My last week in the DR was really busy. I was saying my goodbyes to my new friend and sister in Christ, Dianna, I was putting together (very last minute) the Lifehouse Everything skit for Guatupita, I stepped in to be a temoprary team leader while our leader was gone, we were packing for Ireland, AND God was trying to reveal things to me that I had been struggling with for over a year.. so I’m sorry I’m just now getting around to writing about it, but I had a lot on my plate:)
Over the past 2 years, I have gained over 40lbs.
Shocking, right? 1.That a girl would post that for the world to see 2.to also write about it and 3.because thats a lot of weight!
Now that I’ve put that out there, I’m going to move on to the point and I hope you can too.
For someone who is just over 5ft tall.. or lets be honest here-for anyone, that is a lot of weight and really unhealthy. So last year when I “got good” I started really fighting to get healthy again but nothing seemed to work. Everytime I’d take one step forward in excercising or dieting I’d go back two steps. My weight no longer became the issue as much as the self-control part of it. I didn’t understand. I had given up so many bad habits with drinking, partying, and all these other lifestyle changes. I didn’t understand why God wasn’t giving me the strength to overcome this battle too.
These prayers and failed attempts continued for litterally an entire year. It was always a sticky situation. No one ever thinks its okay for a girl my age to diet or try to lose weight unless they are very obesse. Its also something that everyone feels the need to comment on if they see it happening. And because there is such a fear of eating disorders, most people notice when a girls eating habits change- even if it is for the better.
Because eating habits are so carefully watched, and because I knew I needed someone to hold me accountable for overeating, I decided to tell some people that I was trying to lose weight. This could have been a great thing, but because I was so ashamed/ uncomfortable about my eating habits- it made things worse. To ease the sting in moments where I would slip up and indulge, I turned what really was a struggle for me, into something that was a joke. No it wasn’t a point and laugh kind of joke, but everyone grew to beleive that its not that important of an issue with me and that I was never really serious. It was all too comon for me to say I was going on a diet and then eating a whole pizza the next day.
As the weight, frustration, and bad habits were rising inside of me, I lowered the seriousness of the issue through jokes on the outside. Until finally, I broke. I couldn’t take it anymore. It was far past a weight issue or looks issue. It no longer seemed anywhere near funny. I was dirtying up the temple that GOD HIMSELF made for me. I was losing focus on HIM because of food. Whether eating it or avoiding it, food became my focus. I even became frustrated with GOD. I started wondering why HE was not giving me the self-control that I had been praying for and striving for and wondering why HE would allow it to go this far.
Late one night in the DR, I was sitting on the roof and tears came to my eyes and I realized it was time to talk to someone more than just my friends. I called my mom hoping for the best. I knew that this was a conversation that had a 90% chance of making things worse- not because of my mom but because she is a mom, and most mothers that get a call from their crying daughter about weight have one answer,”baby, you are beautiful and you do not need to worry about your weight or what you eat. you look fine, just the way God made you.”
Instead, Shev blew me out of the water. She started to give me the 90% answer but she knew I wasn’t having it. She could see that this was not a self image issue or a weight issue. She saw this was a focus issue and a self-control issue (props to Shev again for hearing me and not the average girl). Then my mom shared something so simple yet life changing. She told me,
“everything you do, you do out of fear or love.”
She pretty much gave me the glasses to look through and see everything that was confusing me and frustrating me with perfect 20/20 vision. The second I started applying that to my eating habits, I realized what was happening. When I was eating healthy and being intentional about cleaning up the temple, I was doing it out of love for GOD and the body HE has given me. I had been confident about that before, which I think made it harder when I would slip up (because I saw it as me not acting in love towards GOD). The thing that I had never seen was the fear aspect. I knew I loved food but I knew I wasn’t eating out of love for food. I had never even thought that I might possibly be eating out of fear until that moment.
In that train of thought, big dots connected. I knew I had eaten for comfort, but never put the pieces together that there was more behind that. Then I saw that I was eating out of fear that I wouldn’t be comforted unless I comforted myself with food. Then I began to think about what else would make me fearful about eating healthy. It seemed silly to think anyone would be fearful of eating correctly, most girls are fearful of not eating correctly.
But once I started thinking that way, a flood gate of memories opened up. I opened up memories of high school that I’d rather keep closed. I started thinking back to when I worked so hard to get healthy and lose weight. I started only eating when I was hungry and waking up at 5am to run(even though I HATE to run) and instead of people being proud of my hard work and the changes I had made to become healthy- people freaked out.
“Friends” began to constantly watch what I ate and tell others that I didn’t eat, because I would rarely want the unhealthy school lunches. Rumors were started about how I was on crack- which is almost funny because thats the farthest thing from the truth. Boys would tell me I looked gross because my slinder apperence wasn’t near as appealing as my curvy one. And people from church, who had never felt the need to talk to me before, would come up and practically tell me I had an eating disorder and that shouldn’t be doing that to my body.
It sucked. Obviously, with that kind of feedback, it didn’t tke long for me to not only give up my new healthy habits but to also make new habits of excessive eating and indulging. I began to eat a lot when I wasn’t hungry because I’d rather do something that was bad for me and that I enjoyed, than have people consistantly talk about my weight. It took about a year for me to start packing on the pounds but obviously once it started I also picked up habits I couldn’t just lay down.
Now don’t get me wrong, I think there are moments when if you are guinuenly worried about someones weight that you should say something, but it has always made me sooo mad that people thought it was okay to say something to someone who they think is under weight but to sit there and watch their neighbor killing themselves by what they put in their mouth and no one ever say a word.
Just a little reminder, gluttony of any kind is a sin.
And yes, I believe we are freed from the condemnation on sin because of Jesus, but do we really want to slow down or miss out on the work HE is doing in our lives because of something as silly as food?? In [Proverbs 23] is says:
1 When you sit to dine with a ruler,
note well what is before you,
2 and put a knife to your throat
if you are given to gluttony.
3 Do not crave his delicacies,
for that food is deceptive.
Those are some pretty heavy words. I think that too often we get so focused on what we see as “big” struggles that we never deal with the little ones that plague the majority of us.
So in conclusion to this whole blog, I just want to remind everyone that we all struggle and every struggle is important to work on. satan doesn’t want to make us all serial killers to keep our focus from GOD if all it takes is the distraction of food or “success”. And the easiest way to determine why you are doing things is just to ask that simple, but profound question:
“Am I doing this out of fear, or out of love?”
