What if I would have known?

I wonder what my 12 year-old self would have thought if I had told her that skipping meals was not going to give her a friend. I wonder what my 16 year-old self would have thought when I told her that when she started purging everything she ate to get skinny and/or sick to get friends, it would fail.

I wonder what I would have thought if I would have told myself that it would ruin any attempt at making relationships for the many years to follow.

I am deceitful.
I am a liar.
I am manipulative.
I am controlling.
I am selfish.
I live behind thick walls.
I isolate myself.
I do not know how to act in social situations.
I don't know how to comfort or love people in person.
I don't know how to feel vulnerable.
I don't know how to let people see me cry.
I DON'T KNOW HOW TO LOVE.

I wonder if I would not have continued on if I would have told myself that, at almost 23 years old, I can not even HAVE a healthy relationship because of the decisions I was making that I thought would make everything better.

It didn't work. I didn't get "skinny" and getting sick got me nowhere except... well... sick.

This is a big FFF YOU to Satan and my eating disorder.
I am done with you. I will not let you ruin my life anymore.

For the past six hours, I have been feeling the weight of everything that you have stolen from me. I have released so much hurt and pain. I cannot afford to keep doing this.

I have a life to live. I want to live it.

So, from this moment forward, I choose life. I choose to walk in the  identity that He has given me, IN which I have full confidence when I focus on that. I know who I am in Christ. I know exactly who I am in Christ. And it is in that identity I will choose to walk. I am not a slave to this disease any longer. I refuse to be gripped by chains any longer when I have the Spirit that resurrected Christ from COMPLETE DEATH living inside of me. I have been given AUTHORITY. I have been given the same glory that the Father gave the Son. I have no excuse to live a life bound any longer.

But.
Guess what?
You don't either.

And this isn't to say that I will not need to frequently remind myself of these truths. And you can feel free to remind me too.

True Repentence

My heart is broken at my sin. Over my life.

All I can think is, “I am the worst possible person in the world. Every person that has tried to love me, I have manipulated, tried to control, and pushed away. I have hurt them. Told them I hated them. And I never appreciated their love. And to this day, although they have shown me selfless love, I still doubt them.”

I hate what my eating disorder makes me. I hate the sinful, fleshly nature that I carry.

I live for myself. I live to satisfy my flesh.

But praise God that He has washed me white as snow, no longer sees these things, and has made His glory and nature available to me. Praise God that He made me new by His Spirit, and whensoever I choose to walk in this newness, I am not controlled by my flesh anymore. And praise God that He is teaching me how make this a reality in my life. Little. By. Little.

I desperately desire to live as He has called me to live. And each day I choose to deny my flesh and say NO to my illness, I get closer and closer to living in that true and new nature and being confident of my identity in Him.

May my heart never be hardened to the things of my life that break His heart.

May I learn more and more what it means to be truly repentant over my sin.

May I walk closer with the Spirit of the Living God every single day.

May I live more in the POWER that was given to me when the Spirit was released on Pentecost.

May I live more in victory every single day.

May my life become more about serving and loving others every day.

May I learn how to have healthy, non-manipulative relationships and  how to continue to break down my walls and stop pushing people away.

May I let people love me and love them in return.

May I be more like You EVERY SINGLE DAY.

Amen.

When did modesty lose its value?

It has been weighing heavily on my heart for quite awhile now. Sometimes I just feel so alone in my views that I shy away, terrified to speak up. And I know that there are many other women in my generation that feel the same way: the burden on the heart with a fear of voicing it.

The issue is modesty.

It's a difficult issue to talk about because it is hard to draw the line. It is not something where I can say, "Just don't touch alcohol and getting drunk won't be a problem." We can't just not wear clothes. So, where do we draw the line? What is acceptable and what is not?

Part of the issue is not even in the clothing, but in the way we carry ourselves. Modesty first and foremost reflects the entire Proverbs 31 woman. It is about having that gentle spirit. It is in the way one works, the way one speaks to others, the way one selflessly provides for others, and the way one dresses. So, in order to address modesty, the entire spectrum of the definition is important. And, while I feel the entire picture of a modest women has deteriorated, I feel as if the issue of modest appearance has become an almost terrifying thing.

I have made it an issue to ask about ten of my brothers in Christ over the past few months what their opinion of females in bikinis is specifically. "When you see a beautiful girl in a bikini, do you stumble?"

Not a single one of these men said no to me.

Now, while I understand very well that the problem lies within the sinful nature, not within the clothing itself, it still must be addressed because it still exists.

We are on this journey together. Brothers and sisters all aiming for the Highest Prize-- being face-to-face with our Creator, the Living God. So, we make it a point to see Him together. We do not do this alone.

So although I may not have all of the answers on where the line needs to be crossed, I do know that when a guy sees anything evenly remotely revealing, he will be tempted to stumble. Why is it that us women who BEAR THE NAME OF JESUS CHRIST are unwilling to give up our DESIRE TO FIT IN WITH THE WORLD and LOOK GOOD in order to help our brothers? No one in our generation seems to care anymore what they wear or who they may be affecting (and this goes even outside of the realm of clothing).

We begin to forget that we are not here to please ourselves or others (by wearing clothing that is revealing to fit in or look good), and we are unwilling to live lives fully committed to His Kingdom -- including helping our brothers and sisters in Christ to not fall -- by leading them astray.

We need our brothers in Christ to be strong, to abstain from sin, so we need to help them as much as they help us.

Ladies, let's step it up. Stop wearing revealing clothing. Bathing suits around guys -- just think about it. Tight shirts and pants. Cleavage. Short skirts / dresses. Even obsessive makeup These things matter.

We do not exist on this earth to look good. We aren't here for anyone but our Creator. And He is already pleased -- ENTHRALLED -- with our beauty.

May we not forget that.
Step it up. Please.

Call me ultra conservative... but I really just love my brothers in Christ and I NEED THEM.

The Continuing Journey to Freedom

It is a terribly sad thing to me that so many people are unaware of the darkness that lies behind eating disorders. Terribly, terribly sad. Eating disorders are not simply choices that one makes in order to "look good." Eating disorders are symptoms of trauma, of abuse, of rape, of rejection, of abandonment, of anything else that can tear one's life apart. After having an eating disorder for most of my life, I am finally realizing that temporarily "quitting" behaviors does not do anything if the underlying issues are not dealt with, if true healing does not take place. Letting go of behaviors temporarily will then become just that -- temporarily letting go of behaviors. There will be a return. There will be relapse when the underlying issues resurface. And so I have this past week.

Over the past few weeks, a lot of really real and painful things have resurfaced in my life. From the messages in chapel, to the Holy Spirit individually revealing a lot of pain in my life, to eating meals alone just like in my past, to spending my weekends alone, to isolating, to realizing that I still have no idea how to handle social situations, to stresses of school, to family, to coming home, to not being able to deal with student teaching being so soon... I have had a very difficult last few weeks.

I am broken. I am weary. I am scared. But I have been learning how to start dealing with the underlying issues of an eating disorder that has consumed me for a good portion of my life.

But because of all of the stuff I have been trying to finally deal with, and because I've been allowing God to prune things in my life and bring true healing, I have become vulnerable. I have spent so much of my life attempting to numb my feelings and pushing the stuff that's real aside, having surface level relationships, and shutting people out -- now that all of this is changing, now that my walls are coming down, I'm in the midst of a really terrible relapse.

But the thing that is different throughout this is that I do not wish to be here. I long for health and I long for life. In the past I would argue that I was definitely in control and there was nothing wrong with me bingeing and purging consistently. Controlling what went in and what went out of my body meant that I was in control. In reality, I was more out of control than one would even think to be possible. Now that I have spent the past two months really recovering, I can recognize how out of control I am this week. And while in the midst of a binge I do not care, when I step outside of it for even one minute, I am broken. I am broken because I know His heart over me. I know that I have so much life ahead of me. I know that I am hurting the people who truly do love me. And I can see that my entire life is being stolen right before my eyes.

And I realize that I have to choose to refocus. I cannot change my behaviors right now by "willing them away", but I can choose to focus on what matters. And what matters is that I do have goals in life. I have things to fight for.

1. I have Argentina in two and a half months. I have a chance to be used by the living God, to bless the lives of others, to make a true difference in a hopeless situation. 
2. I have student teaching in 5 months. I am stepping into the realms of true professionalism, a career, of marking the lives of adolescents forever, of being the face of Jesus even when the Truth cannot be verbalized. 
3. I have a life of missions ahead of me. When I feel that God is calling me completely away from the American school system into a Spanish-speaking country full-term (or just during summers, or just temporarily... whatever it may be) -- I will be living in a place that is unfamiliar, risky, stressful, hard -- but I will be loving children and sharing Christ's love with them, which I was born to do.
4. I have a story to tell that will bring others who have dealt with mental illnesses hope. I have a testimony that will truly represent the resurrection of Christ, if I choose to continue to stay on this road of recovery.
5. God has given me the desire to be a mommy over anything in this world. The most important thing to me is having children, and I believe that He has blessed me with the gift of being a wonderful mother. I cannot wait to live this out! (And each time that I use disordered behaviors, my chance of being able to have children decreases.)
6. I cannot wait to have a family of my own to redeem everything that went wrong in my own. To have a husband whom I love, who loves my children, and children, whom I love, who are best friends with both me and my husband. We will worship the LORD together and read books together and watch Tangled together and serve together. And my children will grow up to be Holy Spirit warriors. And my husband and I will lift each other up in the Spirit together at all times. 
7. I have a body that deserves to be taken care of. I have a body that will need to face the tensions of the public school system, of the mission field, and of generally being His hands and feet. My body needs to be healthy for all that He has called me to. 

I am more than this disorder, and even in the face of relapse, I believe this with all of my heart. I am struggling with the fact that "nothing changed" in two months of no behaviors, and so I wanted my "excuse for any failures that I may have" (being sick being the excuse) back, but in reality -- it has taken me 10 years of developing an eating disorder to get this sick, it will take me more than 2 months until I am fully healed.

• It takes a lot of perseverance and surrendering to Him. 
• It takes continuing to break down my walls and being willing to build relationships that are beyond surface level.
• It takes being willing to take care of myself above everything else. It means that learning to love myself and my body must become a priority.
• It means that I stop being a people-pleaser, because I am important, and because Galatians 1:10 says I am not to be.
• It means that I believe that imperfection does not make me a failure.
• It means that God being in control is more important than controlling my body (which is truly me trying to control my out-of-control life).

I am struggling and fighting a very difficult battle that I feel like I am losing right now, but God is faithful and I believe that He will continue healing me, even in the midst of this relapse, even despite my inability to control my behaviors at this very second.

Every day is a new day. Every breath is a chance to speak out something positive. Every beat of my heart is another beat of learning to live. I am still here. I am still a fighter. I am still free because He has already paid the price for my freedom.

His blood is powerful. His Spirit is alive. His Gospel is my peace.