by Heidi Bylsma | Aug 10, 2010 | Blog
We talk a lot about emotional eating–our tendency to eat when we are sad, lonely, bored, angry, etc., etc., but let’s go a step farther.
What about why do we get in an emotional state of such extremes so often? What is with the drama? There is something extreme about the emotions that resulted in my eating so frequently and so often. If I could get to the heart of that, it makes sense that I could dismantle it and break free.
I found that unless I dealt with the root pain and all the other times something similar (in feeling instead of circumstance, perhaps) had come up, I continued to feel pain disproportionate to what was going on in the present moment–and I continued to eat my way through it. In fact, for me, it got to the point that if one of my little children chose not to be obedient, even that could trigger the “I am being rejected” tapes of my past and I would eat to soothe myself. Is it any wonder I ate constantly and became 6 sizes larger than was healthy?
How to deal with it? Please don’t discount what I am going to say here…let me explain how this works.
Forgiveness changes me–a bunch. Inside AND out!
Bear with each other
and forgive whatever grievances
you may have against one another.
Forgive as the Lord forgave you.
– Colossians 3:13
God led me to have a long look at my entire life and to journal my way through the heartaches I had faced from the earliest days I could remember to moments previous. As I walked through the Valley of the Shadow (it felt like Death), the Savior led me along the way. I prayerfully considered (and journaled) all of the instances over my life that I could think of where I felt wounded. I “told on them”–each person– to God.
“God, did you know that in sixth grade that girl wrote me a hate letter and had the entire class sign it? That devastated and humiliated me! People I thought were my friends, signed that letter, God!”
I wrote this with many tears, getting in touch with the deepness of the wound that this and other similar things inflicted. Nothing was too insignificant to deal with.
I wrote about my parents, the kids in the neighborhood, the mean lady that hurt my feelings…and also about the many things that I had done that I needed forgiveness for.
I know what you are saying…you are probably saying that the Apostle Paul tells us in Philippians 3:13, 14 to forget what is behind and press on to what is ahead. You are right. But I couldn’t press on until I unloaded the baggage I carried with me. Otherwise, I was “pressing on” with the baggage weighing me down. I viewed everything now through my perceptions that were dramatically impacted by what happened in my past. ALL because I hadn’t allowed His blood to cover them. I hadn’t forgiven them.
This was what God led me to do in order to live out Hebrews 12:1:
Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses,
et us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles,
and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.
– Hebrews 12:1
The key to being biblical in this is to choose to forgive each one, each person, each occurrence, each detail.
I had to be very intentional. This wasn’t “sanctified denial.” This was deep stuff. And, truthfully, walking through that time was excruciating. But that was what the blood of Christ was intended to do. To forgive not just MY sin, but also the sin committed against me.
Jesus said:
If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples.
Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.
– John 8:31-32
He tells us to forgive in His Word. With the Lord, we have no need to fear the truth of our past–even the painful truth of our past. In fact, there is freedom in prayerfully acknowledging it and taking it to the cross, specifically, the details of it…and forgiving. Letting the blood of Christ drench and redeem every single solitary moment that came before.
Even if I “shouldn’t” have been offended. If I felt pain…I took all of that to him and chose to forgive.
And, yes, I even had to confess each time I felt God had wronged me. NO! God does no wrong! But I have felt wronged by Him at times. I have taken each of those things to him–the fact that he allowed my mom to abuse me about food, my dad to molest me…WHERE WAS GOD during those times? I had to take that feeling that he “should” have kept those things from happening…to Him…and release them. I had to say “You are God and I am not…I don’t understand, but I am ok with this.” I had to prayerfully beg him, first, to make those words true in my life. He was faithful to do that. But it was so painful. This was very much a real demonstration of dying to self for me….
(For those in our book study, this is why we have been keeping a list of the attributes of God…when we see him as he is, we can begin to trust him…and this stuff is deep…and requires a trustworthy, GOOD God…whom we DO serve! Hallelujah!)
I can’t communicate just how much doing this transformed my journey. I had no idea just how much my present challenges triggered past wounds. It was indiscernible, really, but once I chose to forgive, huge changes happened. This was when I began to be able to be in the present moment. I stopped being drawn to food so often.
In fact, a couple of years ago, when I began to struggle with my eating again after two years of not having such issues, God showed me that I needed to return to this practice–that pride had kept me from keeping short accounts! Forgiveness changes things!
You see, if I have learned to soothe myself with food and haven’t forgiven things in the past–pain that caused me to yearn for comfort and freedom from pain–then any time any pain is triggered by something in the present, I will eat over it…but I am not eating because of the pain of being cut off on the highway ten minutes ago like I may think. I am eating because something of the behavior of the driver triggered heartache of a thousand yesterdays. Once those yesterdays are forgiven, then I respond in the present to what goes on and things aren’t nearly so bad. I don’t feel lured to food nearly so much.
And I also can begin to see that the Lord wants to be my comfort instead of turning to food, which short-circuits the very thing God wants to do in my life by allowing heart ache anyhow!
Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort,
who comforts us in all our troubles,
so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the
comfort we ourselves have received from God.
For just as the sufferings of Christ flow over into our lives,
so also through Christ our comfort overflows.
– 2 Corinthians 1:3-5
Recently, God used a situation to show me just how much he had grown me in this. Something similar to what I shared yesterday (not a women’s ministry thing, though) happened to me. I had the feelings of rejection, but God instantly led me to the foot of the cross and I went willingly. Where there was sin committed against me, because accounts were current and I had no past wounds lurking in some dark part of my heart, I could look at what really happened in the NOW, see what needed forgiving now, prayerfully choose to do so and also clearly see that God has sovereignly allowed this for His glory. This is
His doing. He is sovereign, after all. My quarrel (if there is one), is not with other people. It would be with Him! Do I really want to “go there?”
Forgiveness Changes Things
No really. Forgiveness changes me–inside and out. It changes my journey to become my “natural, God-given size.”
How about you? Do you sense that something about what I have shared may be true for you? Are you willing to walk with Jesus through the Valley of the Shadow? Is He calling you to revisit some past pain so that he might redeem it through the power of His blood?
by Heidi Bylsma | Aug 9, 2010 | Blog
Walk with me on a brief imaginary journey…
You relish having the privilege of serving in the women’s ministry at your church. Your latest brainstorm, a “Spring Fling” mini-retreat event, is an exciting opportunity for women to gather, to worship, to fellowship, to deepen their understanding of life-changing truth with a gifted bible teacher who has the date you have suggested available. Your proposal for this event has now been presented to the Women’s Ministry Committee for their consideration. After discussion and questions, you are invited to leave while they decide whether to move forward with the event or not. At the conclusion of the meeting, they inform you that, because they have decided to host another activity led by another woman for the date two weeks prior, they chose to forgo your event at this time.
POOF!
Suddenly, there are precious few thoughts about the sovereignty of God or that He chooses the instrument for His ministry for His purposes.
There are precious few thoughts also about the faithful servant or the event that was chosen nor thoughts of thankful gratitude for her willingness to minister to others.
There are precious few thoughts about praying for her and for the team of women that she will lead.
Instead, there is the sense of having been wounded. This experience triggers a series of thoughts of:
“I was rejected.”
“I am not good enough.”
“They don’t like me.”
As the lid is blown off of Pandora’s Box, the disproportionate response to what has just happened causes you to plunge headlong into a carton of ice cream, a bag of chips, popcorn…it doesn’t matter. It can even be the most nutritious and delicious salad! Food! Anything to munch on!
Even the loaf of bread isn’t safe. What has happened here?
For me, the wounds of the past used to be all rolled up in these kinds of situations. There can hardly be prayerful insight and wisdom because of all the voices, words, wounds of the past are bound up in the now!
When this happened, I tended to resort to the way of coping with pain I had depended on for years, seeking to anesthetize myself. Eating 0 to 5 was not on my radar screen. In fact, I would even be a bit mad at God for allowing whatever it was that seemed so horrible right now.
God began to show me about ten years ago, what was going on for me in situations like this. Why I could be “triggered” by my 4 year old’s defiance, for instance! It didn’t take much to send me flying to the pantry or fridge. The sense of needing to be comforted by food, of wanting the pain to stop…it all happened so easily and so often.
Years of experiences–little, big, long-drawn out, short bursts of “nothing much”–it doesn’t matter; if there was pain associated with them, gone unchecked, without surrendering them to the Lord, for me, it resulted in a well of pain deep down inside me just waiting for the right opportunity to be tapped. The way someone treated me in sixth grade, the word from my dad when I was fifteen, the rejection of a friend at 23. There were times–most times, of course–when it wasn’t at the surface, true. It was like it had all “scabbed over.” It didn’t take much for the scab to be scraped off and pus and blood to gush out, however.
In these times, the “wound” I felt was not relative to the present moment, but all of the wounds, in all of the situations, that all of the people caused that ever made me feel similarly–even on a “minor” scale.
All the eating I did to anesthetize my pain…it began to STOP the day God led me into the Valley of the Shadow. It was a path of suffering, but a path of forgiveness.
More on that tomorrow…
by Heidi Bylsma | Jul 24, 2009 | Blog
I want to give all who visit this blog and who are reading the Thin Within book by Arthur and Judy Halliday time to soak in chapter 19 if you are studying with us. Truly, forgiveness has been the hub of my journey–the driving force around which my life has been turning and being transformed. I don’t want to gloss over the significance of this for others–for you. It is deep and penetrating.
So, if you are anything like me, I believe forgiveness is at the root of what can transform you, too.
I believe that many of us are caught in cycles of sin-repent-sin-repent because of shame. We think we will never change. We believe that our capacity to sin is, in effect, more powerful than God’s capacity to change us. We then lose hope. Without hope, we remain stuck! Somehow, we have to get out of that place so that we believe God. He says he is transforming us. My choices don’t somehow tie God’s hands. He is in the business of transforming lives. So confessing my sin to God, receiving His forgiveness, confessing that I know He forgives me and then forgiving myself is vital. I couldn’t overstate this. PLEASE don’t blow this off!
Yes, he wants my cooperation. But he can work even a willingness into me. So, rather than speaking about this chapter right now in detail, I just want to tell you…if you really want to have this time be different for you, if you want to break free forever from the junk that keeps you binging, purging, overeating, compromising, hating yourself…(if you can relate to this at all), you have to have to have to (please!!!) work through chapter 19, pray through it, journal through it, whatever it takes to honestly do it. Forgiveness is vital to your next steps forward. I really believe it.
So, what do you believe? Which is more powerful: your sin? Or God’s ability to overcome your sin?
Please take time to prayerfully ask God to show you if you are willing to allow Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross be sufficient for you so that you might forgive yourself. Let the shame go. Whether it is the shame from one of the “Significant Times” experiences in chapter 16 or shame from 10 minutes ago (yelling at your kids, resenting a lady at church, or plowing through a bag of Oreos)…God IS doing a new thing in you right now. You have never been where you are right this moment. Take this moment captive for him (remember the marble jar!) and let Him wash you with the grace of His forgiveness. Believe Him. Let the shame go…as far as the east is from the west…
by Heidi Bylsma | May 5, 2008 | Blog
Look at this face:
Could YOU be angry, upset, disappointed with this face?
I doubt it.
Today, I needed to trim this boy’s feet. My way of saving $400 a month is by trimming my own horses’ feet. Doc is special. He has been retired for most of the 5 years we have had him, as I bought him quite lame…quite accidentally quite lame, in fact. His story is at this website. (Just a warning…there is more there than most people would EVER want to know!)
Today he decided he had other things to do other than have a pedicure, however. It wasn’t that he was so all out nasty. He wasn’t. He was just sort of passive aggressive. Doing his feet is a big deal. His body is so out of whack. When his feet aren’t quite right, his body goes even further our of whack. Pain can be intensified for him. So I take doing his feet really seriously. I guess more seriously than he does! 🙂
As I sat on my little stool to cradle his front left foot in my lap to rasp off the edges and so forth, he just kept wanting to have his foot for his own plans.
He didn’t want to go anywhere at that moment, really. He just wanted his foot. Period. He was quite convinced that this was the thought we both should go with.
I guess he also knew that an electrical storm was brewing. About ready to rain huge pellets of water down with sound effects of thunder claps to go with it. From my perspective, I needed to make the most of the moments I had with him to get at least two of his four feet trimmed up.
I can’t tell you how frustrated I got. I didn’t get frustrated quickly, mind you. But when every time I would get to shaping his foot he pulled it away, I couldn’t get very far very fast and my back was aching from the endeavor. I just wanted to HELP him.
By the time the rain started and it was clear I had to release him to go pitch the fit that he and his buddies pitch when they get pelted with rain or hail, I was worked into quite the tizzy myself. Not only had I not gotten really to a stopping point, but I had a sore back to show for it and my tools and ME were getting all wet. I had to hurry to cover hay and a million other things that had to happen in order for the hatches to be battened down should a storm really hit and this not be just a passing wet cloud.
Can you see that there wasn’t one shred of gratitude or godly thinking going on?
As I was backing my horse trailer up to its parking place (one more thing I needed to do before the ground got too wet and the truck got stuck), I realized I wanted food and BADLY. I wasn’t hungry and my response to that realization was “SO WHAT. I DON’T CARE. I want it ANYHOW.”
A ha…once again I was in “That Place.”
I hadn’t blogged yet that have released the 5 pounds that I had gained during the week or so that I had been caught in a place of struggling to forgive. Surrendering my will to the Lord it didn’t take long to get it off! YAY!…I had done the forgiveness work and proclaimed God as God in my life again. I am NOT God…and my eating was able to return to his parameters. It was interesting to me how like clockwork it was.
So here I was in That Place again. Angry eating. I just hadn’t eaten yet. So, I asked myself the question…WHO am I angry at? Well, I know this is a ridiculous answer….I was angry at Doc! Yes, the HORSE!!!!!! Even being angry at my HORSES makes me want to eat. Is that not amazing? How sploogied could my thinking possibly be?????
I think we have uncovered a serious character flaw! How ridiculous!
If you think that is ridiculous, how much more so do I feel like a fool telling God that “Ok, Lord, I choose to forgive Doc (the horse) for not letting me trim his feet…and I choose to acknowledge that you are God of the rain, God of the thunder, and God of the horse’s feet, too.”
But it is true. If I find myself wanting food, I do just need (or so it seems) to ask myself or the Lord “Who do I need to forgive?” or, maybe, “Who do I *think* I need to forgive? Who am I angry at?”
Good grief. Poor Doc. He was being a horse sensing the pending storm and I was busy acting like a trap capturing his leg. He knew he needed his leg to run in the storm…he is a prey animal, after all. His instincts say that during a storm is NOT the time to have your legs held on to by some human trying to do a pedicure!
Silly, huh?
