The lady I babysit for needed me to stay later with her kids, so by the time I had returned home Tim had already started lunch. Instead of thanking him, I began to discuss the nutrition of the food he was preparing. In my head I knew everything he had made was healthy, but the fear in my stomach and chest revolted against eating “so much.”
So I went off on this tirade about how for lunch I like to eat 1 carbohydrate, 1 protein, and 2 vegetables… but if you added cheese to the vegetable that made it a vegetable and a protein, and if you prepared the food in oil it became more difficult to stomach.
Tim looked at me and announced, “I hate cooking for you. I can never please you. I’m mad at myself for never knowing what to make.”I knew then I was being unreasonable. That the fear I try to bury in me, had again raised her ugly head. I wanted to make amends with Tim, but couldn’t while the gripof fear still clutched my heart. I went into the bedroom and knelt low in the closet so my face touched the floor.
I was thinking so many things at once:
- I hate you; you’re so dramatic.
- He should know. He should understand. He married a woman with an eating disorder. I told him.
- I hate you; you have an eating disorder.
- God help me. Why don’t you help me? I hate this.
- What if I never shake this… what if she [anorexia] kills me? What if she kills my children?
And memories played like movies in my mind.
- First grade Sarah. The girls in my class where fun of me for being fat. They say “You are so fat we can’t fit between your chair and the wall to pass your desk.”…. and I think I can’t get fat again.
- Third grade Sarah. I am eating fourth plate of food at the buffet and my mother scolds me for eating too fast. “People are looking at you,” she says, but I am still hungry… and I think I can’t be full again.
- Eleventh grade Sarah. Finally giving the demon anorexia full permission to possess my soul, in exchange for the stamina to starve myself. She promises “I will treat you better than God. I will give you all that your heart desires.”… and I am still so deceived...
I see how even this afternoon as I bowed in my closet… shaking my fist at God for not healing me. I have bent my knee again to anorexia, and heeded her whisper. I have again worshiped the goddess of thin, and I have become like her--- consumed with shallow preoccupations.
Even in this moment of perspective I can feel the tug of anorexia. God is silent, and she has had such a hold on my emotions for so long… that even though I recognize her distorting whispers in the insecurities plaguing my mind. I entertain the thought that perhaps God has given her my soul. I hear her whisper, “You did this to yourself, Sarah. You deserve your inner hell and you deserve damnation”
Trembling I realize…
She’s right….
she’s right… I cannot free myself from her grip. I cannot be good enough to earn salvation.
and as tears pour down my cheeks... I see the Cross, far in the distance... and I think again about how I am only saved by Grace… I can't stop crying.
Ten minutes later I apologize to Tim [who is blaming himself because it’s not helpful for him to criticize me for food struggles] and try to make up for my meanness by small talk. We both know I need to change. I know I need to fight instead of giving up [tonight I had popcorn and light yogurt for dinner as I watched America’s Next Top Model. I am not helping myself.]
but I thank God that as it says in the 1 Peter 5:10-11 (MSG): “Jesus gets the last word. Yes, He does.” and that in truth I am not expected to and could never earn the right to be loved and redeemed by my Lord,
The Apostle Paul wrote in his letter the the church at Ephesus,
It wasn't so long ago that you were mired in that old stagnant life of sin. You let the world, which doesn't know the first thing about living, tell you how to live. You filled your lungs with polluted unbelief, and then exhaled disobedience. We all did it, all of us doing what we felt like doing, when we felt like doing it, all of us in the same boat. It's a wonder God didn't lose his temper and do away with the whole lot of us. Instead, immense in mercy and with an incredible love, he embraced us.
He took our sin-dead lives and made us alive in Christ. He did all this on his own, with no help from us! Then he picked us up and set us down in highest heaven in company with Jesus, our Messiah. Now God has us where he wants us, with all the time in this world and the next to shower grace and kindness upon us in Christ Jesus. Saving is all his idea, and all his work. All we do is trust him enough to let him do it. It's God's gift from start to finish! We don't play the major role. If we did, we'd probably go around bragging that we'd done the whole thing! No, we neither make nor save ourselves. God does both the making and saving. He creates each of us by Christ Jesus to join him in the work he does, the good work he has gotten ready for us to do, work we had better be doing.Eph 3:1-10 MSG
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