Before the Race I posted a blog entitled How The Darkness Blinds You, where I shared a little bit of my testimony and the things I struggled with before coming to know the Lord. I will share the breakthrough I experienced this week, but first I want to give some more background.
For a little over a decade of my life I struggled with an eating disorder. That was my crutch, that was my downfall. I wasn’t big on drugs, or overtaken by alcohol. I did rebel a decent amount in high school and drank at parties, but I wasn’t addicted. I was addicted to weight loss, to being thin, to looking and being ‘perfect’. It consumed me and everything I did. It consumed my thoughts and destroyed many of my relationships. It’s all I thought about and all I meditated on.
Come my Sophomore year of college I began to develop more confidence in myself, and my addiction, my disorder, stopped manifesting in the same ways. I no longer dieted the same way, or obsessed nearly as aggressively, but the self deprecation, and self loathing continued. However, because I was no longer acting on my thoughts, I considered myself healed. I convinced myself I had grown out of it, that I didn’t struggle any more. I convinced myself that any self deprecating thoughts that arose were obviously just natural for a woman in today’s society.
Yet I was wrong. So very wrong. The past couple years I haven’t been busy healing my wounds, I’ve been covering them, hiding them under layers and layers of bandages, convincing myself that they no longer existed.
The Race is a challenge for a health nut. I greatly value my ability to eat fruits and veggies, to cook healthy, lean meals, and workout when and how I want. I knew coming into the Race that this would be my biggest struggle.
The first half of the Race was okay, I relinquished the control, it was challenging but not impossible. The limited work-out schedule, and less-than-ideal diet didn’t produce as horrible results as I anticipated. It was far from ideal, but it stretched my expectations and my impression of myself.
However, that phase has ended, and now things are starting to fall apart. I am sick and tired of not having control over this aspect of my life. I’ve grown to realize that a lot of my false confidence over the past few years has been a result of me finally working to achieve the idea of ‘perfection’ that I so desperately longed for. I was finally achieving the threshold that I considered beautiful; clear tan skin, shiny, freshly highlighted, blonde hair, a lean, toned, thin, tan body. All the things I wanted my whole life were finally coming to fruition and therefore my pursuit of perfection was filling me with a false joy.
Fast forward here, to the end of month 7. I’ve grown more in my relationship with the Lord in 7 short months, than I have in my entire life. I’m more of the woman I want to be internally, I’m learning how to be a better daughter, a better friend, girlfriend and sister. I’m learning more about my Heavenly Father and how to put my love and trust in Him, and yet quite often that gets overshadowed by my physical downfalls. The constant change in environment and poor diet has resulted in poor skin, my highlights are far overgrown and my hair is no longer the bright vibrant blonde I desire. My muscles have lost a lot of their definition, and with cultures demanding that I cover everything from my shoulders to my ankles, I’m growing paler with each passing moment. As these frustrations and insecurities continue to grow and overwhelm me, it’s become clear that I never healed the gaping wounds inside of me. The Race has been slowly peeling back the veil that I’ve so desperately adorned over the years. It’s stripping me of all the shallow attributes I’ve chosen to put my pride and identity in, and it’s left me with just…me.
That’s hard, and scary, but a blessing if I choose to press into it. Which finally brings me to this week.
Everyday we, the girls of Radical Pursuit, have team time, and each day a different teammate hosts. Tuesday was Taylor’s day and she decided to have the team listen to a favorite podcast of hers, Woman’s Hurdles, by Matt Chandler (The Village Church Sermons).
I won’t give the whole thing away, but the jist was that the majority of women’s sin is driven by two factors, Comparison and Perfectionism. He argues that these two desires are the downfall of the female population. And I would agree.
The Lord used this podcast to completely rock my world. By the time it was over, my head was tucked down and I was sobbing into my knees. Never before had I realized how sinful and detrimental my behavior was. Never did I realize how unnatural and unhealthy it was. We live in a society where every woman criticizes herself in one way or another, where body image is a constant source of worship, and where we tell each other that it’s okay. I never acknowledged it for the idolatry that it is, that I’ve put my physical appearance before my God every day of my life, and that I spoke death over myself with such overwhelming consistency, yet never acknowledged or anticipated consequences.
The podcast humbled me within minutes, it showed me how this obsession that our society enables, was stealing all my joy and peace right out from under my feet. It revealed to me that there is an inner peace available to me, one far greater than I have ever experienced in my life, and I can achieve it, if I allow myself to heal my past hurts.
Since about ten years old I’ve been filling this vault in the depths of my spirit with lies, with hatred, with inflicted wounds, with regrets, with resentment against myself and others, with memories and offenses I refuse to get ride of, with pain and self loathing, and unmet expectations. I’ve been stockpiling all this crap in a vault for over a decade. Then, I spent the last 2 years burying it under 6-feet of dirt, convincing myself that it no longer existed. I believe that the World Race handed me a shovel, and up until this point I’ve been working to dig that box of hurt back up. Then finally, after months of poking around, I hit it. I nicked the top of the vault and it sprung a leak. All the memories I’ve stocked piled, all the painful thoughts, and hurts are bursting to the surface. While it’s hard and beyond overwhelming, I’m finally at a place where true healing can begin. Where I can start casting out the negativity and self-criticism, where I can start to rebuke the lies that I have so easily spoken over myself for so many years. Where I can finally sweep clean the vault and fill it with all the love and truth of the Father instead.
It’s not easy, I’ve gotten so used to speaking death over myself, (I think many of us have) that I hardly even notice when I’m doing it anymore. Rebuking all those thoughts is a lot of tedious work, but I’ve got my sisters to hold me accountable, and the desire of my heart to finally be free of these chains is stronger than ever before. It won’t be over tomorrow or this month, or probably even here on the Race, but the door has been opened and I’m finally going to take His hand and walk through it.
My Father loves me so much that He pursues me radically, that He sent His Son to die for me, so that I may know and experience the life and the freedom that He is showing me now. He loves me so much that even though I put up idols in front of Him for many years, and resisted Him, and turned away from Him, He never gave up on me. He will never give up on me. I fell into garbage but He picked me up, and He will never leave my side. He’s given me redemption and a life in Him that surpasses anything found on this earth. I’m grateful for the hurt, because with it comes new life, and I’m grateful for His salvation, because even though I got myself into this mess, He will hold my hand and help walk me out. His love abounds, His river flows deep, and He is good, so very good.
