food will lose it’s stronghold. in Jesus name.
I have struggled with food for 8 years now. I have trained my brain to overthink everything that I eat. I check the calories of things simply to check them. I compare and compare and, with every thought, I compare. I remember what I eat like my life depends on it. I am addicted to weighing myself. I have struggled with food for 8 years now.
I have been open about depression. anxiety, and even self harm. I have been an “open book” as far as mental illness goes… but eating always seemed more shameful. It felt like I couldn’t talk about it because if I did… I don’t know, people would watch. watch what I eat or what I don’t eat, or when I do and when I don’t. I’ve been scared. so scared. With eating… you can’t really hide if you talk about it. It’s hard to hide when people know. It is the scariest thing to talk about because once you do, there is no going back. It is so scary… frick. Right now God is doing some crazy things in my heart… and in my mind and with my thoughts. And it needs to be shared. I don’t want to hide anymore. I want to speak boldly about what God is doing. I want people to care enough to watch. It needs to be talked about. So I’m gonna talk about food. Like really talk about it.
My struggle with food goes pretty far back actually… and if you want to hear the full story hmu. It’s just too much to write about right now. So, for now, we are gonna talk a little bit about senior year. Towards the end of the year I went through this crisis that a lot of seniors in high school go through. That crisis that stems from feeling like your world is ending because high school is? ya know. I felt as if everything I was feeling was normal and exciting and my future was so full. I tricked my mind into thinking that the way that I was acting, the things that what I was doing, the feelings I was feeling, were all completely normal. That I had a right to give into every addicting thought. I realize now that with every thought, feeling, and action I was reaching, or maybe desperately grasping, is a better way to explain it, for anything and everything that I could take into my own hands. I needed anything. anything that I could control. Even if it was better off left alone. Even if it meant I had to fake it. Even if it meant putting myself first. I needed control. And I acted on it, absentmindedly and totally aware all at the same time. As you may assume, It lead me into some dark places. I was ceasing control: recklessly and selfishly. I lost friends. I lost trust. I lost respect. I lost weight. I lost a lot of weight. Sometimes when you’re so caught up increasing control you start to loose it. In this process of playing 2 different people you forget who you actually are and everything starts to fall apart. You feel the waves pull you deeper and deeper and all of a sudden you’re so deep you don’t even know where the shore is. You’re so deep you wonder why the heck you started swimming in the first place. You realize that you were so desperately trying to gain control, that in the process… you lost it. I lost a lot in those two short, but never ending, months of senior year… a lot. but for now, we are just going to talk about the weight. 22 pounds actually. In the span of two months I lost 22 pounds.
Alright. now I’m going to drop the poetic bull crap and be real with you. Once one thing came out, everything did, & just as quick as I lost the weight I was able to gain a lot of it back. I was healed as quick as I was hurt. great. I was ready for the world race, I was back to normal weight, I had come to terms with the pain I went through and couldn’t wait to get started with this new season. I didn’t realize that although, physically I was fixed, mentally, nothing had changed. Fast forward to month 3 in Guatemala. God had been, and still is, teaching me about His love. Teaching me that in order to love, first I needed to be loved. I needed to understand what it felt like to BE loved. In all of this the Lord began to reveal the stronghold that food had on my mind and on my thoughts. He began to reveal that this pain I went through senior year was actually a result of the way I’ve been thinking for 8 years now. Me losing this weight, was only the tip of the iceberg. Now here is where you need to listen closely… In all the years of trying to “fix myself” I always thought it was about the weight or the image or the calories or whatever. I thought in order to get better I just needed to not care about the way I looked… But through some deep inner healing this is what I realized: In order to feel the love of Jesus and actually understand his love for me I needed to allow his thoughts to become intertwined with mine… and it wasn’t the image I had of myself that didn’t align with Jesus. It was my thoughts. It was that with every morning my mind was controlled by one thing. food. Each day my every thought went through this filter of food food food. My day revolved around what I was going to have for lunch or what I was going to eat as a snack and when I was going to eat this snack. I’d wake up thinking about dinner and go to bed thinking about breakfast. With every house we were invited into I wondered if they were going to offer us Pepsi and if they did, was I going to accept it, and if I did would my team look down on me, or would they look down on me if I didn’t accept it. These thoughts would run rampant. and I would let them. Every thought was filtered through this brick wall of food. It held my mind captive. chains, that with each meal for the past eight years, have grown stronger and stronger. Thoughts that I have justified time and time again. Actions that were masked as steps towards healing, but were actually suppressing the one place that needed to be healed, my mind. food food food. And the crazy thing is… I didn’t even know I did it. I didn’t know it wasn’t normal for your whole day to revolve around what you decide to eat or what you don’t and what your mind had to say about it. I didn’t know… then Jesus told me that where my mind was, my heart was also. And I didn’t have to search very far to find where my mind was. Where was it you ask? you guessed it! food. Always on food. I became overwhelmingly aware of each thought that went through this filter. I realized that if I saw the world through the lens of, I don’t know, JESUS, I’d understand his love just a little bit more. I’d understand that when Jesus saw me He didn’t see a girl who’s mind was controlled by food, but He saw a daughter. Somewhere along the way I had made food an idol. I had allowed it to retake the frekin throne of my heart… I replaced Jesus Christ, with FOOD. I realized that I never understood how much Jesus loved me because for so much of my life I thought Jesus thought like me… I thought his mind worked like mine. The Lord helped me realize that I don’t want food to sit on a throne in my life. It is where Jesus is supposed to be. So I told my team. I told them the thoughts, actions, and chains. I told them that I wanted freedom. That I needed freedom. That I deserved freedom. and they prayed for me that night. They sat around me while I cried. They broke chains that had held me captive for 8 years. They brought me to the feet of the Lord.
Now the reason I am writing this blog in the first place. Last week was the start of a new year. I sat outside and asked Jesus what promises he had for me this year. He sat with me and spoke some crazy things over me. He promised me restoration and freedom and crazy God given dreams. He laughed with me and told me things like, this year I was finally going to learn how to do a backflip and in the same breath told me He would restore relationships I thought were lost forever. sheesh. He spoke crazy words. crazy words. That night I sat in a circle with my squad and I listened as they stood up one by one and declared the promises that God had given them. I stood up and surprised by my words, I declared that that food would lose its stronghold. in Jesus name. and in that moment the Lord held my hands and made me a promise. He held me and told me that in 2020 He was going to retake my mind. a promise that meant freedom from shackles that have held me captive for 8 years. a promise. His promise. Jesus told me that by the end of the year 2020, food will be nothing but food. and Jesus… Jesus will be everything.
Now, as I am writing out this blog this is what I realize… this whole food thing captured my mind in 6th grade. It began to captivate me 8 years ago. It began when I thought I had to measure up to be someone. Food began to replace Jesus In 2012… now. Get this. In the United States we are on a different calendar year than Ethiopia. Wanna know what year it is in Ethiopia? It’s 2012.
Jesus has been cultivating this ground for me. Jesus has promised me freedom from the moment I thought I lost it. Jesus is restoring pain. taking away. renewing, fixing, rebuilding. He took me back to 2012. He took me back to 2012 just to show me his promise of FREEDOM. absolute freedom. He has brought me to my knees and broken every chain. He holds me in His arms and looks me in my eyes and says “Lan, I have always been faithful. I have never left you. I have promised my daughter freedom. You, sweet Lan, know freedom. I will reclaim. Every lie will be renewed in my hands. I have taken this treasure and put it in jars of clay. I have saved this for you. This stronghold will be broken. a promise. my promise”
a promise: In 2020 food will lose its stronghold. In Jesus name.
