My Spiritual Eating Disorder

This past summer I was faced with the harsh reality that one of my very best high school friends was suffering from an eating disorder. At first it didn’t seem real – she was so good at covering it all up. I knew something was up – all the signs were there – but she kept on living life the way I had always remembered. In the fall after graduation, after we had all dispersed to our respective colleges, was when things started noticeably falling apart. After a few months, around Christmas, she finally started
seeking out real help. It wasn’t long after that she told me she would be moving into an inpatient treatment center for her eating disorder and related complications. Even then, though, the whole situation didn’t seem completely real or as complicated as it was. It seemed like all it would take was a
quick-fix, 3-month stint in treatment and everything would be back to normal again. It wasn’t until four months after she moved into the Anna Westin House that things started to click for me. I visited her at AWH for the first time on April 10th. It had been a solid 4 months, if not longer, since we had seen each other, and I wasn’t really sure what to expect. Would she look better? Worse? Would she be the same incredible friend I had come to love so much in high school? I got to the house and still everything felt so surreal. The place didn’t look or feel like a treatment center, at least not to me. The other girls there were (or at least looked like) perfectly normal, fun-loving girls, about my age. You would never know most of them had a problem if you saw them outside of the treatment center. It wasn’t until a couple of days after I had visited that the reality of this disease really began to hit me. I had been processing all the things I saw, heard and experienced on my visit to AWH, and the realities of my friend’s eating disorder started to make sense. My heart went out to the girls I met there, especially my own dear friend, but I think the reason I really felt compelled to visit her was so that God could really use her situation to help me understand one in my own life. In all the ways that a person with anorexia or bulimia experiences physical consequences of their disease, it is possible for someone to experience a spiritual eating disorder. I have seen the natural effects of an eating disorder firsthand, and through that experience, God has shown me that I, too, have an eating disorder – a spiritual one.

You may be asking what I could possibly mean by that. Let me see if I can explain this in a way that makes sense outside of my head as much as it makes sense within it. When a person has an eating disorder, it usually stems from them being unhappy with some part of their life, whether it be what
they look like, their lack of control over certain situations, or a number of other reasons. In a spiritual eating disorder, I think a lack of control is often the driving factor. It is hard to hand over one’s entire life to an invisible Creator whom we only believe in by this obscure feeling of assurance we call faith. When something feels as out-of-reach as that, we often look for something tangible to place our trust in, and a lot of times we find that thing to be ourselves. Sometimes it can be fear, too, that leads us to a place of not knowing what else to do, so we start to take matters into our own hands. We may also feel a sense of pride, arrogance or selfishness, like “I know how to handle this and I don’t really care how things happen as long as they turn out the way it seems to me that they should.” In any sense, some underlying factor, different for every individual, can drive us to a sort of spiritual eating disorder.
What does this spiritual eating disorder look like, then?
Well, think about a natural eating disorder. When someone has anorexia, they have made a conscious decision to restrict the food they eat, in quantity, quality, and numerous other ways. They may supplement with vitamins or diet pills that would make them not feel hungry or would sort of replace the nutrients they are lacking by not eating. In a spiritual sense, someone might decide to starve themselves of their time with God and His Word, possibly thinking they don’t need it right now, they can handle things on their own, or that they don’t feel it working anyway so why bother. They find ways to replace this time: being with friends that seem to have a positive influence, reading books,
watching movies or listening to music that makes them feel satisfied or healthy about what they’re doing, etc. As this goes on, the person becomes numb to the feeling of hunger that their spirit once had for the Word of God, and they lose interest in even considering feeding it.
In my case, the thought of feeding my spirit the Word of God became something that made me actually physically ill. I would think about going to Bible study or having a quiet time and I would get shaky, nauseated, nervous, and start to panic about it. It was miserable. It doesn’t stop there, though. Someone can have spiritual bulimia just as much as they can anorexia. With bulimia, one binges on all the things they’ve been going without until they have eaten so much they feel guilty and so they find a way to purge it. This works the same with spiritual bulimia. One can go a long time without feeding their spirit the Word and then experience a time of spiritual bingeing where it seems like they just cannot get enough. However, after they have binged they feel ashamed and weak for having given in and not remaining in control of the situation on their own. To make up for it, they purge, in any way they possibly can, in hopes that they can remove everything from themselves that causes them to feel guilt, shame, remorse or weakness. Physically this is done using practices such as making oneself throw up, taking laxatives, and a number of other ways. Spiritually, one purges the Word they have put into their spirits in much the same way that they “replace” the missing nutrients with spiritual
anorexia. Listening to secular music, reading secular books, spending time with the wrong crowd and in general denying anything that God may bring to mind to deal with are some ways that someone may spiritually purge. I have noticed this pattern in my own life, as well. I have a period of spiritual ‘high’ where I am on top of the world, nothing can touch me, and I am allowing God to show me some incredible facets to who He is and what He has in store for my life; but then something happens,
sometimes unidentifiable, that causes me to rid myself of any trace of my time spent with God and I go back to starving my spirit of the One thing it needs most of all.

The main mistake we make is to view coming to God as a weakness. The truth is, God wants us to come to Him. He created humans to have a sense of need for relationship, a need to rely on others and to not carry our burden alone. He fulfills this need by way of the people he places in our life as friends, parents, teachers, and significant others; but He also desires for this need to be met by way of a personal relationship we experience with Him. He knows our hearts deeper than anyone else and He understands what we are going through. Hebrews 4:14-16 tells us that Jesus was tempted and understood weakness just the same as we experience, and therefore He sympathizes with us, giving us the strength to come boldly to the Father any time. God knows our need, He knows where we came from, and He wants to be the solution to our every problem. We have to know, as humans, that it is our tendency to want to have control in most every situation, especially the ones where we could be
positively or negatively affected by the outcome. It is also very hard to accept love from and trust a Creator that we don’t think did a satisfactory job when He made us. This makes trusting God and coming to Him even more challenging; but God wants us to know and experience a part of Him that only we, as an individual, can experience for ourselves. He wants to reveal Himself to each of us in a
way that only we understand, and remind us of His everlasting love for us, proven by the work of Jesus on the cross. In order for this to occur, though, we have to open ourselves to His intentions in our lives, understand that His plans are far better than our own, and accept that our having control is not the best thing for the situation. Then and only then, can God begin a work in our lives that will transform us forever.

The treatment for this spiritual eating disorder, like a physical one, is not an easy process. It is slow, agonizing, painful, and often seems absolutely impossible; but, like a physical eating disorder, God wants to do a work of healing in our hearts. When we turn our focus back to Him, things begin to change. We can find help in going to spiritual leaders that have experience with this sort of thing themselves for help and guidance, but ultimately it is up to us to make the changes and have an effective treatment. There are all sorts of therapies, just like in physical eating disorders. There’s  music therapy through spending time in praise and worship. There is art therapy by looking at the incredible creation God has laid out before us – we can even use it as inspiration to paint, draw, journal, or just as a way to experience God in a more tangible way. There is physical therapy through getting your spirit back out there into the game and working hard at your quiet times or Bible study.
Bible study also works great as a sort of group therapy, all of us coming together and sharing our strengths and weaknesses to help one another overcome their own situation. There are countless other ways that God provides therapy for our spiritual eating disorders that parallel the treatment for physical ones. Granted, there are going to be a lot of days when our treatment is the absolute last thing we want, but we have to force ourselves to persevere because those who do are the ones that win the race and receive the ultimate prize of eternal life in Christ.

My Spirit is Sick

This morning the Lord was telling me His take on why I wasn’t feeling so up to par this week. It was one of those weeks where you just don’t feel like doing anything, nothing really gets you motivated, and (oh no, don’t say it!) you don’t even really care to spend time with God. I was definitely feeling down and I really didn’t have much of a good reason, but then God got my attention and shared this with me:
       My Spirit is sick and I had made it this way by filling my mind and heart with things not of God. That is why I felt such a longing for Him at the beginning of the week – my Spirit knew what it needed to get itself back to health. God equated it to when my physical body gets sick. The first day you’re sick, you know it – you feel way worse that day than most of the rest and you tend to “milk it” a lot more that first day out. Then, the next couple of days you start coming to accept that you are indeed sick and start sort of nursing yourself back to health, or dealing with it at least. You self-medicate or go to the doctor – the natural way of dealing with it. Then you just let your body rest and heal without asking too much of it.

The same goes for when your spirit is sick – the first day you feel miserable. You might be depressed, tired, crabby or down and things just seem like they’re not quite right. You may decide to just wallow in it, or you may decide to take action early. The second day you start to accept it, but here is where it can get quite dangerous. If you let it just keep going here, the sickness is just going to get worse and worse; but if you take action now you will get it under control.

So how do you take action? Spending time in the Word, praying, being in the presence of God (especially when you don’t feel like being there) is the best way for us to do our part in the natural. Then God joins us with His supernatural power (like His healing for our natural bodies) and He takes care of the rest and gets our spirit back to health and in shape to do His work.

I would urge you that if you are feeling this way, find time to spend with God and really let Him into your heart to heal the broken places. If you don’t think you can do this by yourself, find a close friend who is a strong Christian, a leader/pastor in your church, or email us and we’ll help you connect with someone or with us. Having another person helping you and encouraging you in your walk with God is fundamental to your success as a Christian. God loves you and He wants your spirit to be healthy so that you can share His love with everyone around you!

To Just Be

Right now I just really want to curl up in my Daddy's arms and feel the warmth and comfort of His sweet embrace. I want to just be there, Him holding me, the two of us alone where I know nothing can happen to me, no one can take away what I feel, and all is perfect with the world because my Daddy is holding me in His arms. I want to become like a little girl again when I knew that nothing I could do was by my own strength, whend I did not yet understand what pride was and had too much of it to ask for help. I want to become like a little girl again in knowing that nothing that happens can take away the feelings - the love - between my Daddy and me, and that whenever I am feeling down or tired or just want to be, I can come sit in His lap and He will just hold me, whisper in my ear, kiss my face, rub my back, and remind me of just how much He loves every ounce of my being. That is where I want to be right now. I long for it so much that I can hardly wait until I can get to my place alone and just be with Him in whatever way it pleases Him to be with me.

"Well, He is! Can't you see Him?"

My very best friend told me today that she loves that when I talk about God, I talk about Him as if He is right there next to me, talking to me like anyone else would. When she said that I responded somewhat cynically saying, "Well, He is! Can't you see Him?" I poitned to the empty seat to the right of me at our table. As I said it jokingly, I realized how true it is - I really do feel as if He is literally with me all the time. My friend went on to ask how I could know and feel with such confidence, and it took me a little while to describe it. I answered her in the best way I could, even though it's not something you can really understand until you've experienced it for yourself. As best as I could, I explained that it had taken a long time for me to get here; I definitely don't feel like I have arrived. For a more tangible example, I told her how I view God as if He's a real, tangible being instead of this far, out-there, untouchable Someone who we have to treat as this Lord over us all the time. I don't mean that we can disrespect Him and treat Him as if He is no different from us, but He does want us to be real with Him, show our raw emotions, even if it may mean yelling at Him or arguing with Him. As much as God is my Lord and I worship Him, He is also my Heavenly Father and the Lover who has caputured my heart so that it cannot escape. He desires my touch as much as I desire His, and He is so jealous for my heart. He wants all of me and I want nothing more than for Him to have all of me. That's a really hard thing to do sometimes - give your entire self over to God's control and have that kind of trust - but it's also something that is meant to take time.

Trust is a process. Some people are more quick to trust than others, but all in all, no one trusts someone completely the instant they meet them. In fact, more often than not that trust takes years to get ot that level of trusting someone with one's life, giving them complete control. Over the years of knowing God, it started out as a lot of talk with most of the action stemming from following the lead and expectations of others; but the more you say and act one way the more you start to believe that way, and the more you believe the more you start to really feel that way passionately. As I've spent my time discovering who God is the more I desire to know Him and feel Him close to me. It's similar to when you find that one person who is meant to be with you forever (not that I've experienced that yet, but this is how my friend explained it). As you first met that person you may have felt drawn to them or you "liked" them. Now as you've spent the time to really get to know them you start wanting to know them more. That is how I have come to feel this way about God. I kind of feel like the psalmist David in my pursuit for God's constant presence in my life.

There are many times that I feel God very tangibly. I've learned to distinguish His voice from all the rest and I have experienced Him walking right by my side and even taking my hand in His as we walk together. It's a little bit like God takes me on dates as a means of helping me get to know Him more.

Back to my comment of God being right next to me. Can't she see Him? Well, naturally, the answer is no; but think about that for a second. It's always said that Christians will be known by their love. So isn't it natural (or rather supernatural) to expect that she really can see His love in me so much that it is as if He is sitting right there?

You are my beloved....

"You are my beloved and I am pleased by what I have made in you and what I have found in your heart."
- Your Heavenly Father
Dearest Lord, Holy Father, I praise You alone for the adventures, enjoyment and relaxation I had today. You are the giver of all good gifts, and today, Father, was a truly splendid gift from You. Thank you for beginning to reveal your plans for me, Lord, and starting to use me for Your glory. I ask You to continue working in me and through me for the sake of Your glory alone. I find my pleasure in doing what delights You, my Father, so I thank You for teaching me what that is and for bringing me many opportunities to do just that. Thank You, Lord, for the new friends I have made that challenge me to grow in my relationship with You. I ask that You would continue to grow those relationships which are meant to be and to cut off those which are meant to end.
As I sleep tonight, Lord, I pray my sleep would be sweet and my dreams pleasant. Let my heart be constantly focused on You, even while my body is at rest, that I may be in prayer and conversation with my One true Lord at all times. Keep those who need prayer on my mind and heart so that I may lift them to You; and show me those I do not yet know of that are longing for a touch from Your heart to theirs. Let me be Your vessel, Lord, a constant outpouring of Your love overflowing in my life. I praise You, Lord, for the sole reason that You have been so good to me.
Love and Praise Forever and Always,
Your humbled and faithful servant
Amen

I Long for You

You, O Lord, are what the depths of my soul and the core of my being cry out in longing for. No matter how much time I spend with You, I cannot get enough. In You alone I find my strength and the meaning of my life. Your glory defines me.

Thankful for Suffering

Over time I am becoming more and more thankful for the suffering God has allowed me to endure because anytime I am suffering I have learned to stay strong in my faith in God. All the trials I have experienced have led me to a stronger faith in God and a closer relationship with Him. If I had not experienced the things I did, I would not have had the kind of faith in God that I do and I may not even be able to be used by Him for his glory in the way He so desires. My passion and longing and love for my Heavenly Father would maybe not be nearly as strong had I not experienced the need of it to sustain my own life.
Christ's body is my bread of life and His blood is what brings life to my spirit. I live by the nourishment that He alone can bring. Because I have experienced the fulfillment of what His nourishment can do in my body and spirit and soul, I long for Him and nothing else. My desires are slowly becoming what He desires for me; I am being transformed by the renewal of my mind and my desire for the things of the spirit. I am seeing a change in me and consequently in my life because God has been allowed to work on the parts of my life that require His careful hand.