After about a week of my sending her my hunger graphs each night, she shared these thoughts with me:
Most of the days, you do really well until evening. You get your spiritual feeding in the morning, when you have your time with God. You have your physical feeding throughout the day, as you get physically hungry and eat. Is your spiritual strength wearing thin in the evening, so you falter and stumble, and eat, at night? Is it possible for you to take 10-15 minutes alone of quiet time with God after dinner or even late afternoon, or even 8:00ish? Just some time to strengthen you so you don’t fall into eating because you have grown spiritually weak because you have not fed yourself spiritually since early in the day.
The other time you have a problem is when you get frustrated or angry and turn to food instead of going to God with the emotion. Can you, IN THAT MOMENT, ask God how you are feeling? If you know how you are feeling, can you tell God how you are feeling about whatever it is, instead of eating? You usually identify the feeling after the fact, but can you, IN THAT MOMENT, determine the feeling and take it to God? I realize I am throwing your words in your face, but that’s where I learned a lot.
Good post, Heidi. How did you go about finding an accountability partner? Is it a face to face relationship or e-mail/phone? Enjoyed reading some of your other blogs as well.
I’d love to hear more about how you were lead to a particular partner as well!