I started 2018 too afraid to even eat chips with my family as we watched the ball drop sitting on my living room floor.
If anyone looked at my life from an outside perspective as 2018 started I would have seemed like the happiest and healthiest person around. I went to crossfit 6 days a week and my diet pretty much consisted of only meats, veggies, and fruit. Looking back, I might have been physically healthy, but I was not mentally healthy. I was walking in a lot of fear of food, especially sugar. After my eating disorder I never was able to reteach myself what a healthy relationship with food was, instead I just cut everything out in order to have a consistent diet so I would never have to think about food. If I ever strayed from my simple and repetitive diet, I would mentally beat myself up and try in every way to ‘undo’ what I had eaten.
I ended 2018 eating rolled ice cream sitting with my team amongst thousands of people at the lantern festival in Chiang Mai, Thailand.
When I signed up on the race a lot of people asked me what I was hoping to get out of the race. I always just said to grow more in dependence on the Lord. While that is true, I realized quickly in month 1 that what I really wanted was to walk in the freedom that the Lord has won for me. I was tired of saying no to going out to ice cream with my team because I just couldn’t bring myself to eat sugar. I was tired of trying to work out harder every time I had corn tortillas for dinner to ‘make up’ for eating carbs. I was tired of telling people that I didn’t like sugar, when in reality I was just too scared to gain the World Race 15.
At month 1 debrief I came to one of my squad leaders and poured out my heart to her after I had been beating myself up all day for putting flavoring in my coffee. I explained that I was tired of feeling like this, and she told me to begin to pray that I would be able to walk in the freedom that the Lord had won for me. She told me that I will only ever have these opportunities once, and I don’t want to miss out on anything because of my ED. I knew she was right, and from that day on I prayed every morning to be able to walk in that freedom.
I found that freedom when I ate real ice cream for the first time in years on November 18, 2018.
It has been a little over a month since I have begun walking in this freedom, and wow, it is beautiful. I can go out to ice cream with my team to celebrate us all being fully funded. I can work out every day knowing that I do it simply because I love crossfit, not for any other reason. I can bake cookies with my squad to celebrate Christmas, and drink the homemade eggnog that the guys on our squad made. And I can eat rolled ice cream with some of my favorite people as we welcome in 2019 from the Way Chiang Man Gate in Thailand with hundreds of lanterns floating all around us.
2018, you have been amazing, and full of so much growth, but I couldn’t be more excited to walk into 2019 in the complete and utterly beautiful freedom that the Lord has won for me.
– Michelle
