If I want to break free from unhealthy eating habits, I have to be willing to prayerfully evaluate what place my emotions have in my choice to eat. I can be as practical as anything, but when it gets down to it, there are times when my compulsion or drive to eat something is like a run-away train–there is no stopping it. No promise to pray to overcome temptation or to look for a way out, to sing praise songs, to journal seems to keep the inevitable from happening. In times like those, I want the craziness more than I want to be sane…what is that about? Why can all my godly and good intentions be overcome in a moment of intensity? What place does my anger (or other emotions) have in driving my eating?
I don’t really know the answer to this yet. I know that God has graciously exposed moments when my thinking is heading in the direction of *becoming* that run-away train…before it happens. I continue to pray in my moments when I *want* that–that I will see it before it happens so I can derail it…take my thoughts captive rather than be taken captive by my thoughts.
I have seen that much of the “inexplicable” agitation or angry feelings that seem attached to more compulsive eating are often due to unresolved issues in my life. If I haven’t forgiven my husband for a careless remark he made on vacation, then when he does something that triggers that memory, I tend to give him “what for”…or turn the equivalent amount of anger inward…and allow it to drive me to eat. If I don’t take these things to the Lord and work to forgive and release my wounds, unmet needs, and anger, it is almost surely going to bite me in the rear…
I must sit with the Lord and ask him to search my heart and know me. Show me if there is anything in me that needs to be brought out into the light. A survey like this daily is helpful. It keeps that unresolved anger at bay and compulsive eating because of it at a minimum.
23 Search me, O God, and know my heart;
test me and know my anxious thoughts.24 See if there is any offensive way in me,
and lead me in the way everlasting.– Psalm 139:23-24
