Over the year that I released 100 pounds, I received accolades, praise, encouragement. It was wonderful on the one hand, but I battled with my pride…and lost. For the better part of the following year, I coasted along maintaining the weight loss pretty effortlessly (said rather smugly), but during that year, my focus shifted. I sensed it…and began to grab earnestly–desperately, even–for some way not to let the goal for which I had worked slip through my grasp. During that time, my focus definitely went OFF of listening to the voice of God in the moment by moment walk of life and on to the food, my weight, performance.
As I look back over the past 2 months, I see even more how I have strayed. My desperate attempts to focus on the Lord have been about performance…reading this book, doing that bible study…DO DO DO!!!
I feel like the people spoken about in Isaiah 28:11-13:
11bGod will speak to this people,
12 to whom he said,
“This is the resting place, let the weary rest“;
and, “This is the place of repose”—
but they would not listen.
13 So then, the word of the LORD to them will become:
Do and do, do and do,
rule on rule, rule on rule;
a little here, a little there—
so that they will go and fall backward,
be injured and snared and captured.
Do and do, do and do, rule on rule, a little here, a little there…
I fasted sweets, began the 60-60 experiment, fasted the bathroom scale…did The Lord’s Table bible study, did the Freedom From Emotional Eating bible study and began reading numerous other books, all designed to GET ME CLOSER TO GOD again.
Talk about frenzy!
One thing, though…I haven’t been still. My frenetic grasping at straws has just further promoted the very problem I am desperately trying to solve.
Jesus says, “Peace be still.”
“Be still and KNOW that I AM God…”
“Come to me and rest…”
“Let the weary rest…”
“Child, I lead you beside still waters…”
TRUE CONFESSIONS: (Oh, this is hard and I want to edit this OUT of this blog entry…) As I noticed that the jeans I have worn for 15 months have begun to be uncomfortable, I got on the scale yet again and noticed the number is TEN pounds up from where I landed in October of 2007.
PANIC.
Dread, shame…what I have feared is happening….
This is a ruse, though. Fixating on the number hasn’t helped me at all, so why would it now?
So, today I step off the scale by which man weighs my value…off the man-made platform that says, “Look at my success, world! I have maintained my weight loss!”
But I don’t do this in shame. I do it in relief. The jig is up, the performance has ended. The curtain has closed. Now I can just be. Whew!
Today, I emailed my accountability partner and let her know that I think I should stop reporting about food. I want to focus on something else. Like GOD, maybe? Having responded to God’s leading in this, I am so much more at peace with food, eating and my body already!
I think that, for this season, just as in my earliest years of this “Thin Within” journey, I have to set aside scales, charts, reports, graphs, numbers…I have to BE. I have to LISTEN. I have to REST. No more striving.
I went to the Lord yesterday and today. Instead of turning to my “quiet” time basket filled with workbooks, “how to pray more powerfully” books and other “aids” to make me “more effective” in my walk with God… I stilled my heart. No…I let HIM still my heart. I asked, “Lord, where do you want me to turn in your Word to hear from you?” Then I did the unthinkable…I waited… GASP!!!!
He wasted no time telling me something that surprised me… “Join me in Jeremiah 3,”came the whisper.
I obeyed–as if to walk through a gate of promise–and set my eyes on the page ordained for my heart in this moment and asked God “What, Lord? What do you have for me here?” Nestled in the midst of this chapter, He showed me this:
” ‘Return, faithless Israel,’ declares the LORD,
‘I will frown on you no longer,
for I am merciful,‘ declares the LORD,
‘I will not be angry forever.
13 Only acknowledge your guilt—
you have rebelled against the LORD your God,
you have scattered your favors to foreign gods
under every spreading tree,
and have not obeyed me,’ ”
declares the LORD.
God beckons to me. He is merciful, not angry. But he wants me to quit trying to throw “godly” band-aids on a cancer. My zealous hustling and bustling spiritually has an appearance of godliness, but devoid of it’s power. How many bible studies and books can one really complete? If I fill in yet more blanks, will it make me more godly? The one who dies with the most filled in workbooks wins? No…
I must acknowledge that I am eating out of his will. I am living out of his will. I am pursuing that which is out of his will. Acknowledge your guilt he says to me. Quit trying to cover it up by more bible study, more doing, more avoiding.
Child, You have rebelled.
Child, You have not obeyed.
That is at the heart of this.
Child, I love you.
In fact, all of my frenetic searching and doing and performing is actually contributing to the very problem I hoped to solve. It isn’t my JOB to solve it, in fact. In Jeremiah 3 he spoke to me about that as well…
“Return, faithless people;
I will cure you of backsliding.” (vs 22a)
And my answer…
“Yes, we will come to you,
for you are the LORD our God.” (vs 22)
Is that not precious? He tendered my heart to him further…How can food, or weight, or being “Miss Thin Within USA,” compare to One such as this who speaks so tenderly?
Today, I again overlooked the “quiet” time basket filled with distractions and stilled my heart. I asked again and before I could even get the question out, “Lord, where do you want me to turn in your Living Word, today?” The impression was “Joel 2.” What? Huh? I couldn’t have made that one up either…so skeptically, I turned to Joel 2.
Listen to the song he sung to me there…
12Even now,” declares the LORD,
“return to me with all your heart,
with fasting and weeping and mourning.”
God beckons to me yet more…oh, it tenders my softening heart further…
13Rend your heart
and not your garments.
Return to the LORD your God,
for he is gracious and compassionate,
slow to anger and abounding in love,
and he relents from sending calamity.
I love how God’s invitation to return, fast, weep, mourn, rend is coupled with his graciousness, compassion, slowness to anger, and his love. Wow…
There is so much in this chapter that God used to speak over me, soothing me, delighting over me with singing with His Living and Loving Word:
I am sending you grain, new wine and oil,
enough to satisfy you fully;
never again will I make you
an object of scorn to the nations.
I reject the path of shame for being a number higher on the bathroom scale than I have been in 15 months. I choose to take this moment captive and surrender my thoughts, my mind, my body to him for obedience.
I am becoming. Gah..I don’t like the term…it sounds so 70s-ish, but it describes what is happening.
It doesn’t mean I cast aside the principles of 0 to 5 eating. Far from it. But I must quiet my spirit. I have allowed “this”…what…journey? process? Thin Within THING?… to become something so different than he intended. HE is sending me abundance and richness…and HE will satisfy me fully.
As if to keep me from becoming confused about my latest leg of the journey to process the Get Thin Stay Thin material, however, he made sure my eyes fell upon:
I will repay you for the years the locusts have eaten—
This, he does want.
Those years of my life that were eaten up by dysfunction…he will somehow redeem. This is a promise for my future. He wants me to continue this path, but with a stillness of heart…not a desperate attempt to make something happen, to win yet more accolades, or to really “get thin forever.”
26You WILL have plenty to eat, until you are full,
and you WILL praise the name of the LORD your God,
Before time as we know it began, God existed in trinity. He was/is three in one and this implies an amazing intimacy…it blows the mind, really. The joy shared within the triune God, the perfect union and communion…it is a result of perfect intimacy and perfect intimacy and love foster perfect union and communion. God the Son, God the Spirit, God the Father all connected, joined, loving, giving, sharing, delighting–before time began–in one another!
This is the God in whose image I have been created!
Something about me, about the way I have been created, connects with the triune aspect of God.
When I see the premium that Jesus places on commissioning me to love others, I have to think it is because he knows I was created for this level of deep intimacy, connection and love. The very depth that is experienced in the trinity. Somehow, God intends for me to experience that level with him, but also with others. Maybe it will be limited here on earth, but someday I believe I will experience that kind of connection with others in heaven without it being diminished by our flesh nature.
God defines himself so often with love–which requires an object of that love–to enjoy full expression. “God IS love.” “God so loved the world that he gave.” “We love Him because he first loved us.” “But God shows his own love for us in this–that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us.” The examples are plentiful…The Word of God is soaked in the Love of God.
Because of my dysfunctional upbringing, I tend to be protective. I don’t want to love or be loved. Even this far along on my journey as a Christian and as a Christian dealing with my struggles with eating, food, and my body I have tended to think that if I stay protected from others, process my “issues,” forgive as needed, and then feast on the Lord, this will satisfy me and I won’t be as drawn to food to fill that soul hunger the GTST book speaks about.
I think that the part about feasting on God is a BIG piece of it. But I see now that it leaves something out. I have had this attitude that if I offer myself to others, I will be depleted, sucked dry, turned to toast. Hungry for more to make up for it.
But if I am created in the image of God…and Jesus is the reflection of God in human form…then it stands to reason that he is my example and my strength! He said that his FOOD is to do the will of the Father…and the will of the Father was to love even when he wasn’t loved in return, to give even when the gift wasn’t recognized as precious and to die for the needs of others. His love was totally 100% sacrificial.
I am called to this.
Not only that, but I am called to this and my soul hunger can only be satisfied as I DO risk everything to engage in this level of intimacy. The two commandments that Jesus said were the most important are…”Love God and Love Others.”
Our need for intimacy–for connectedness and expression of our innermost character–is one of our most basic human needs. It is fundamental to our physical, mental, and spiritual health and to our ability to live the lives of self-giving love God intends for us. GTST, p. 29
There is something in God’s great economy that actually causes my soul to be satisfied as I risk for the sake of loving others like Jesus did…unconditionally, without regard for if they receive it, or love me back, or are nice to me, or understand.
THIS IS HUGE to me. I believe that somehow, by allowing God to break down my walls of self-protection and spurring me to venture out, extend myself for others…that this, combined with turning to God to experience intimacy with him, “feasting on Him,” will work together to cause me to no longer have the heart hunger that I have attempted to fill with other things.
I don’t know yet what this will look like, but I KNOW it isn’t programmed ways of “showing love.” This is the real thing. It isn’t showing up on Saturdays at the soup kitchen to hand out biscuits and calling that love. (Of course, thatcould be a part of it! But I don’t think that is the whole answer!)
As someone said in our neighborhood fellowship group last Saturday night, maybe I can capture one moment at a time to try to love perfectly. If I do that, then maybe at the end of this week I will have loved perfectly for 5 moments…but bit by bit, I can build moment upon moment where I have allowed God to love perfectly through me…Over the course of my life of practicing this, perhaps there will be a year where I loved more than I resisted. More than I protected. And maybe the hunger will be quelled.
Hm…
9 Then you will call, and the LORD will answer; you will cry for help, and he will say: Here am I. “If you do away with the yoke of oppression, with the pointing finger and malicious talk,
10 and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness, and your night will become like the noonday.
11 The LORD will guide you always; he will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land and will strengthen your frame. You will be like a well-watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail.
For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. Romans 7:15
How did disordered eating happen? What flipped the switch? Why do I do what I hate?
To answer this question relative to the four testimonies shared in the book and, perhaps, relative to my life:
At some point in each person’s life, there was a breach, collapse, or lack of intimacy. Each adopted patterns of disordered eating in an unconscious attempt to insulate him or herself against the emotional pain. GTST, p. 25
Can you identify with this summary? I know I can. On Sunday, I wrote in my journal:
“Ok, so this is how I got to where I am, but what about now? Why can I be so filled with a rich life of closeness with wonderful people, yet still struggle? How come between this and my times in Your Word, Lord, in prayer…why do I continue to have a disordered relationship with food, eating, and my body? My life is a veritable feast on your love and the love of others!”
God has been faithfully answering this question–even this morning. I hope to write about that tomorrow.
The book goes on to explain the causes of disordered eating. I find encouragement and hope in this explanation because I am not just a “sinful person” like many teach. While we don’t want to blame our current choices on others in our past, sometimes it helps to understand some of what has occurred in the past *affects* my choices now! I am not crazy. Neither are you! I summarize what the book says about this below. Do you see yourself in any of these explanations?
Trauma – unresolved emotional trauma…including, but not limited to rejection in a significant relationship. In my case, I don’t need to go any farther than my relationship with my mother. The act that epitomizes how she felt about me was when she tried to place me in a foster home when I was 14. Definitely rejection and abandonment are a part of this for me.
Abuse – The authors describe that this can be anything from the covert obvious abuse to something a bit less obvious, including growing up in a dysfunctional home situation like with an alcoholic parent. I had two of those.
Having been a very sensitive child.
Some who read this blog or who I have spoken with feel that since they didn’t have any significant “abuse” or dysfunction that they can see in their homes either as children or later, that this whole line of thought might not apply. I quote at length from the Get Thin Stay Thin book in case you can be encouraged too!
Even in a “functioning” family, where feelings are acknowledged, a very sensitive child may not have his or her needs met. A child who grows up in a family where emotional pain is not acknowledged or discussed may turn to food for comfort. Outwardly the family may appear to be “perfect” and problem-free. Frequently, these families are very religious and spend a significant amount of time attending church or synagogue activities. Even though the source of the family’s pain is often very subtle and difficult to identify, children are usually aware of it and maybe even think it is their fault. Lacking someone to talk to and having inadequate coping skills, a child may develop disordered eating. GTST, p. 26
For those of you who weren’t raised in an obviously dysfunctional home, does this explanation resonate at all?
A controlling environment – where we learn to survive by giving up our own identities while trying to please other people.
Again, I can identify with this. I walked on egg-shells in my family of origin. If I didn’t, it meant my mother would make yet another suicide attempt. I learned to stuff down who I was or else she would try to kill herself and, again, it would be my fault.
Lack of validation of feelings.
Many people with eating disorders come from families or relationships where there appears to be no overt abuse or identifiable problem. They experienced, rather, a very subtle undermining of their self-esteem…They may have repeatedly received no validation of their thoughts or feelings or were given the message that it was wrong or selfish to feel as they did. People (as children or as adults) might conclude from this experience that they must be bad or crazy. Over time, they learned…to direct their negative emotions inwardly and become self-abusive, since direct expression was not allowed.GTST, p. 27
In all situations such as these…gosh, in life in a sinful, fallen world…we don’t experience the emotional support and intimacy that God intends. As a result, we learn disordered ways of coping with the pain that life throws at us–be it in a horrible, abusive family, or on the highway, or in the line at the grocery store.
We aren’t crazy! We may have the Romans 7:15 struggle of not understanding why we do the very thing we hate–that which we don’t want to do. There are solid reasons that we struggle in this way.
By believing God’s truth about this, we begin to have hope that if there is a reason and I am not just crazy, it can be dismantled…piece by piece…and brought to Him.
That is what my journey through this book is about. Having spent the last 2 years dealing with a LOT of externals and more superficial things, I sense God calling me to a deeper thing he is doing. He is doing a NEW thing.
I hope that you will join me in believing God for what is in store.
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.
weight loss pretty effortlessly (said rather smugly), but during that year, my focus shifted. I sensed it…and began to grab earnestly–desperately, even–for some way not to let the goal for which I had worked slip through my grasp. During that time, my focus definitely went OFF of listening to the voice of God in the moment by moment walk of life and on to the food, my weight, performance.
I went to the Lord yesterday and today. Instead of turning to my “quiet” time basket filled with workbooks, “how to pray more powerfully” books and other “aids” to make me “more effective” in my walk with God… I stilled my heart. No…I let HIM still my heart. I asked, “Lord, where do you want me to turn in your Word to hear from you?” Then I did the unthinkable…I waited… GASP!!!!
