically shed a cloak that I was never meant to wear.  By disrobing this cloak from by body I could feel God's love for me like I had never felt it before. I even feel this new sense of love of me, who I am, who I was meant to be, and who I am yet to become.  My brutal emotional and physical self inflicted wounds seemed to fade like images in my rear view mirror.  I had a swelling desire to live the abundant life I was meant to live.

I begin to pray for God to allow myself to see my physical body more accurately and he began to reveal it little by little to me over the past few weeks.  It is in a picture from Mitchell's senior day that I see that I am still shapeless beneath the baggy sweater and jeans that once fit me like they were made for my once "perfect ass'. Those aren't my own words, but those of friends and fellow gym rats.  Trust me I never thought of any part if me as perfect, but I have to admit it wasn't too hard on the eyes.  Then I see my reflection as I walked, ironically, through the buffet line at a recent benefit for St. Rita's School for the deaf surrounded by mirrors.  Wait, God is that really me?  What happened to my perfect 34 B cup breasts that still stood upright on their own?  I see that I am not scary skinny as I was 2 years ago, but I am much smaller than the body I remembered and was pleased with at one time.  I ask for just some confirmation that this image staring back at me is what I really look like?  I walk into church the next day after the benefit and Tree looked at me and asked me if I was okay.  "You have just been on my heart.  You look so thin."  It was as if this is some form of confirming that the image staring back at me is accurate and slow coming into focus.

He even allows me to become aware of the way my bones especially my ribs are felt even through my clothes.  Only the Lord would give me more than I asked for.  I only asked to see, but he allows me to feel it.

Somehow I make it through the benefit without purging.  Surprisingly it doesn't even cross my mind until I get home and realize I ate pecan pie with ice cream. Was it just that I was enjoying myself, or that somewhere inside I felt that if these children struggled everyday to make it in our hearing world not by their own choice and I essentially choose to hurt myself, and then I found myself thinking "what the Fuck was I thinking?"  It was too late to purge.  I just had to sit with it and surprisingly I lived to tell about it; my jeans still fitting just as they did the day before.

My week passed by in a blur as I continued to eat by faith, even as my gut still ached at times and I was exhausted from long days of work, classes, and meetings.  I was doing it all one day at a time and there was a shift inside that I still can't put into words, but my pastor notices it right away.  "There is a lightness about you that I haven't seen before." He tells me. And he isn't talking about my physical presence!  I tell him about my preceding days, and the shedding of my cloak of self hatred and loathsomeness.

Then as easily as I don't purge the past weekend this weekend I purge, and I think I can even connect the dots on this one.  I start to feel the disappointment and shame rise once again.  I am sure I wear it like the cloak I have just shed, but then I hear God speak through his words.  Psalm 34:5  "Those who look to him are radiant; Their faces never covered in shame."  God doesn't want me to cover my face in shame even when I mis-step with my food or purge as I  did last night.  Yet, he doesn't want this for me either.  He wants me free from it; all of it.  So, yes I am disappointed in my self, but shame?  Shame would pull me back down into the depth of the eating disorder.  Shame would tell me you'll never be free.  Shame would tell me to surrender to the eating disorder instead of God.  Shame would tell me I am weak, a loser, but God tells me "oh no, you are my child, and you are radiant as you keep seeking me.  I will bring you out into the spacious place in my timing because I delight in you, and in your weakness I am strong and using all of this to bring you from glory to glory.  So, get up, hold your head up and thank me, worship me and bring me your praises as you rest and refuel in me.  Your brothers and sisters in Christ are waiting for you to join them in worship.  Do not stay away from church today because Satan would have you believe you failed and are filled with that shame.  By my blood you are my daughter.  You are redeemed.  I love you!"

Radiant

Radiant

Psalm 34:5 "Those who look to him are radiant; their faces never covered with shame"

God again uses the image of light to reach out and comfort me.  So not only does he delight in me, he now sees me as radiant.  I believe he wants me to see past the shame I have carried that feeds the eating disorder, as well as the unique shame that comes with the eating disorder itself.  It is a viscous cycle that I want out of, but just can't quite figure out how extricate myself from the behaviors that, as I have said before, seems hard wired into my brain.  It is like skiing a black diamond from top to bottom.  My heart races, not from the physical exertion, but from the adrenaline and dopamine flooding through my body. I am going way too fast on a slope that is way to steep, but somehow I make it down.  My legs quiver from fear and my lungs burn from breathing quickly as if to keep up with the racing of my heart.  I take a quick inventory to make sure I am really still standing and in one piece.  I am frightened, I am tired and know I was lucky to escape unharmed, yet I get back in the lift line, knowing that I am pushing my limits.

That is what the eating disorder is beginning to feel like.  It is scary, dangerous, and I am lucky to survive, but I keep going back to it again and again even though I know that it is always that one last run that takes you out.  Last year at this time I could have cared less if I died on the steep slope of the eating disorder.  I didn't care if it hurt me or I hurt myself, but I am shifting as God reveals more and more of himself to me, and that he loves me, delights in me and now I am radiant!  My pastor asks me to look myself in the eyes everyday and say "I love you Liz"  "Really?  I am not sure if I can do that.  It feels, well, contrived and unnatural.  I know that God wants me to love myself as he loves me, but I am not sure I can do this.  I am not sure I believe it,"  I say back to him.  It is easy for me to look in the mirror and pick myself apart and tell the woman staring back how much I hate her, but tell her I love her; I am not so sure.  He encourages me to just try it.  If I could scream the lies that Satan would have me believe, how much more would I be able to believe the truth about the woman God loves and delights in if only I would speak it to her.  I agree to give it a try and find that each time I do the haze that I see myself through is starting to lift like the fog off the mountains that take my breath away.

I have used my dad's death as an excuse to flirt with the eating disorder.  At least that is what I thought I was doing since I had been feeling so much better and stronger. I believe I am in recovery.  I just don't feel "sick" anymore, and really don't think I look anorexic or too thin. My therapist disagrees.  She spends much of the session pointing out each piece of the eating disorder that is still alive.  She pulls out her notes from my last appontment and reads them to me.  I am not sure if it is to make me feel better or worse, but I feel worse.  I am not sure if it is what she reads or the clinical way that the notes are written.  It was like listening to someone describe the results of working with a chimpanzee for research.  I felt hidden behind the illness even as I believe I am starting to emerge.  I feel the tears beginning to well up, but it is almost time for me to go so I draw in a long breath allowing God to hold them again. This felt safer since he has no time limit.   I think she sees the despair on my face. She hugs me and says "The eating disorder is BIG, but you are doing great, you really are!" I leave feeling defeated, hopeless, and too weak to keep pressing into God and recovery.

I felt old and childlike at the same time.  That familiar feeling of shame starts to rise like bile in my throat, and that is when God reminds me that as long as I keep looking to him I am radiant and released of my shame.

Light

LIGHT

Psalm 18:17-19 "He rescued me from my powerful enemy; From my Foes that were too strong for me; They confronted my in the day of my disaster; But the Lord was my support; He brought me out into a spacious place;(Get This)Because He delighted in me.
28 You Lord keep my lamp burning; My God turns darkness into light.

Ephesians 1:18 I pray that you hearts will be flooded with light so that you can understand the confident hope he has given to those he called his holy people who are his rich and glorious inheritance.


1Peter 2:9 (NLT)"But you were not like that, for you are a chosen people.  You are royal priests, a holy nation, God's very own possession. As a result, you can show others the goodness of God, for he called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.


There is a common word running through these three scriptures that I happened on this past week; Light. God is trying to speak to me through His word, and I begin to wonder how this ties into the question or answer for that matter: Who am I, and what about me causes Him to "delight in me"  What is it that causes others to "delight in me"  when I find it so difficult to delight in my self.  Is it possible that God and those outside of my own body and definitely those outside of my own head see someone entirely different than I see my self?  Could they possibly see light piercing threw the darkness of the eating disorder, with each ray bringing me out of the dark places of the last few years into his wonderful light?

 God uses light to expose our strengths, but also our weakness.  It is both my strengths and weakness that he is showing me and reminding me that he has a plan and a way out for me.  As I read the above scriptures I know that he wants me to turn to him, yet I keep getting sucked back into the habits and rituals of the eating disorder.  I use my dads death as an excuse.  I get to flirt with the eating disorder again because I am grieving.  God is coming to rescue me and I turn away.  This weekend was just like the last.  I ate well on Friday night and though my desire to purge was pulling at me and calling me like a siren's song, I stopped and tried to focus on God and his promise that he will lead me out of this darkness.  I hear him whisper in my ear that I will be okay.  I wake on the Saturdays and I am okay.  It is just as he has promised.  I am rested I am strong.  I run for miles soaking in warm sun, followed by a gentle cooling breeze.  "You are doing it'' I hear him say. " You are growing stronger from the inside out."

Yet it is in those moments of growing and strength that I panic.  Who am I without the disorder.  It is as if I wear eating disorder as who I am. Then I falter.  Then I purge.   Recently I have  fallen back into the rituals that accompanied me for the past two years.  I think that some of it rises out of comfort, and some of it out of needing take some sort of inventory of body since I have agreed to stay off the scale.  So, I only get to know my weight every 2 weeks when I meet with my nutritionist.

I find I am beginning some days now with the same anorexic rituals that I retrieved from my adolescents two years ago.  As I wake to the strum and vibration of my cell phone, I begin to take inventory of my body.  It as if I think that in the  darkness of the night I have morphed into the fat ugly body that I fear.

I curl tightly into a ball, like an infant curling into it's familiar fetal position, and slowly run my hands along my legs as they unfurl.  I check to feel for the muscles and bones just under the surface of my skin unobstructed by some potential new layer of fat.  Are the veins that that scared me, yet somehow mesmerized me still protruding?  Are they still palpable?  I point and flex my toes causing calves to grow taut, and I feel for the firm ball of tissue as it contracts and relaxes under my fingers.  I need to know they can be felt and seen,

I stretch out supine under the weight of the covers.  My hands wander the length of my thighs as I feel for the 4 definite muscles that form my quads.  Can I feel each one, or have my legs become a glob of fat and other useless tissue? I feel for the line of definition along the side of my thighs, and then confirm the existence of my "dancer's hollow"  I let out the breath I had been holding.

My hands wander up over my hipbones fearing they will no longer rise above by belly, but they do.
I let out another breath that sounds more like a sigh of relief  as I realize my belly sinks leaving a space between the waistband of my pajama bottoms and the surface of my skin.  How much longer until the two will meet?  Should they meet? Will they meet if I gain the 5-6 pounds that would please everyone, but possibly me. They have never met before  even when I was 10 pounds heavier than I am now.

The assessment continues.  I palpate my body like I would a patient in the squad, but instead of looking for injuries, I am checking for flaws.  I need to feel the segments of my rectus I draw my finger around each segment hoping there is no new layer of sub-cutaneous fat.  Then I run my finger along the mid-line of the rectus until it lands on the ridge of the vertical internal scar from my hysterectomy.  I have felt the emotional scar of the procedure for years, but it is only now that I feel the physical scar.  So, now it is because of my weight and the eating disorder that physical and emotional scars are revealed

Next I feel for my ribs through my back and even through my breasts, noting the scar from the biopsy a year ago.  I think for a moment, maybe cancer would be easier than this.  The treatment either works or it doesn't.  There is a beginning  and an end.

I run my hands down one arm then the other, stopping along the way, and finally wrapping one hand around each wrist insuring my fingers still touch each-other as they encircle the bones.  I turn to my right and then to my left seeing if my belly still looks flat and intact.  And slowly get out of bed.

I know this seems like a long drawn out process, but like the eating disorder itself, it is hardwired somewhere in my brain.  I can process how my body feels, as fast as you can google eating disorders on your high speed internet.

I then go to get dressed and stand in front of the mirror as I shower and dry off for the day.  I allow my eyes to yes, survey my body, but then I allow my eyes to wander to my face.  I hear God speaking to me "Liz there is a beautiful face attached to that body.  Look her in the eyes.  Who do you see? No don't turn away in shame.  Look carefully you are not just a body, you are my daughter and I delight in you.  I delight in your transparency, your tenacity, your sensitivity, how you love me, you step away, but you love me and you keep coming back to curl up on my lap listening to me intently seeking my heart and seeking to know me.  These are just a few of the qualities that make you who you are, and remember that each time you falter and are broken, I am collecting the pieces and just wait until you see the beautiful stained glass mosaic I am creating.  It will leave you speechless!"