Being Thin Made Me Crazy

Being thin made me crazy, but I clung to thinness like full body armor in the face of a world full of women who are wealthier and more beautiful than I. Even after I let go of the eating disorders it was important to me to remain thin. My features are plain, and I couldn't afford any kind of wardrobe. Being thin was all I had to distinguish myself in the world.

Marriage wore me down. Gradually I gained weight as I gained confidence in Tim’s love and concern for my sanity.  Infertility made me open to any change that might increase the chance that someday I would conceive. Pregnancy changed everything because I didn't care what I had to give up to keep my baby healthy. I would sacrifice anything, even my figure. Motherhood has given me the strength to let it go once and for all.

After my son was born I realized I can’t have it all. I can’t be admirably thin and a give my son the attention he deserves. I can’t worship at the altar of thin and offer my body as a living sacrifice to Christ. I can’t compare the relative thinness of the women present in any room and truly be loving my neighbor as myself. I can’t even be thin and think about much of anything else. 

Freedom is.

Freedom is not worrying about what I look like or what I wear. Allowing God to make me beautiful in the ways He wants to. Freedom is never having to worry about what I eat.

Eating when I am hungry.

Enjoying every bite.

Giving control to the Spirit who births self control in me.

Freedom is not having to waste my time and energy in activities I don’t enjoy just to burn calories. Freedom is long walks with my husband and son. Freedom is dancing in worship. Freedom is a life all for love, all for Jesus.

Counting the Cost

A few nights ago I was lying in my bed thanking the Father for giving me a son, the desire of my heart. Gradually my thoughts shifted from praise to petitions for supernatural help in all the areas that I need to model  a Spirit-bearing life to Isaiah. I want raise my son radically aware of God's love and power. I pray that Isaiah will be a jealous lover of God, a sold-out worshiper  filled with the fire of the Holy Spirit, and empowered to serve in the ways he was created to.

Wow. These are BIG prayers, but I whisper them in my heart because I know the power of hope, when hope is in Christ Jesus.

 Still I feel uneasy because in my own life I am wrestling with how to live and love the Word of God. As a new mom  very often I feel like I don't have time to read the Bible.Scripture doesn't feed my spirit when I do study it because I am so rushed.I am embarrassed to admit that many times I have taken the attitude of "just hurry and get this over with" into my devotion times.

 I am tired of stumbling over doubts about my place in the kingdom, and the relevance of all these promises to me.

And reading the word always leaves me feeling responsible to do something and caring for myself and my child is overwhelming enough,

I am not sure I have enough energy to act.
I am not sure I am brave enough to live the gospel.
I am not sure of any of it...

Many times over the past few months I have poured all these pent-up frustrations out in a heart prayers.

This week,  Holy Spirit interrupted me. I felt the reassurance of His love for me, and the grace He is giving me everyday to be a good mom to Isaiah. Then He planted an idea into my head, "I want to be a woman of one book."

I want to want to read the Bible.

I want to love every word like I did in the beginning.

Falling in love again is going to mean changing my priorities. I have to place my relationship with God high above my need for entertainment. If I do not have time to read the Bible, then I don't have time to read any other book. But I do. I read prolifically. Everything but the one thing I need to read the most.

 Holy Spirit reminded me how becoming a mom has brought many changes to my daily routine.

 "Is it worth it?" He prodded.

"A thousand times yes," my heart answered without delay, "I love my son. I would do anything for him."

 At the same moment a light switched on in my soul, shining on a million questions,

"Shouldn't your love for God also change the way you live?"

• What would life look like if I truly meditated on His word? 
• loved Him with my whole heart? 
• loved my neighbor as myself? 
• What does it mean to me when God says that religion He "accepts as pure and faultless is looking after orphans and widows in their distress?"

I am not able to ignore the questions burning in my gut any longer. I am going to face my faith. Look it in the eye. Figure out what it means to live this. Tread deeper into the mission waters. Today I am opening my eyes. I am taking responsibility.

Starting today. For the next eighty days. I am only going to read one Book, and I am going to let the Word change me.

Anticipating Reversal

Que amasti me, fecisti me amabilem.

In loving me, you made me lovable.

~St Augustine

When I began working for the profoundly disabled was when I began to long for the reversal of all things. At first I just prayed hard for healing. My grid for knowing God as a Healer gave me faith to believe that miracles were possible. I prayed with earnest love for the people I served. But day after day, week after week, they continued to suffer. I could not wrap my mind around a why and my heart just shattered. The experience of loving the hurting brought me face to face the agonizing doubt of unanswered prayers.

But even though I didn’t see the healing or the miracles, I was convinced in my Spirit of the Father’s deep affection for the people I was serving. A reassurance came,

• that these women were some of His favorite people in the world,
• that they would be completely restored,
• that the suffering they experienced in this life would be light and momentary compared to the glorious freedom of the kingdom,
• that their stories would be honored,
• that someday in a great reversal of all things they would no longer be last, but first. Honored daughters in the kingdom of God.

With the reassurance came an overwhelming flash of love. It was as if I could feel the heart of God for myself and the people was working with. Tears streamed down my face it was just too too much.

That experience changed me. I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that God saw the suffering of the people I cared about and God saw my suffering. I began to hope for His glory instead of asking why. I began to long for the kingdom to come here, but especially at the end of time. I know in my heart that when we see Jesus face to face all that was sick, broken, wounded and disabled in each of us will be healed. He is making everything new.

I still believe that God heals body right now, here on earth, but I also know that when healing doesn’t happen His love is still powerful. One of my goals in life is to extend the healing love of Christ to the profoundly disabled. In serving others I feel His heart of love beat furiously in mine. There is urgency in His desire to communicate love to the suffering, to you, and to me.

I am open to Him right now. He loves me totally, unconditionally, and unendingly. My dreams for myself and beliefs about what truly matters are being transformed by this radical Love. This desire in me to love the disabled is so big it frightens me. It’s too big for just me, but somehow I believe the right size for God. I believe He has a plan to let me see glimpse of the reversal [we anticipate in the fullness of His Kingdom] here in this life. I am so excited Father. My eyes are on You.

Growing Up

Can you believe that soon I will be closer to thirty than to twenty? Thirty is such a grown-upish age and I know I can’t fathom that I really am approaching such a life stage. I do know this— I am as young at heart as ever. I love the charm of children and so have clung to childlike-ness in me with the tenacity of a Never-never Land urchin. Case in point: Just this past week I insisted on buying bows for my hair from the baby department in Walmart. Is this the action of a grown-up? I think not!

With my fateful 25th birthday looming, I have been reflecting on the ways I do see that the past year has grown me. I have decided that God has synchronized the challenges I have encountered to tug at me from every direction. He is using them to stretch my heart like putty. I have been spread thin, burnt-out, and heart-broken; and somehow in the tearing the place in my heart that longs for the Divine has become larger.

So maturity has come this year in a surrender:

A week ago I had a waking dream. I stood suspended in time my past was to the left of me and my future to the right. I had my arms extended and my hands balled into tight fists. I heard the whisper of God tell me to open my hands and receive the life He created for me. I realized that I’ve approached my life with an iron grip on the story I wanted to live. Growing up I just pretended the story was true, then in college I tried to manipulate my family into joining my charade.

But inside the fist is empty. The story I want is a fairytale that can never be true.

Similarly I have a vision for how my future should be and I spend countless hours and tremendous amounts of mental energy to trying to manipulate God into making my life all that I want it to be. I told Him that He should give me a pain free life to show His generous love, intentionally “forgetting” that Jesus taught, “In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.[Jn 16:33]”

But I am clenching only air because I am not the Author of the Future. I cannot dictate what will be.

As I looked to my left I saw the scars on my arm and then saw my life until now, the mistakes, the joys, the failures. When I looked to the future I saw only questions and uncertainties. I felt God telling me to open my hands to the riches he had given and would give me. All the pain, all the worry, all the failure, all the uncertainties would form me for the kingdom work He is calling me to.

After the Saturday service at Revolution I said “okay. Okay, I am scared but I surrender. I need You. I need to know where you are in this.” I closed my eyes and opened my trembling hands, as this wave of certainty smashed my former hesitations. Of course I want what God wants. I want all of it. Pain, brokenness, and redemption…

This surrender is the first blossom of the plant that has been growing in me this year. By pain its’ shoots have pierced the soil of my heart and it’s roots have cracked the foundations of my dreams for myself. God has not forced my hand in this decision to let go, but He has surrounded me with broken and suffering people to help me see how His way is the way to lasting life.
In the words of Elisabeth Elliot “The will of God is never exactly what you expect it to be. It may seem to be much worse, but in the end it's going to be a lot better and a lot bigger."



It terrified me for so long, but now that I have actually done it I am surprised that Surrender actually excites me. Instead of assuming the absence of God in my difficulties or in the suffering I see in others' lives I find in me an expectation. Instead of asking God "Where are You?" I am more often asking "Where are You?" A small shift has changed so much in me.

New eyes for someday

Tuesday morning and I’m running late. The weight of worry takes its familiar place on my back as I skim over my mental list of prayer requests. Ugh. It’s so heavy today I don’t want to leave home and face the need I know waits for me at work.


I wring my hands as I wait for the microwave to finish heating my oatmeal. Sometimes life is just so blah I want to scream. I gripe inside and pray for more gratitude.

---But thankful or not the truth is that I can’t shake the longing for a more than figurative resurrection and new birth. I don’t want to “be healed” in a way that means I am still anxious, low, and obsessive. I don’t want to preach about freedom and be stuck watching people I love suffer one more day. In this flurry of worry I think of the verse in Romans chapter 8 that always stands out to me when I catch myself groaning for deeper freedom for all creation:

I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.

Romans 8:18-21

I so want to see this freedom—the glorious freedom of the children of God One manifest in creation. Right now we have promises. We all see miracles happen sometimes, but we all also die. We have prayed and prayed and

• he still died
• they never conceived
• she continued to suffer
• he refused to get the help he needs
• our friend just got sicker and sicker.
• we remained broken

Right now too often the miracle we long for in the moment is not the miracle we receive. So Life forces the honest soul to admit, “this is not the script I would have written.” For our faith to stand in this unpredictable and short life it must be found in a resurrecting King--- who promises that death is not our ultimate end.

I can imagine the conversations we will have with each other someday —sitting at a great party, swapping stories of how Christ intervened in history to save us:

• Peter will tell of how even after he betrayed Jesus his Rabbi took him back.
• Paul will share of the Blinding Light on the Damascus road.
• A mother will tell of her worries for a wayward son and how in desperation she turned to Christ who comforted her in her grief.
• One will tell of a life-controlling addiction and Jesus’ intervention.
• Another of growing up in church and the day she fell in love with the Savior she had been taught about all her life.
• I believe that at this table will be my sisters who still struggle in the grip of Anorexia—finally free--- telling of how the Father still received them, even after they rejected themselves.
• I believe at this table will be the women I serve as a companion for--- finally healed--- telling of how despite the inexpressible suffering they experienced, Jesus never, never, never left them.

And on and on the stories will stretch--- resurrected testimonies of God’s glory[… I get chill bumps just thinking of what it will be like.] I so want sit beside my friends who right now hurt so much and know that finally the full healing we prayed and prayed for is here. The hurting is over. We can all finally see how Jesus has the final word in the suffering that it tore us up to watch.

I find tremendous encouragement in knowing that despite all my failures my life will be among the testimonies of His power. My small, unexpected, often difficult story in light of Jesus is likewise miraculous, and glorious. I am surrendered to a process of being made new and will not be God’s first failure--- This promise is what gives me hope when life continues to detour from my girlhood dreams for sharing Christ. It may not make sense right now how small and hidden service is the way I can most fully show His love but I know I am given fully to him. So this is good—a beautiful part of whole I will understand someday.

Me on purpose

Me on purpose.

Recently I have been challenging myself to turn off the CD in my mind that constantly spins,

“You are not pretty enough. You don’t work hard enough. You don’t love God enough. Not enough. Not enough. Not enough.”

These messages [in some form and degree] have come against every woman I know, and I have seen how the way a woman faces the feminine insecurity is formative--- shaping the whole course of her life. For me the messages have already threatened to destruction.

Since I first became fully aware of her at 9 years old, insecurity has been the monster on my back, the monotonous lie stuck on repeat playing every day, all day. Her whisper casts doubt on every compliment. Her lies have taken me out with depression and made me run around like a crazy woman trying to make up for all the ways I fail at life. I have tried without avail to reason with the whisper of Insecurity. I would yell back, “It’s garbage. Not true. I’m enough," but whenever I try to fight the lie she bites back—drawing blood every time. So I have found she doesn’t need a speck of truth to make me cringe under her assault,

You are worthless, lazy, ugly. Your friends are more successful. The women at the Y are more attractive. You aren’t trying hard enough… If you were better you would be thinner, you would be closer to God, you would be pregnant by now…”

So how I am refusing to engage Insecurity’s lies in my thoughts anymore? By smashing the lies.

It may seem simplistic but I trying visualization, prayer, and scripture memorization. From now on every time she whispers I am going to visualize myself smashing her CD in my mind and playing a different disk, a higher truth—the Word of God over my life:

The truth is I have spent my life chasing after God’s plan. Like my namesake, the matriarch Sarah, God has called me to a life and a world I had no grid for, and He has promised to be with me in the journey. He has made me who I am on purpose.

Here are the passages I am trying to memorize for October to root this truth in me:

John 15:16 (New American Standard Bible): "You did not choose Me but I chose you, and appointed you that you would go and bear fruit, and that your fruit would remain, so that whatever you ask of the Father in My name He may give to you.

2 Corinthians 5:17-21 (New American Standard Bible): 17Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come. 18Now all these things are from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation, 19namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and He has committed to us the word of reconciliation 20Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were making an appeal through us; we beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.

Romans 8:31-39 (New American Standard Bible): 31What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who is against us? 32He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him over for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things? 33Who will bring a charge against God's elect? God is the one who justifies; 34who is the one who condemns? Christ Jesus is He who died, yes, rather who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us.35Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? 36Just as it is written,"FOR YOUR SAKE WE ARE BEING PUT TO DEATH ALL DAY LONG; WE WERE CONSIDERED AS SHEEP TO BE SLAUGHTERED."37But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us. 38For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers,39nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Ephesians 1:3-8 (New American Standard Bible): 3Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, 4just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him In love. 5He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will, 6to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved. 7In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace 8which He lavished on us. In all wisdom and insight

God-stop while painting finger nails

I had a God-stop—a moment where I felt Christ pouring through me. Over the past several weeks one of the women I work with has been in severe pain. Since she is unable to say what hurts treating the cause of her pain is difficult and she feels helpless and afraid. She has periodically become very aggressive or spent hours screaming on and off at the top of her lungs.

Her behavior would be very frustrating if her eyes weren’t screaming her pain, “please make it go away.” Looking at her eyes—I feel her pain and helplessness, and any frustration in me melts into desperate prayer.

It’s hard to handle the fact that God does not just make the pain stop, but I have tried to learn to see His hand in the momentary reprieves while still praying for healing. One thing He has shown me is that He loves this woman so much, absolutely treasures her.

A few days ago Christ met us in her back hallway. I was sitting cross-legged on the floor beside her gently blowing on her nails to help dry the polish I had just applied when I sensed the Holy Spirit speaking to my spirit,

“Look at her. She is my beloved. It is not for you to know why she suffers so, but know this: I have not abandoned her Sarah. I have given her you. Your lips are my lips gently blowing her nail polish dry. Your heart is my heart groaning prayers of intercession before the Father. Know that I will heal her.”

Then in my mind’s eye I saw Christ sitting cross-legged next to my client. Gently cradling her hand in his nail scarred palm, head bent to blow her polish dry.

All resistance in me dissolved. The humility of Christ serving her that way became my evidence that He saw her pain, His heart broke over it all too, and someday He will heal her fully. I felt permission to be as angry as He was at the pain, permission to continue begging for an intervention knowing that, despite what it looks like, God has not abandoned us in this suffering. He has come nearer to mourn and suffer with us. In the dark night of the soul He treats us with greater tenderness lifting our eyes to tomorrow. Whispering in our spirit, “hold on not every day will be like today.”

Let me live your dream for me.

“There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, "Thy will be done," and those to whom God says, "All right, then, have it your way” - C.S. Lewis

Tonight a college friend confided to me that God was opening her heart to new dreams, new possibilities.


She seemed excited, nervous, swelling with anticipation. The question of her heart shone through her eyes, “Where will God take me? How I am I being called to serve in this kingdom?”

Talking with Ruth felt as though I was staring at senior- in-college-Sarah in the mirror. Just three years ago these same questions confronted me. Like many of my classmates I was all about serving where I was. I reached out to my campus as an R.A. and a small group leader, but I sensed the whole time this vague call of destiny and as graduation loomed nearer I needed details.

In many ways this sense of destiny had been haunting me since I was a small girl. It seems my heart has always burned to be in the middle of the next great move of God. A favorite scripture during my teens was this portion of Psalm 139,

For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother's womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.

As I sought God's purpose in creating me my heart was captured by this image of the entirety of my life being known already by God . On days where my future seemed dark I comforted myself with the idea that God had already written a beautiful role for my life in His book. This promise of destiny kept pressing into God throughout college. I wanted so much to make the world a better place.

My senior year of college I read about how the Spirit is working in Asia and Africa, and dreamed of being God’s vessel there.

I prayed prayers of abandon, “God I’ll go anywhere. I’ll do anything. Just let my life bring you glory.”But two and a half years later I never made to any farther than Kentucky and now I’m back in McPherson and God is teaching my heart to dream his dream for me.



That is “to enrich the life of those I serve in every way possible,” [DSGP mission statement]

Over the past months I have become convinced that becoming a Direct Support Professional is a calling not merely a job [though we who serve don’t often see it that way at first.] We are called to listen, to protect, to challenge, to care,

to serve in the shadows
so others can have an opportunity to shine.

If while I was in college seeking-out-my-destiny you had told me that I would be working in disability supports I would have told you “you’re confused.” Twenty-two year old me had dreams of getting my doctorate, dreams of working overseas, and writing books. I had layers of pain I had not faced, and pride I didn’t know about yet.

I was blind to the ways that my dreams for overseas ministry were really dreams for me. I thought I was being so self-sacrificing when I moved back to McPherson to get married. I back-burnered my dreams to support Tim’s dream. I was still praying , “God I’ll go anywhere, do anything..”

But as the breadwinner for our small family I told myself destiny would wait until after my husband’s graduation. Clearly what I needed was any job where I could spend time with people and bring home a paycheck. So at first that is all my job at Disability Supports was for me. I gave it my all and enjoyed the company of co-workers and clients.

I didn’t know how much compassion I would feel for the women I began to work with. I didn’t know that this experience would shake and strengthen my faith. I didn’t know a job could be so much fun--- how there would be times I would laugh with these women so hard it hurt. I didn’t know how much care there was in me.

When I was working at Oakdale my co-worker remarked on my heart for children, “Sarah this is a gift and you truly love it. Embrace it. The blessing of the Lord makes rich and He adds no sorrow to it.” I got that.

Working with children has rarely seemed like work to me because I love it so. Today I am finding care-giving blessed in me, just like working with children.

Now I do know and am convinced that this care- giving was a huge part of God’s dream for me. For right now anywhere is McPherson, KS, and anything is pouring out my love and energy to serve an amazing community.

These gifts bring a beautiful humbling to my heart.

This humbling is described in a storybook I often read with one of the women I work with. It tells the tale of three trees. The each of the trees in his own way dreamed of achieving greatness and glorifying God. The items they ended up being made into were common, even humble. They thought nothing would come of their dreams, but in the end they were used by Christ. Then they realized that the Savior King had given their lives greater purpose than they could ever have dreamed of.

Whenever I read this book with her my mind drifts to the purposes and dreams God must have for the two of us. In our community our lives are unassuming, people can and some do overlook us.

I am learning to see even this smallness is a gift because of the awareness of our need for God it creates in us. In this vein I have begun to meditate on the exhortation of Peter, a humble fisherman turned apostle, “Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you. Cast all your cares upon him, for he cares for you.” (1 Peter 5:5b-6).”

And here’s the hardest truth in the calling I stumbled into-- it'll break your heart. It’s difficult to work in supports many days because your heart hurts for the people you serve. This is the way that my job shakes my faith because I spend so much time in prayer for healing and understanding that sometimes it is hard to see the small blessings—the momentary calm, the growing sense of communication—as evidence of grace.

I am constantly having to re-center myself on Christ. In light of Him I see clearer. I realize that the willingness to help carry the real pains of another is evidence of a greater capacity for love growing in me. On the days when I return home from work crying and praying, Christ is teaching me that loving will always mean hurt. I have found that He is bandaging and healing my heart as it is stretched by the suffering.

A few years ago , right before I graduated from college, I heard an interview with Bono where he quoted a Christian leader. His advice has stuck with me all this time, “Stop asking God to bless what you’re doing. Find out what God’s doing. It’s already blessed.”

Tonight I have the blessing of know that right now I am where God has led me. He is teaching me here. He is working in me [willing, caring, and desperately inadequate] to show his love to the women I get to serve. He has answered my prayers and is letting me live His dreams for me.

Somewhere over the neon rainbow:

I took a break from writing.

Partly because life got so busy at the end of August. School started for Tim again. I got full time [hooray], but am currently still working a couple of my old shifts each week until the company hires for them. Tim got into two car accidents in one week-- parked vehicles. We celebrated our one year anniversary.

Partly because life got so inexpressible. Maybe I was just worn out but when I arrived home from work at the end of the day I literally had no words to describe the emotions churning in me. Not that they were all bad just numerous… and intense- a neon rainbow of feeling, spanning the spectrum:

• from elation
• to frustration
• to helplessness
• and hopelessness
• then faith
• and finally to a profound experience of love,
  

a deeper love than I knew existed.

It’s mid- September now, and , though my work schedule has yet to slow, I have gotten into more of a rhythm. Though the hood of our 1996 Dodge Stratus is forever dented I am happy to announce that Tim and I are emerging from the neon rainbow fog more in love than ever if still rumpled in spirit.


As I gazed at the reflection of the past weeks in my rear-view mirror all is still a haze. The lessons I absorbed as a result are scattered:

1. Car insurance is expensive. Car accidents are generally more expensive. Be glad you have insurance.
2. Nobody is perfect. The only way to find peace is to forgive everything and everyone at the end of the day [including yourself.]
3. People are different. It is better to relate to every person as an individual than to try to make blanket rules about communication.
4. Despite the cultural insinuation that it is impossible[ or just plain boring] to only ever give your lips, body, heart, and spirit to one other person, it is possible [and it is good.]
5. Even more amazing is this-- it is also possible to fall more deeply in love with your spouse everyday of your life.
6. Humans are by design diamonds in the rough. In you there are layers of pain you don’t even know about yet, and talents you have not yet discovered.
7. What is true and what appears as truth are often two different things.
8. God is love. He loves us broken. He does not want anyone to reject herself or to abandon the hope that the Father’s love will set her free from all the lies that keep her bound.

It would be silly for me to attempt to form a cohesive narrative from these highlights so I will leave them as they are. I hope they make you smile. If you have the time and energy, pray for me. Pray for my husband. Pray for the women I work with. In retrospect my eyes are open to the ways that God is giving us peace--- granting more clarity where there was only mystery, working even the miserable and the hard points out for our good. So praise Him for a beautiful hope and perspective, and ask that He will also comfort our hearts in the face of a growing awareness of all that is broken around us.

The Doorway

A dear friend of mine told me this week, “You are standing in a doorway not a tunnel, just a few more steps and you will be there.”

Where is there you ask?



There is the stuff of my dreams. A land with fewer headaches, muscle aches, and heart aches. A land:

1. where truth is heard louder than lies,
2. free fear of abandonment and filled with trust reborn
3. saturated with God’s presence and love

There is the true land of plenty… where I am no longer hungry, alone, and afraid.

Fear has told me time and again that there does not exist. “There is a fairytale. Here is all that exists.” one day she whispers and then the next, “why would God allow a girl like you to ever go there?”

I am ashamed to admit that for the past years I have been buying her lies once again. Since middle school she has been a relentless tormentor of my soul. She makes her voice sound so much like my own that I am fooled into believing her lies are my own thoughts and desires. Even when I can recognize the constant deceit dripping from her tongue-

I can’t silence its ping. ping. ping. ping. ping…

I am four years in recovery and Fear still tells me I am:

• a shallow girl,
• only decorative—empty on the inside,
• socially discardable,
• undeserving of nourishment,
• always going to be hungry,
• too weak to win this.

I got so tired of fighting these lies that I gave up, ran to the corner, and covered my ears--- “you’re right. I will never be wholly free. The thoughts in my head are too twisted, my body too conditioned to fear gaining weight, to completely kick this thing.”

This week my friend’s words reached me here in my corner-of-doubting-the-Father’s-love. She challenged me that it is really not so many steps from here to there. The journey to here has been difficult. Four years ago Jesus met me in the clutches of a disorder that fragmented my emotions, disfigured my body, and was slowly driving my mind towards madness. People may think this melodramatic, but I know He stood in the way of death. He held out his hand to me—a throw away girl, a basket-case in the middle of her final breakdown, and pulled me of the mire of self-hate Fear had sucked me into.

You’d think after getting in so deep with an eating disorder that I needed divine intervention to save my life I would make a speedy exodus from my task-master once out of the pit.

But at the top of the pit was a pitch black room and though I could not see them I knew from the yowling, the whispers, the crying; that surrounded me in all directions that Jesus had lifted me into my own Valley of the Shadow of death. His voice, his message has been constant: “follow me. follow me into all the things that most terrify you about yourself.”

It is my voice that has wavered. One day the dark will not be so scary and I will confidently follow the voice that leads in darkness. I will begin to believe that we are finally gaining ground. Then the next day Fear will hit me hard again and again--- forcing me to retreat. So like the children of Israel wandering around the desert I have wandered--- only four years so far, but it may as well be forty.

I got free enough to keep people [besides my husband] off my back. I have continued to control Fear to the point of maintaining weight—not health. I survive in a perpetual state of headaches, confusion, and fatigue, but here’s the real rub my heart is broken in this struggle. Fear has never ever relaxed her grip on my heart. I’ve just learned to cling to a faith that allows me to limp towards another day.

As I have talked with friends over the last couple of weeks I have realized (1) that I am truly not at a healthy point in my thinking, and (2) this poisoned thinking is not my heart.

No matter how hard the lies batter my soul they simply are not true. I don’t want control. I don’t want to live my life fearfully protecting my needs or guarding my wounds. I know anorexia is empty and I hate it. I do believe that the name of Jesus is exalted above the lies of this culture. I know I am a daughter of God. He has given me a beauty that captivates his eye and a purpose that both transcends this life and is lived in the nitty-gritty details of serving the disabled and loving my family. These are not empty words, but truth that nourishes my starving soul and hope that gives me strength enough to walk through the door.

As I work the courage to try again in this area I keep thinking about something I read in the Message:

God means what he says. What he says goes. His powerful Word is sharp as a surgeon's scalpel, cutting through everything, whether doubt or defense, laying us open to listen and obey. Nothing and no one is impervious to God's Word. We can't get away from it—no matter what.

Now that we know what we have—Jesus, this great High Priest with ready access to God—let's not let it slip through our fingers. We don't have a priest who is out of touch with our reality. He's been through weakness and testing, experienced it all—all but the sin. So let's walk right up to him and get what he is so ready to give. Take the mercy, accept the help.

Reading these words now I remember that Jesus wasn’t the one abandoning me in the dark. Though I haven’t always been able to see what He is up to, I have heard his voice calling out, “this is the way,” and “don’t be afraid Sarah, I will never leave you.”

And He hasn’t.

So this time I am going to muster enough courage to follow His call. This time it’s going to be different. God helping me this time I will break all ties with Fear. I will step through the door-way into freedom---and keep my eyes on Jesus knowing that He loves to give me the grace and help in my time of need.