“Owning our story and loving ourselves through that process is the bravest thing that we will ever do.” -Brene Brown, from The Gifts of Imperfection
This is a blog I’ve been convicted to write for awhile. Every part of my flesh has been screaming, “No! It’s too embarrassing!” Forget embarrassing. This is a story of what God has done in my life and what He is DOING. To Him be the glory.
A little back story:
In October of 2009, shortly after my 21st birthday, I decided it was time for me to get healthy. At the time, I was clinically obese, carrying around way too much weight for my barely 5’0 tall frame. I joined Weight Watchers and started going to fitness classes. I became a runner, completed a half-marathon, and started wearing size small t-shirts. I received compliments left and right. People started telling me how tiny and skinny I was. For the first 21 years of my life, no one ever called me skinny. Boys in school called me fatty instead. Well, after a lot of hard work and persistence, I reached my goal weight. Happy ending right?
Not quite.
I started struggling immensely with anxiety during my senior year of college. I was stretched way too thin and my way of coping with it all was to eat, and eat a lot. This is when my binge eating habit began. Over the next year, I would go through cycles of eating healthy and then if I ate a little too much, I felt terrible and would then consume a ton of food. The excessive eating would only make feel worse and more shameful. I reached a really low point where all I wanted was to be someone else, with some other kind of problem that didn’t involve food. I started going to counseling which was helpful and encouraging but I continued to believe lies about my identity on a daily basis.
My squad launched September of 2012 and at that point, I looked healthy on the outside so it came as a shock when I confessed to my first team about my struggle with binge eating. I eventually opened up to my squad leaders and my entire squad and they received me with incredible love and support. During my time on the race, I worked through a lot of my own identity/body image issues. I learned that there is power in sharing my story with others, especially the messy parts that I would prefer to keep hidden. When I chose to be transparent before my squad, I believe chains were broken off of me because I no longer let my sin reside in the darkness. Bringing to light what was once in the darkness is so freeing which is exactly why I am writing this blog.
Binge eating is done in secret and while I was on the race, people were always around. I couldn’t hide anymore. The mental battle was still a daily fight. Never good enough. Too fat. Many women think their body size is directly related to their happiness. The smaller they are the happier they will be. From personal experience, I have learned that body size does not equal happiness. I was the smallest I’ve ever been while on the race and I was not happier because of it. I do believe losing weight and getting healthy is very empowering but if you don’t love and accept yourself as you are, no amount of weight loss can cure your insecurities.
As the end of the race was drawing near, the fear of going back to the self-destructive cycle of binge eating was constantly on my mind. My teammates continued to speak truth into me, declaring that I am a set free, transformed, beautiful, and forgiven daughter of God. I had a teammate look me dead in the eye and tell me, “Kirby, you are not fat. You are beautiful. You’re free in Christ!”
Check out part 2. I’ll share what life has been like since coming home.
