This journey is filled with a variety of challenges. Some take us by surprise. Some are of our own doing. Some…both!
On Monday, I asked you to celebrate victories that God is doing by posting here to share with us. Could it be that you feel like that request may be terrific for someone else, but you feel like you haven’t seen any victories? Or maybe you feel like the setbacks have been so HUGE that they eclipse any sense that you might have had of forward progress?
If you feel stuck…like you can’t seem to string together several consecutive baby steps…I believe that you may be stumbling over a root. On a jungle trek, without warning, a root can change the nature of the excursion if it is stumbled over. Tripping over a hidden root causes pain, suffering and a need for rest, ice, and ibuprofen! Right there in the middle of somewhere. Forward progress just can’t happen until it is dealt with.
The root that I wonder about for me and for you is…well…bitterness.
Look after each other so that none of you fails to receive the grace of God.
Watch out that no poisonous root of bitterness
grows up to trouble you, corrupting many.
– Hebrews 12:15 NLT
I think we trip over this root a lot on our Thin Within journey. Then, we sit down and grind it up and make it into a tea and drink it!
It’s POISONOUS! If there is any chance that this is going on in our lives, we want to deal with it.
I know that forgiveness is a common teaching. We are taught in church and many secular programs that we need to receive forgiveness from God, from others, and extend it to others as well. That’s great.
But the root of bitterness that I am speaking of is one that I don’t see mentioned often. Yet I believe it exists for many of us. No, maybe “good little bible study girls” (and boys) aren’t supposed to feel this way. But to be honest, we do. I know from first hand experience that it can cause us not to be able to make the progress we could. Until we remove it, we may be stuck. Or we may feel like we keep bumping up against a dead end.
This isn’t your typical root of bitterness, though. It’s the root of bitterness toward …
(I am a bit nervous about saying this so boldly… you may think I am one of those reckless arm-chair theologians or, worse…you may feel I am some sort of heretic.)
It’s the root of bitterness we have toward… God.
Yes, you read right.
Many of us, many times, have bitterness that we harbor toward the Lord of the Universe.
Many of us feel like God has done us wrong.
No wait…before you blow me off as being off my nut :-), consider this!
We know in our heads that God does not actually DO any wrong, but we struggle with what He has assigned to us, at times. We feel like He has expected just too much of us. Maybe He gave us parents that were abusive, a husband that abandoned the faith (or that claimed to be a Christian and never was), a child who died of cancer, or no husband, wife, or child at all when that is what we have longed for so desperately. Maybe He gave us a boss who belittles us or a sister who grabbed the inheritance and ran, just as the bills were coming due. Whatever it may be…is there any way that you feel like God has asked just too much of you?
Or, are you all good with it? “God is God and I am not, so whatever he assigns me in life is fine.” Can you say those words? If I am truthful, right now I can’t.
Why am I referring to this as a root of bitterness that may trip you up on your Thin Within journey?
Well, because if there is some way that you feel God has “done you wrong,” then trusting Him with your food and your body might be just too much of a stretch. You may resent Him too much to give this over to Him to guide you and direct you.
If you know my testimony, you know that I first became aware of 0 to 5 eating in 1999 and began writing Thin Within material in 2000. I worked closely with the Hallidays in generating the Thin Within book manuscript in 2001/2002. Yet, it wasn’t until 2006 that everything that I knew and wrote about “clicked.” Prior to that, I would release some weight and then grab a hold of it again. 2 steps forward and 2 back. It didn’t feel like there was any forward progress.
The catalyst for the change that occurred in 2006, was God showing me that I was angry … at Him. I resented Him for what He had assigned to me. You see, I had dealt with the horrible upbringing I had, the sexual abuse, physical abuse and so on and so on–I had forgiven a boatload of people and released them to God’s hand, but it seemed plain IMPOSSIBLE that God would assign to me, a woman who had never seen decent parenting in action in my own life when I was a child, the responsibility of being a mom to a special needs child. When Daniel was born in 1992, within six weeks, I knew in my spirit that God had assigned me the challenging role of parenting a child on the autism spectrum.
I have a VERY different view of this now than I did back then, but back then, I figured being a parent at ALL would be hard enough. I lived in fear that I would abuse my own children just as my parents had me and their parents had them…I feared that I would just be one more generation of abuser in my family. I am so very grateful to my husband for his tender love, care, and demonstration of a different way to parent than the one that I knew. He and my precious mother-in-law made a difference that has transformed our family tree–I believe that.
But it didn’t mean that parenting a child on the autism spectrum was easy. It wasn’t. In 2006, 100 pounds overweight and fearful of dying from a stroke or heart attach, I decided it was time to really deal with my overeating, I lamented “What is WRONG with me that I can’t give You my eating, God?!?” He plainly impressed upon my heart, “You don’t trust Me. You resent Me for Daniel.” OUCH.
I didn’t want to submit to the Lord because I held this against Him. I felt that God had done me wrong even though I knew that God does no wrong. It just simply seemed like far too much to expect of me. It was a root of bitterness that I was tripping over again and again.
God and I began to deal with this a bit at a time. It wasn’t easy, but I began to develop a tender heart for God and whatever he ordained in my life–including being the mother of an autistic son. It didn’t seem fair to Daniel and that was hard for me, too, but through the nudging of the Holy Spirit and a conversation with a wonderful woman in my church who had dealt with being the mom of a special needs child so beautifully (about Daniel’s age, too), my heart began to soften.
He used two songs to really nudge me to a place of releasing my hold on MY will, MY way. One, Steven Curtis Chapman’s God is God, and the other Draw Me Close by Kutless. It didn’t happen all at once, but over time. I did, however, need to come to a point of decision. “God, You are God and I am NOT.”
Can you relate? Is there something down deep inside of you that you resent God for appointing to you or, if you don’t like that way of thinking of it, that He has “allowed?”
I believe that this can trip you again and again on your life’s journey–not just with Thin Within and applying the principles to break free from obsession with food, eating, and weight, but even more generally.
If this resonates for you, I urge you to sit down with God for a bit. Ask Him to help you to see with His eyes. Ask Him to give you His perspective on whatever it is He has seen fit to be a part of your life.
The truth is, what we see and experience on this planet is but a tiny “blip” on our eternal timeline. God takes the blip of time on this planet and uses it to create something that will be for glory for ETERNITY. It is hard to fathom because we are creatures who are SO linear and bound by time and space. But the reality is–this is NOT all there is. There is SO much more.
This is why the Scriptures tell us again and again to fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary and what is unseen is eternal. And that our trials on this planet are accomplishing for us an eternal glory that far surpasses them all. And fix our eyes on Jesus the author and perfector of our faith who for the joy set before him endured the cross and scorned its shame. And set our minds on things above where Christ is seated. When Christ, who is our life appears, we will also appear with Him in glory.
These are just off the top of my head. There is so much more than what we see or think or feel on this planet.
But if we resent God for what he has ordained for us on this planet, we will miss so much of what He intends…the good stuff. The joy. Even in the pain.
When my heart was grieved and my spirit embittered,
I was senseless and ignorant; I was a brute beast before you.
Yet I am always with you; you hold me by my right hand.
You guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will take me into glory.
Whom have I in heaven but you?
And earth has nothing I desire besides you.
My flesh and my heart may fail,
but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.
– Psalm 73:21-26 NIV
Is it possible that you have a root of bitterness toward God–something that you are tripping over–something that keeps you from trusting him with your eating? What will you do to begin to deal with it today?
The horse dream ended up in a very real way being a nightmare—God continued to shut down everything to which I looked for satisfaction but Him (including my horses!).
I stopped riding due to challenges the horses faced (the one in the picture wasn’t even 5 yet and came totally lame…surgery was required…he is only 9 now and is retired). Between that and my escalating weight (again), I stopped riding. This was a heartache as well.
God was insistent. Gentle, yes, but insistent. Would I look to Him? Or would I continue to resist His call?
In the fall of 2006, I got involved in an online Christian horse owner’s list. I wanted to fellowship with other believers who loved and were owned by 🙂 horses. I guess the group owner “Googled” my name and found out about my involvement with Thin Within.
The internet is an amazing place. We can be whoever or whatever we want independent of how we look. In real life, had this woman seen me, she might have been very polite and never even mentioned a “Christian diet book” to me given I carried 100 (or so) extra pounds—even if I “helped write” it! But, not having seen me, she didn’t know I didn’t practice what I preached…And innocently asked me about it. She had no idea that this was something from my past—or was it?
She was a tool in God’s hands to flush me out of hiding!
In fact, she asked me to lead the horse group members through an online study of the Thin Within book. Good grief! God was actually pursuing me! Rather than interpret it as indicative of His great love, I felt trapped. 🙁 And a bit annoyed.
Not willing to be Jonah and run the other way, however, I went along with it. After all, no one had to know the truth–that I was almost as big as ever and didn’t give a flying fig about surrendering this to God…right?
I am sure that precious woman didn’t have a clue how God was using her. She may have only known that she and others in the group wanted to lose weight (or, at the very least, make it through the holidays without gaining) and Thin Within was a “Christian diet” (or so they thought—it isn’t at all, but they didn’t know that yet).
It is funny how the Lord works things out.
Early in November 2006, I began to share lessons about Thin Within on the Christian horseman’s list. Getting to know the group, I also shared the video of Daniel and Dodger.
In response to that, I discovered that a young mom of a four year old boy…who had been diagnosed with the same autism spectrum disorder as my Daniel—Asperger’s Syndrome—was also present on the list! When we began to talk about our sons—hers only 4 years of age and mine 14 years old—we shared and talked and shared and talked some more. I had walked this road 10 years ahead of her…and God used her earnest questions to soften my heart some more. There were times when I would come through an email exchange in tears…both at the pain I had touched upon in my own life in order to reach out to her, but also with joy that the years of heartache had an outlet…a positive one.
God showed me again…He spins straw to gold if we allow it.
The question was, would I yet continue to resist that God is God? Could HE use me in some way to encourage another about her child’s autism?
How ironic…I found that, in spite of myself, I did have encouragement to offer her. If nothing else, I could share pitfalls to avoid, blessings to rejoice in…and as I shared with her, I found that God was redeeming many years of pain, years of resentment that He chose to make my son autistic, years of feeling God’s “cold shoulder.” I began to consider that God had much more tenderness toward me, and toward Daniel, than I realized.
As I shared daily in just two short weeks with the online horse group about Thin Within, God continued to melt my heart…this time, combining the awareness of the truth about Thin Within with his gentle nudge to look at all the areas of my life I had yet to surrender or to surrender…again.
Because of what I learned in 2001, I knew forgiveness of others, of myself and, even of God, was an important factor. I knew that, if nothing else, it would help clear the air in my life and lift burdens I was carrying needlessly.
Not so nearly the huge undertaking it had been in 2001, I was able to move forward quickly.
Early on, a song came on KLOVE radio that echoed the stirrings in my heart for the first time in a number of years:
You are my desire,
no one else will do….
help me find a way,
bring me back to you…
You’re all I want.
You’re all I ever needed.
You’re all I want. Help me know you are here.
God was making a way in the wilderness…and a way to bring me back to Him. That song was like a healing ointment applied to my heart, softening it. God gently peeled back the callus…and the heart beneath was tender.
Another song ministered to me deeply– “He’s My Son” by Mark Schultz. God used that song to show me that He was, indeed, aware of my heartache and pain. He reminded me that He, too, gave up His Son…only He gave His Son over to sinful man. He was not asking me to do that. He asked me to trust my only son to HIM—to the Lord. To let God be God.
As if to confirm what He was showing me in the stillness of my quiet times with him, another song came on the radio while I was driving through the canyon near our home:
God is God and I am not
I can only see a part
of the picture He’s painting
God is God and I am man
So I’ll never understand it all
For only God is God
God showed me unmistakably that he cares, that he is here, that he is making a way, even when I see no possible way for that to happen. He IS doing a new thing, even when I don’t perceive it.
See, I am doing a new thing!
Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?
I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland.
Isaiah 43:19
He is faithful to complete that which He has begun (Philippians 1:6). I had allowed my vision to be blurred by bitterness and fear. As these blinders came off, I could begin to see the truth. Truth sets me free (John 8:32)—The truth that He loves, He cares, He is involved…He calls to me, to you. He beckons to us to draw near to His love…so great a love. So unfathomable, in fact, that we may miss it.
I challenge you, dear reader…believe Him for the truth. He says the truth is that He IS doing a new thing. Will you choose to believe God? To believe what He says?
Tomorrow, I promise 🙂 the close of this lengthy testimony.
In the Fall of 2002, my family and I moved to the country to fulfill a life-long dream I had of owning horses. All the work of preparing the land, fences, including the moving of tons of rock (literally) by hand caused me to work my tail off (literally) outside. When we moved, I weighed in at 230 pounds. But I quickly began to shed extra weight primarily because I was working outside so hard. The physical demands being placed on my body were more than the amount of food I was putting in, so I began to shed weight relatively quickly. I deceived myself into thinking I was now applying the TW principles. I got down to 170 lbs, patted myself on the back and arrogantly reconnected with folks at Thin Within, including the Hallidays.
I again began to write articles for Thin Within’s ThinLine magazine. A few pieces were published, but, honestly…they were devoid of heart. I wasn’t living the message, and this time God wasn’t going to let me get away with not living the truth. It wasn’t about weight. It was about my heart which I continued to withhold.
I should have gotten the hint when a piece I wrote on the Abundant Life didn’t make the cut for the magazine. In my arrogance and pride, I refused to see what God was saying. I even tried participating in online support groups, but these experiences, too, were cold–devoid of heart for me. My heart was rock solid—frozen…HARD. I wanted God to snap me out of it, but He was calling me to live according to the truth that He had already revealed to me. He had done so much for me…and yet I continued to insist that He do more. I was not yet willing to make the hard choices.
I still hadn’t surrendered food and eating to the Lord. I definitely hadn’t surrendered my son’s autism…and it continued to be a heartache to me.
Not only that, but issues with my mother intensified at that time, causing even more bitterness—reopening the wounds that God had done so much healing of in the summer of 2001. Unfortunately, rather than apply what I knew to be true—that I needed to keep short accounts and walk in forgiveness moment by moment—I stored up bitterness. The wedge intensified, not only in my relationships with people (including my mother), but also in my relationship with the Lord.
I chose not to deal with this at its root—a big mistake.
God used the horses to minister to my soul and to Daniel’s. Below is a video showing a special connection between Daniel and our formerly abused mustang, Dodger. In the video, you can see where my weight had gotten. That wasn’t even my heaviest…it was on its way down! I wrote about the special connection Daniel and Dodger had and that piece was published in the Chicken Soup for the Horse Lover’s Soul Volume 2.
As the big outside work projects were completed, the winter began and my body was no longer called on to do as much physical labor outside, the weight began to pour back on. The truth was evident. I hadn’t dealt with the heart issue…my heart was still chained to food—as if there had been any doubt! Shame intensified again…and I once again withdrew from friends that might remind me of the Thin Within message.
Stubborn. Rebellious.
It wasn’t that I didn’t *know* what to do! I knew all right. But I remained content (in a manner) with my arrogance and pride, refusing to surrender. I got angrier and angrier at the Lord.
My blood pressure had become an issue even while I was thinner and more active—before we had moved. Now it was off the charts and I needed more medication to manage it. I would fall asleep at night wondering if I would wake up or have a stroke and die in my sleep…or a heart attack. We live on the side of a steep hill and three times a day I went out to spread hay all over the hillside for the horses…and there were times I wondered if I would keel over down there and how long it would be before my family would notice that I hadn’t come back in…and I would be out there dead in my tracks. 🙁 You know…that isn’t the abundant life that Jesus came and died to give to me. And it is NO way to “live.”
In late 2005, when I reread an email I had sent off to my sister in an emotional frenzy, I was shocked at the absolute hatred I verbalized for our mother. God used that to knock me soundly upside the head. I was shocked at what I had become. Not just physically…but inside, too! After all the “forgiveness work” I had done in 2001, what had happened? It was a reflection of the deterioration of my heart that was visible outwardly in what I had allowed my body to become as well.
God used that exposure and a series of events to begin to peel away the hard callus over my heart. My Mom ended up in incredible emotional and physical need. God used this to show me what “faith choices” really were. I could step out in faith and choose with an act of my will to do that which I didn’t FEEL like doing. I discovered, as I stepped out in faith and believed Him for what He wanted to do, that my heart softened to my Mom who had so great a need for the first time in her life.
This was a difficult time as I lost my Mother-in-Law with whom I was incredibly close. In a very real way, Phyllis had been the godly loving Mom I had never known in my own biological mom. She was a prayer warrior who loved Jesus and she was my best friend even before I met her son :-). To lose her at the same time that my own Mom needed me—I knew it was no accident.
In the summer of 2001, I began to work through the material in the Thin Again book. (This is NOT the Thin Within book, as the Christian version of that wasn’t published until 2002.)
I had read through Thin Again, but hadn’t processed the questions at the end of each chapter. I knew God was calling me to take time to allow him to heal me. There were reasons that I struggled with this cycle of eating, gaining, pulling myself up by my bootstraps and dieting, losing a lot of weight, only to start the cycle again. By insisting that it was all about my rebellious choice to sin (something that I felt WDW taught in error), I hadn’t dealt with some root issues.
God used the summer of 2001 to walk me through the valley of the shadow of death. I discovered that at the root of my tendency to overeat was bitterness, anger, lack of forgiveness. Many might not understand how these things could be attached to overeating. Throughout my life, I had experienced abuse and early on I had taken on some coping mechanisms for that. I had to own my responsibility for choosing behaviors that didn’t honor God, yes, but I began to see that there were underlying reasons this was something so challenging for me.
God gently but firmly led me to face into all the wrongs done to me…I journaled each and every occurrence of anything that I could think of that had wounded my heart. From my earliest years to just moments ago. Some might say this is self-indulgent. All I know is that God led me to do this. He led me to journal specifically that I CHOOSE TO FORGIVE EACH AND EVERY ONE. He led me to make this leap of faith…that he would enable me to do it.
In this, there was great healing. Because I chose with every painful memory to journal how each offense made me feel, I cried my way through that summer finding comfort and rest only in the arms of the Lord. Choosing to forgive, however, was like unlocking the shackles that had held me.
God used a Thin Again friend I had made in a Yahoo group to help me to go through this process…something that Thin Again calls “unwrapping grave clothes.” This precious sister was there to pray me through this process, to hold me accountable for pressing on, to spur me on to love now in the present, to continue to choose to forgive, even as I faced into past wrongs.
In all of this, I also had to choose to forgive myself for sins I had committed against others, against myself, against God. I know that 1 John 1:9 says that if we confess our sins he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us of ALL unrighteousness, but somehow, I managed to resent MYSELF. I even resented God! Not only did I need to choose to let God be God (“forgive” him, in a sense), but I had to confess that arrogance to him as well.
As you can see, this is a multi-layered issue…thus the imagery of unwrapping graveclothes like when Lazarus stepped forth from the grave when Jesus raised him from the dead. The Lord was raising ME from the grave of past wrongs, bitterness, lack of forgiveness…and I needed the help of others to unwrap the graveclothes just as Lazarus did before I could experience the life that Jesus intended.
God did an amazing work through this. He established a truth in my life for me that I couldn’t deny. Almost without question, even now 12 years later when I revert to “that which I do not want to do is that which I do” with regards to eating, it almost always indicates that I am feeling wounded and am in need of forgiving someone. During that summer, I learned just how powerful choosing to forgive really is.
Today, if I struggle with rebellious eating, my current accountability partner knows to ask me “Who do you need to forgive?” It is a powerful truth in my life that bitterness, wounding, and lack of forgiveness are directly connected with overeating.
You can probably do the math, however. If I learned that in the summer of 2001, how was I at 250 pounds five years later–in the summer of 2006 when my “before” picture was taken? 🙂 More on that the next time…
Hi, everyone. The video below may take a while to load. It is a little over 7 minutes long. It is a clip of a friend of mine sharing some thoughts about her body as the temple of God as well as another section on God’s forgiveness. I got permission from Thin Within (and my friend) to share this. Some of the thoughts about the temple may be challenging for some of us to hear, but hang in there–I think it dovetails beautifully with her testimony of God’s forgiveness that follows. I hope you can take the time to view the video. It is powerful. I would love to hear from you about it.
