The wind batters the house, she follows me as I do chores and go about my morning.
She doesn’t know that there is nothing to fear. To her, the world is unsafe just now. And there is comfort that comes from being close to her master.
I reach down and pet her head and her eyes look up at me, adoringly. The fear fades for a moment.
The wind concerns my golden retriever. Usually, not one to cling to me, this moment flushes out something different in her character. This rare lack of confidence surfaces.
The trials of the wind have caused her to see she is beyond herself.
So she lays at my feet, or becomes my shadow going from room to room as I put away laundry, pick up after the kids–gosh, I can’t even go the bathroom alone right now. 🙂
I want to be like this. When something unsettles me, I want to run to my Master, to sit at his feet, stay close by His side. Follow him.
I know I will find the comfort I seek.
Come to think of it, I don’t want it to take the wind to make me want to stay close.
~I am deeply loved by God. 1 Jn. 4:9-10 ~I am completely forgiven and am fully pleasing to God. Rm. 5:1 ~I am totally accepted by God. Col. 1:21-22 ~I am a new creation, complete in Christ. 2 Cor. 5:17
Continuing to make my way through Get Thin Stay Thin, also known as Thin Again, and Silent Hunger…
Have you ever had to endure well-meaning friends or relatives say to you, “So why don’t you just eat less food?” Or “Can’t you just stop?” These clueless but loving folks don’t understand that there seems to be something else at work…something that almost seems compulsory. They don’t understand that things are misfiring and, at times, we seem to be controlled by food.
So how did this happen? How did we get to a point where the natural way we were born…to cry out for food when our stomachs were empty and to be pleasantly content when our stomachs had an appropriate amount of food in them…how did this process get derailed?
How DID we get to a point where our eating is/was so disordered?
In chapter one, the authors begin to wade into the deep answer to these questions. Connecting these current behaviors to experiences that we have had earlier in life, helps us to understand that we did the best we could at the time…and began to cope differently with life than the way we might have apart from the experiences that unfolded. We were beyond ourselves. For some of us, it may have happened when we were 6 and ridiculed by an older brother. For others, it may have been as a result of repeated deep trauma. And for still others, it may have happened later in life, when we were betrayed by our spouse or a dear friend.
Something, somewhere in our stories, triggered something in us that caused us to step out of God’s order…into survival mode.
“I felt unprotected and vulnerable and my feelings of self worth eroded.” GTST p. 21
This is the result of one story included in the book–one which I could identify with. Can you? As you look back over the past year, the past decade, your entire life have you ever felt unprotected and vulnerable? Who hasn’t? Is it possible that this is connected to the way you struggle with food, eating, or your body?
Personally, I felt very unprotected as a child–very vulnerable to being wounded by those who were supposed to cherish and protect me most. I see now that this set me up to head toward a way of coping that would fail miserably to ultimately serve me in the long haul. Nevertheless, it enabled me to survive those difficult adolescent years…
Facing the past and taking responsibility for the choices I make in the present have given me a new experience of freedom, both in my eating and in my relationships. GTST, p. 21
The authors don’t encourage us to blame our current difficulties on the past, certainly, but they do encourage us to have an honest look at our stories to see if there aren’t justifiable reasons that we may have been predisposed toward disordered eating. Many of us never intentionally headed down this road and yet here we find ourselves.
I believe that having this honest, yet challenging, look is vital to our permanent healing. I know it is for me.
Thin Within jarred me into the truth of what I had to risk to change my life. GTST p. 24
This is true of me as well. My first exposure to this material was when I was fresh out of Weigh Down Workshop. I realized for the first time that there was a LOT of emotional baggage that had set me up to have “issues.” I was going to have to risk a lot to change. I do now as well. I keep hoping that I can find a way to cut off this process…to find another way around, a short cut or something.
…as I stopped overeating and started praying, I began to accept God’s love and to know that he validates me just as I am…By being willing to experience my hunger I become more open to the joy and the pain in my life. With God’s help I am choosing to change old patterns, to trust myself, and to love and be loved. GTST, p. 24
AM I willing to feel hunger? I seem to begin the day where I am ok with this. Maybe it is because I also start the day filling up on the Bread of Life–spending time alone at the feet of Jesus. I am fully satisfied in him. I don’t mind waiting for hunger until I can “get around to” eating.
The more the day unfolds, however, the less I am willing to wait and to feel physical hunger. I wonder if, at some level, when the day gets going…and real life hits including the sense of inadequacy I sometimes feel…if I yet am relying on the old coping mechanisms?
And yet, what the person quoted in the book says is true: God validates me as I am…right now. NOT once “I have my act together.” I am so thankful that I know this truth to the depths of my heart. Sometimes I forget and get focused on performance-based living again, but it isn’t because I think I need to win God’s love…I know I don’t need to do that!
Being willing to allow God into this process all through the day is vital to my being able to be healed and renewed.
Willing to risk? Yes, I must be willing to risk that I will feel the emotional pain–the hunger–more fully, that I have, at some level–continued to numb with food and other things. But as I choose to offer myself to this process God will enable me to change, to trust, to grow. To become what he intends.
–> Are you? Are you willing to risk today? If you allow yourself to feel physical hunger it is possible, even likely, that you will experience your emotions to a greater degree. Are you willing to risk this? Are you willing to allow yourself to feel? You may also experience joy more than you have because, again, we can’t just numb ourselves to our pain and anger and disappointment. We also numb ourselves to joys, celebration, and hope. If you are willing, I want to encourage you…be ready to lean hard on the Lord. He will carry you through it. I know this from experience and, today, I choose to experience it first hand again. I am willing to risk today.
It has struck me afresh that for all of the things that he allows in my life, he has a divine purpose. He intends that the pain of living result in a holy purification, a transformation in me. Any time that I numb myself to the pain instead of going to Him to deal with it, I short-circuit his intention…leaving him with no other option than to bring yet another situation around that will cause me pain–that I might yet forsake the inappropriate coping mechanism and turn to him in fullness, experience HIS sufficiency and strength.
Much of what I am processing as I wade through this material, I won’t share here, but only in the privacy of that inner sanctum of my spirit with the Lord. What I feel His leading to share, I do! Most gladly. I hope that you are encouraged somehow.
When our eating is out of control or when food is used to insulate ourselves against emotional pain, we say that our eating is disordered, that it is out of God’s order. Disordered eating is characterized as follows: (I only highlight those points that are relevant to my life rather than quoting them all here)
Where we are preoccupied with concerns of food and eating.
Oh, am I ever preoccupied with concerns about food and eating! I had a season where I wasn’t. I think what happened, though, is the “mechanics” of this process took over and the heart got left behind. At some point I stopped listening for the voice of God and began to make the food behave or something. The focus shifted subtly from offering my heart to the Healer and the fixation on the food expanded until it began to fill my vision.
It hinders my forward progress. In some ways, I feel like I am having a bit of a tantrum…
“ENOUGH, already…When will I just be HEALED?!!” “When will I just be NORMAL?” “When will it no longer be a STRUGGLE?”
–> Do you find yourself preoccupied with concerns about food and eating? Sometimes this serves to distract us from our real life…which is harder to deal with than thoughts/plans about food. Can you identify with this? Take this to the Lord in prayer.
Where food is used to insulate or numb ourselves from emotional pain.
Recently, I was deeply wounded by someone. I so desperately wanted to smother the pain with food…it was hard to fight. I was surprised, too, as I don’t remember feeling it so obviously in a long while. God used that situation to show me how vulnerable I still am to being tempted to eat to numb my pain.
–> Can you identify if there is emotional pain that you are trying to be insulated from by focusing on food so much? Begin the journey of healing…begin to take your anger, loneliness, sadness, guilt, shame, feelings of betrayal to the Lord instead of to the drive through or the fridge. God waits to show compassion on us!
Where food and eating control us rather than visa versa.
Where food has become an enemy rather than a friend.
True confessions…I don’t seem to be at peace with food right now. I am preoccupied with food/eating/my body. YUCK! I do feel like food and eating control me…like food is an enemy rather than a friend. Oh, how I long to be at peace with this!
–> Do you feel controlled by food? Has food become an enemy? You could journal your thoughts as a prayer to God. Then go back through what you have written and identify which statements you have written that are actually TRUE and which are LIES. Where you find a lie, replace it with God’s truth.
Disordered eating becomes a counterfeit for genuine satisfaction and leaves us empty and longing. GTST p. 18
Or makes us feel worse than when we started.
–> Can you, can I…will you, will I…CHOOSE to turn to the Lord today as our portion? As our satisfaction? Does this promise that the Lord will give us satisfaction seem remote or even…untrue? I know it does to me at times. Can you take your emptiness and longing to him in prayer? Confess your tendency to turn to food and identify if food has really done anything to satisfy that emptiness and longing…expose food for the counterfeit that it is.
—
The Hallidays go on to explain in chapter 1 that there are typically REASONS why our eating is disordered. THIS IS VITAL to understand…and I want to save it for tomorrow’s post. Just knowing that there are reasons, gives me hope that this can be dismantled and brought to the Lord for his healing and transformation.
We have HOPE!
We aren’t crazy. We aren’t insane. We aren’t stupid or foolish. Most of us have legitimate reasons (some more subtle than others) why over the years we have developed overeating as a coping mechanism. It doesn’t mean we have no responsibility for change…we do, but I find it a relief that I am not crazy! There are reasons and the Lord is ready to compassionately show us the truth. The truth will set us free!
Hi, everyone. Hubby and I are heading out on a trail ride right now so we can make it back in time for church. I will be making my daily journal entry a bit later today!
23 Yet I am always with you; you hold me by my right hand.
24 You guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will take me into glory.
25 Whom have I in heaven but you? And earth has nothing I desire besides you.
26 My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.
Many of us use food to numb out. Or we use surfing the web or playing computer games…we turn to all manner of things when we don’t want to feel something.
Have you ever noticed that you can’t numb out JUST to pain, though? If you choose to numb out, you choose to be numb to joy (and other good things, too?). Similarly, if you want to avoid failure in life, you end up avoiding “success,” too, since the only way to avoid failure is not to do anything. To be honest, that, to me, IS failure. I want to LIVE. Jesus came that we might have life ABUNDANTLY! So enough with “just surviving” already! I don’t want to end the day like a Christian Eeyore saying, “Well…another day…I made it through…yippee…” (Said in the best Eeyore voice you can muster!)
This leg of the journey I know I must make a commitment. That I will NOT “numb out.” I know that the Lord has much he wants to accomplish.
In this part of the introduction of GTST, the authors highlight HOW we will get from point A to point Z? From broken–to restored. From ruins, to renovated by the Master Remodeler.
So how does this happen?
I must allow God to lead me to a place where I am:
Free to risk – letting go of the past to live unencumbered in the present (1 Peter 1:6-7)
I am encumbered by my past. Are you? 10 years ago. 30 years ago. An hour ago. It all seems to define me NOW…This moment is new! I have a clean slate in this moment!
Hebrews 12 encourages me to toss off any sin that entangles and anything that encumbers. I don’t want my past to define me…that I am “an overeater” or any other label. I despise labels and how limiting they are. I throw THOSE off. I believe I have to throw off anything negative OR positive that may hinder me.
A big positive thing that sometimes hinders me is my connection with the Hallidays on the writing of the Thin Within book. What an incredible privilege that was, but with that association I feel this responsibility to BE perfect. To PERFORM! To BE the “Thin Within” poster child…That isn’t something the Lord demands of me. It is a burden I have chosen to carry. I choose to toss that off as well. He wants me to be authentic.
–> What encumbrances from your past hinder you in the present? How does this affect your eating? Your perception of your body?
Free to change – being transformed from the inside out by the renewing of my mind. (Romans 12:2)
Barb Raveling, in her workbook, Freedom From Emotional Eating, describes “truth journaling,” a wonderfully practical way of distinguishing the lies I believe in the moment and replacing the lies with truth. As I go through the material in GTST, I know many lies I believe will surface. I must choose to replace them with truth. Sometimes, that which is familiar is hard to release–even if it is destructive. Familiarity seems so “warm” and “accepting.” I have a lot of familiar lies that I want to throw off. Yesterday really showed me that in vibrant living color!
–> Can you think of any lies that you believe? What truth may God want to replace these lies with? How does this affect your eating? Your perception of your body?
Free to trust–Trusting God and the way He made me.
By trusting the signals of hunger and satisfaction…that my body was designed for these signals to be reliable by an amazing, masterful, good God…I have released all the extra weight I carried–100 pounds. When I continue to abide by those physical signals of hunger and satisfaction, my body stays at this “new” God-ordained size. When I don’t abide by those signals, I get larger than he intends. It is simple and reliable. I trust God with this. I have seen that it works.
But I DO have trouble trusting God about emotional things. As I wade back through some things that have surfaced recently (abandonment issues, for instance), I have to keep telling myself that God used the parents that he gave me to cause me to earnestly seek him. Their “mistakes” and sin were a part of my spiritual formation…my pursuit of a Heavenly Father. Developing my trust in God further will be part of this leg of my journey, I am sure.
–> Do you trust the Lord that he has made your body reliably? What can you do to foster greater trust in Him? What about with emotional issues? How does this affect your eating? Your perception of your body?
Free to love – loving as Christ loves me.
Loving others can be painful. I guess it is that selective numbing thing again. If I choose not to love because I don’t want the pain that often seems to come with it, then I will miss out on the blessings, too. Often, it seems as though the pain is much more present than the blessings…
Right now, having come away from a challenging friendship that ended badly–someone who I hoped to encourage toward the cross of Christ–this is especially intimidating to me. Loving others…well…hurts. When I love, I give them the opportunity to wound me. I am vulnerable. I have a hard time with that.
–> Can you identity with being afraid to love? And how about being afraid to BE loved? How does this affect your eating? Your perception of your body?
Your silent hunger can be satisfied–with the true bread of life, our living God. GTST, p. 13.
What hope there is in these words–in this truth! The Lord’s Table workbook definitely was based on this premise. It is true. When I go to the Lord, I know that he is satisfying. Yesterday, as I drove home in my car through tears and battled my temptations to stop and get food or something to drink that would pacify me in some way…HE was there. He whispered His love to my heart…
If you are willing to listen to the voice of your silent hunger, you will find that God is present to soothe, satisfy and make you feel secure in ways that nothing of this world can. GTST, p. 13
This is so true. More than a Cherry Pepsi, more than a triple decadence chocolate cheesecake from the Deli, more than the best ride on my best horse under the most cerulean blue sky…God can soothe, satisfy and make me feel secure…nothing else does it like he can. Yesterday, had I turned to the cheesecake, I would have been numb to the pain for a while…Then, the hole in my heart would have been ripped open wider by going to a false comfort…the emptiness would have been more vast and deep. Hunger is the doorway through which God enters our soul. He takes this place of greatest vulnerability and weakness and uses it to restore, satisfy, and sanctify us. GTST, p. 13
Wow…my greatest vulnerability and weakness? He can USE that? For this process? Wow…amazing. I continue to be astonished at how he takes our straw and spins it to gold like the “fairy tale,” only this one is true!
The message of the Introduction in summary I guess is that freedom comes not through stifling my hunger, but through embracing hunger. As I embrace hunger and take it to the Bread of Life, the One who alone can satisfy the emptiness in my soul, there will be freedom…REAL freedom.
I feel like I am learning to live. When I went through the Thin Again book 8 years ago (now known as Get Thin Stay Thin), there was a disconnect. I felt like I was doing all the emotional work and it was TOUGH. My response to the emotional work was to run to food! Sort of counter productive in some ways. In other ways, not so much…the deeper work had to be done in order for me to ever begin to walk faithfully with the Lord in surrendering my food to Him.
In the past 4 days since I began to process this material again, I have found myself overwhelmed as if I have never gone through it. Today was a classic example of this. I found myself just dreading heading into the valley of the shadow of death…Through tears.
Today, I had a very emotional experience…one that challenged me emotionally, but physically, too. I didn’t feel the emotions and struggles until I was in my car heading home. Then tears just flowed. All I could think of was how I needed a Cherry Pepsi…or a candy bar…or a decadent dessert from the Deli in town (they have amazing desserts)…and I realized I couldn’t do that…If I am going to go through this processing..the pain of it all…it can’t be for nothing. I have to learn to LIVE what I am walking through.
Just this morning, I quoted the GTST book as saying: But this hunger cannot be completely silenced. It cries out to be heard. It is our compelling desire to be loved, protected and considered precious. p. 11
What I was tempted to do on my drive home was to do precisely that thing…to SILENCE the hunger. The compelling desire in me to be loved, protected and considered precious. The stuff I had just gone through had challenged that. My beliefs about who I am have been rocked.
I realized in that moment that I WILL NOT silence that hunger…that cry of my heart. Instead, I have to allow myself to feel it, to hear it…and to turn to the Lord to have it be answered…
I am blessed that the Lord kept me from stopping in at Holiday. This leg of the journey has begun…and it is off to an effective start.
I am the LORD your God, who brought you up out of Egypt. Open wide your mouth and I will fill it. -Psalm 81:10
But this hunger cannot be completely silenced. It cries out to be heard. It is our compelling desire to be loved, protected and considered precious.GTST, p. 11
I know that this resonates within me. I feel vulnerable even reading these words. My very reaction indicates that there is something inside of me that knows that there is a connection between my “compelling desire to be loved, protected, and considered precious” and my struggle with overeating all of these years. Yes, there is something here. Something, though, that I am not sure I even *want* to figure out! It seems to hold such promise and hope, yet at the same time…if I don’t silence that desire…then the desire may be left hanging…unmet…like when someone asks a question and no one answers. I know that the Lord desires to answer the question. He has, in fact, answered it in Christ. I AM loved, protected and declared precious because of Jesus!
Lord, help me to deal with these feelings that rock me to my core. My constant search for significance also seems to be related to this, too.
It is a God-given hunger for genuine intimacy wherein our deepest needs for security and significance can be substantially met. GTST, p. 11
I feel in some ways like I was “set up” to feel a lack in this regard. If It is a God-given hunger (and I believe that it is), God intends to satisfy it. My constant quest for approval and significance shows me that I am not going to the Lord as He intends to have this heart need filled/met.
I have turned to all kinds of things to fill this void. My attempts to satisfy this hunger even in “sanctified” ways have failed.
God’s way is the way of faith and freedom. When we bring our struggles with food, eating, and weight to him in honest surrender, we can be restored. GTST, p. 12.
Lord, here…take it all. I surrender all of who I am or who I think I am to you. I surrender. Please bring healing and transformation. I long for your restoration, Lord. Make me new. Not just my body…I am thankful to be the size I am now…that is true. But it all seems so superficial, so insignificant, so inconsequential if my heart, my spirit, my values, my foundation, the fabric of my life aren’t surrendered to you.
I guess I will call this the “Silent Hunger” leg of the journey. This dovetails beautifully in with the theme of The Lord’s Table as the foundation for that is that we have need for a soul feast–as we feast on the Lord, our incessant drive to fill that emptiness with food will diminish.
This is very congruent with the Get Thin Stay Thin book. This book has been republished several times by the publisher with different covers and sometimes different names. I get asked a lot if it is the same book. YES, it is. So whether you have the Thin Again book, or Silent Hunger, or Get Thin Stay Thin, yes, you have the same material. Even if the cover has fresh veggies on it or a woman in spandex in front of a sunrise, or feet on a scale (eeek!)…all the same book. (BUT, it seems prudent to mention that THIN WITHIN *is* different! LOL!)
So all that aside, it has taken me a few days to wade through the introduction. I have been on this journey before, but it was 7 years ago or more…I am in a vastly different place and I know the Lord has been inviting me now for a while to go deeper, to be willing to stay longer, to take more risks with Him. Admittedly, I have begun this leg of the journey with some trepidation and intimidation. But His perfect love casts out fear…so on I go into the valley of the shadow of death.
Hunger is a universal experience…even those of us fortunate enough to have an abundance of food are hungry. We sit down three times a day to tables laden with food, but our deepest hunger is not satisfied.GTST, p. 11
Lord, I desperately want to learn–and LIVE like I know it!–that you alone are the source and supply of that which satisfies my deepest soul hunger.
Each of us has a hunger deep within where no one can see…the most universal of all. It is the silent hunger of the starving soul. GTST, p. 11
Do you sense it within you, reader? Do you feel like your soul is “starving?” In spite of all the bible studies I do, the wonderful daily quiet times, the rich fellowship I enjoy, the great church I attend, the blessed life I live…I know I do. It is still there. How can I be SO needy! My goodness!
It is silent…because it has been muted with years of behavior designed to still its voice; silent because the noise of our world prevents it from being heard. GTST, p. 11
I want to know if I continue to have behaviors that mute the silent hunger. I don’t want to mute it. I know that if I allow it to come forth, I can process it with truth. Jesus says knowing the truth sets me free. I believe that I can be satisfied with the Lord. I don’t need to “numb out” with too much internet time or with food or whatever it might be. I can allow the need to be heard and present it to the Lord, go to Him to be satisfied.
Lord, I am moved to ask you…if there is anything that needs to be removed from my life in order to be more responsive to you and/or the sound of the cry of my heart…show me what that might be and what YOU would have me do. Not to win your approval. I have that in Christ and I praise you for that! I don’t want to slap band-aids on a cancer if there is a cancer present. Just show me your will, your way, Lord. Lord, I don’t want my journey through this material to be self-indulgent and myopic…not in an ungodly way. Please help me to focus on YOU, Lord. If I haven’t learned that by now, I have learned NOTHING of value! You are the KING and the Great Physician. I know you have come to heal and bind up the broken hearted. Help me to welcome that but not focus on the broken places, Lord. I want to cooperate with YOUR will. Go to the depths of who I am, Lord and be KING in that place. Flood the empty places deep inside of me so that I don’t go on a never ending quest for significance or to silent the ache. Show me YOUR will. In the amazing, conquering, healing name of Jesus, Amen.
This lesson in The Lord’s Table workbook is absolutely awesome! Rather than butchering it, I will just quote little snippets and let you order the workbook and enjoy it for yourself! 🙂
For God’s people, praise of God leads the way to victory in battle…As God’s people earnestly sought Him for help in the battle, God made the promise that He would fight on their behalf, that the battle would be His, and that all they needed to do was stand still and see the salvation He would provide for them….It was those who led in praise and worship of God who led the army to victory. From this, we learn that true praise of God leads us to victory also. Oh, you who are beset by temptation, who know of the weakness of your flesh, who struggle intensely in the battle, please know that God will provide help and victory in your battle as you learn to praise Him. Praise leads the way to victory. (TLT, p. 188)
When we feel like praising the least, is when we need to praise the most. I have seen this powerful truth in my own life. There is power in praising the Lord. The power isn’t MINE, it is HIS. He shows up when His people praise!
They were praising God for the victory they did not yet see. In addition to praising Him for His character, Who He is, etc., it is very good to praise Him for victory in the battle before we see any evidence of it. We can do this because our victory has already been won on the cross, and we are assured of it! We can praise Him even before the work is finished, because we know our faithful God and Redeemer will finish the work He has started in us. So let’s get in the habit of praising God for future victories. (TLT, p. 189)
She huddles close to me, uncertain.
