secret struggles

I wrote an email to one of my campers today, offering some advice and some confessions of a struggle I lived in for the majority of my years ... so I thought it would be valuable to reveal to any of the possible readers of my blog this day. I have decided to just include the letter, as it is written, so you can get the full understanding.

Dearest ... ,

I have been struggling for days in how to explain all my thoughts, confessions and advice to you on this issue, knowing that it cuts deep and is a huge part of your life today, as you are trying to live out Christ's call for your life. But, I have decided to make the attempt, although it may be somewhat scattered ...

I must have watched this video on YouTube about 40 times now, fully understanding how true each of the issues in the video are ... I have cried every time. I have even tried to watch it again, testing to see if I could not cry ... and I couldn't get through it without tears welling up. I hope you can start by watching it and praying for God to reveal to you what he may ... during this very long email. :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyheJ480LYA

I thought I would start by sharing some scriptures about things I believe are essential to see before I share stories and specific advice about where I believe that you should take your initial (or continual) steps of freedom ... tomorrow.

You have been made in God's image & with a whole lot of honor.
So God created human beings in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. (Genesis 1:27)
You have made them a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned them with glory and honor. (Psalm 8:5)

He assumes that we love ourselves. It is essential to our life in Him.
Jesus replied: " 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself. (Matthew 22:37-39)

[Jesus is saying, "as you already love yourself" ...]

It is tempting to be self-gratifying and self-affirming, but we are called to deny ourselves.
Then Jesus said to his disciples, "Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it. (Matthew 16:24-25)

Write His love on our hearts, set an example for others, live it in everything, proclaim it in everything.
Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates. (Deuteronomy 6:4-9)

An absorption in our self-image and what often becomes self-worship ... comes from our pride.
People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God— having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with such people. (2 Timothy 3:2-5)

[ie. have nothing to do with those parts in yourself]

Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves ... (Philippians 2:3)

[we're selfish and prideful when we obsess over ourselves, or think of ourselves first]

A low view of yourself can paralyze/limit you from things God may have for you. (... or turn you into a grasshopper in strength.)
Then Caleb silenced the people before Moses and said, "We should go up and take possession of the land, for we can certainly do it." But the men who had gone up with him said, "We can't attack those people; they are stronger than we are." And they spread among the Israelites a bad report about the land they had explored. They said, "The land we explored devours those living in it. All the people we saw there are of great size. We saw the Nephilim there (the descendants of Anak come from the Nephilim). We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked the same to them." (Numbers 13:30-14:1)

If you believe it, God is going to use you in every situation to do ANYTHING.
I can do all things through Christ who gives me the strength! (Philippians 4:13)


I understand if you are struggling with self-image and weight. I get it, I really do. There is so much pressure from society and from people around us. Or most of the pressure may be coming from you, yourself.

I think it is motivated by a core issue, though. There are many that it could be. For me, it is motivated my discontentment and lack of understanding of God's kingdom (the bigger picture) ... and really my misunderstanding of God and His HUGE call on my life.

I have struggled with being self-obsessed over my weight since I was about 10, when I started going through puberty. It has often been worse than other times, not eating for days and trying to justify it, or just thinking about it all the time. I would run 12 miles, or work out until I couldn't move. I would fast and pray in hopes of sacrificing things to God, and then become so excited that I was losing weight that I would continue in vain. I would never talk about it to anyone, because my pressure was internal and I desired for people to think I had it together. It was dominating a huge part of my life. This was bondage.

In the bondage that comes with eating-issues, we are restricting the abilities God has to work through us. In obsessing (mentally or physically) with our weight and the food we eat, we are under an umbrella of thoughts that are not of God (and therefore sin). In this bondage, we are far from free, we are controlled by the worldly parts of us ... we are not dying to ourself. I struggle with this now, honestly I do, in various parts of my life and in this situation. I hope to be free completely of worrying about any of it though.

One day I came to a realization during this process of being self-obsessed ... it was when I weighed very little, I was healthy and thin (110) ... and I found that I still wasn't content. I would look at myself and I would think "I am overweight and I can't remain this way" ... and I KNEW that wasn't true in the foundation of my rationality. And that is when I started digging to the core of the lies ... knowing it was from "the father of lies" and I had given him a piece of me, a piece of my mind and a piece of my life. I knew I had to repent of that, repent of the lies I believed and the ones I acted on accordingly. At that point, I realized none of the thoughts about my weight were true or really, that none of them were from God. When I weighed 25 pounds more than that, when I felt overweight, and wanted to get that weight off as fast as possible ... it wasn't important, it wasn't motivated by Christ's call to my life, it wasn't truly something I was to act upon. Those thoughts were not of the Spirit, not of God, and therefore sinful and from evil ... the evil place in myself.

I am reading this book and the author is sort of quirky, but I thought I would share an illustration with you that she shared, it is sort of corny, but makes sense when we look at denying ourselves and dying to ourself. (She calls the sin in her that she wants to die to "Flesh Woman.")

The film opens with Flesh Woman slowly making her way through a crowd on the way to her cross. A 683-pound sumo-wrestler chick squeezed into a purple-sequined evening gown. Her flushed but carefully made up face framed by a cloud of feather boa. Pausing now and then as the background music swells, she waves to all her fans lining the path. Black-mascara tears course down her cheeks as Frank Sinatra sings, "I did it my way."

"Wish you didn't have to go!" Gluttony calls from the crowd. Laziness and Procrastination agree, weeping in each other's arms. "Yeah, it hasn't been the same since you left the throne. We're having a tough time getting a break."

"I know darlings, I know. But, as they say, all good things must end."

Flesh Woman throws her final kisses to her dearest friends But she's overcome when she sees the crossbeam lying at my feet and the hammer I'm holding in my hand.

"Really my pet," she says, reaching to stroke my arm. "Is this all necessary?"

"I'm afraid so, I reply firm in my resolve and anxious to have it done and over. "Please lie down. It's time."

"But ... but ... but ..., " she sputters as I pull her toward her demise. "We need to talk."

She puts up quite a fight, but I'm determined. I know I will never have piece until I obey. "Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires, " Paul said in Galatians 5:24. He made it sound so easy. I wonder if Paul had to brawl with a sparkling eggplant in his fight against sin.

With a knee on her chest and one arm pinned to the cross, I attempt to fasten her down. "Think of all you'll miss," she says, struggling to get up.

I try to ignore her, to concentrate on what I must do. "All the things I did for you!" she adds with a pout. But I grit my teeth and begin to hum, "Have thine own way Lord. Have thine own way ..." And suddenly He is there. Having problems? Christ asks.

"Quite a few," I admit. "But I'm willing Lord. I want you to rule and reign in my life.

"What are you talking about?" Flesh Woman screams, flailing wildly at the sight of my Master. "I give you everything you want! I make sure you get your own way! Nobody loves you like I do!" she wails.

"Here, my Lord," I say, stepping back and handing Him the hammer, "I guess, it's more than I can do on my own." Christ takes the heavy mallet and kneels down beside my thrashing, frantic flesh.

Be silent. He says (Zechariah 2:13). And Flesh Woman obeys. For all flesh falls silent before the Lord. The music stops; all is still. Flesh Woman glares at Jesus. Then, subdued but not yet conquered, she turns and looks at me. "Don't you know?" she asks, her eyes narrow and cold. She draws out her words in an effort to draw me in.

"Don't you know? When you kill me, you die too."

The camera closes in on my face. I turn to look at Jesus, then I look back at the pitiful woman I once adored.

"Yeah, I know," I smile. "In fact, that's the whole point."

And the screen goes black. Curtain. The end.

At least for today.

(joanna weaver)

I think the analogy is helpful for me, because there comes this place in our walk with Christ, where we need to separate what is God-pleasing in us and what is us mostly for pleasing ourselves. We have to discern what is good fruit and what is neutral/bad fruit. Because the Word says that bad fruit doesn't grow on a good vine, which means we need to be cutting that out of our lives as often as we recognize it.

I think for you ... what you need to do is seek freedom in Christ. Chase God with everything in your life, your time, your relationships, your actions ... pray that you can see the thoughts that of Him and the ones that are not.

Things that are okay and I believe God-pleasing:
Thoughts of, "I've been eating a lot during this meal, I should probably stop."
Thoughts of, "I think I shouldn't eat too much because I'm not really hungry."

Things that are not okay:
Thoughts of, "I ate so much yesterday, I shouldn't eat much today."
Thoughts of, "I'm going to skip this meal."
Thoughts of, "I'm going to go throw this up, because it's more calories than I can burn off today."
Your thoughts being dominated by thinking about your appearance.

etc.

The thoughts that are not motivated by Christ you need to submit to Him immediately.

The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. 2 Corinthians 10:4-5
This is not something that anyone else will be able to do for you.

This is something you need to choose to give up. Otherwise, it will poison you. I KNOW this.

One of my best friends struggled with an eating disorder for years. She threw up more food that I probably know about. Even when finding out that another friend knew a girl who died on the spot, one day, from being bulimic ... she still continued to get rid of her food out of what I believe to be self-obsession. It's a disease, an addiction.

Many days we would be eating a meal, and I would not be watching and she would get up and go to the bathroom, and I would frantically ask everyone where she went. They would reply 'I don't know.' And I would sprint to the bathroom, crying in my heart, not understanding if she would ever get through this. And it would happen again and again and again and again. It is nothing I could change in her, it is nothing I could do for her, it was something she needed to decide on her own.

With her, with me, with you ... it's all the same ... it has sin at the center, as the motivation. This is not something that originates from nowhere, this is a lack of submission to God and His will for our lives. If we fail to recognize that and think that we can say, "I'm okay now, I'm making a commitment to change my life, because I do not want to live this way" ... and we seek to change the product of our lack of submission ... we will fail. What needs to happen is to chase after Him first and know that we can not do this alone. You cannot give up this disease, this addiction, without Christ's provision and intercession in your life. In the analogy I wrote before, the writer could not "deny herself" by herself ... we are helpless when it comes to us ... we can do anything with Christ behind us and in us. Christ can conquer this in you, if you allow Him to.

This comes in:
- a commitment from you that you never want to go back to this
- confession to others around you who can help you (especially your mom)
- possible counseling and constant accountability

For me, today ... this issue is something I have to submit to Him every morning. And maybe you will need to do the same. I submit my thoughts in moments of temptation and KNOW that He doesn't desire for me to live my life in bondage to self-absorption. He wants to do so much more with me (and with you). I no longer fast for entire days, out of the temptation that it so often brings. And writing this email has made me desire to let others know the truth out by internal struggle for the last 14 years of my life.

I have told many people that I came to the conclusion one day that I decided I was never going to get plastic surgery, so I guessed I needed to work with what I had ... and that sense of conclusion leads to confidence in your appearance. But, for me, this did not include my weight or body-tone ... and that is why my thought-struggle still remains. And God has allowed (and strengthened) me to be free of responding on those thoughts.

A big part of recovery is knowing and being confident of the truth, so you can better discern the lies. Meditate in the end of Ephesians 6, 1 Corinthians 10:13, Psalm 119:37, Psalm 37:23-34 and just try to know scripture/truth: Matthew 4:4.

I want you to let me know any of your thoughts on this and I would love to talk about it all, whenever you want ...

(I have not read these myself, but think it may be a good investment for you to buy one of these.)
Resources:
Hope, Help and Healing
Breaking Free
Thin Enough
Hunger for Freedom
The Monster Within
Weightless
Empty
God Hunger

Intensive Christian Recovery Programs:
RemudaRanch

I LOVE you and think you are just beautiful and amazing and hope you are continually seeking freedom in this.

Miss you,

Hope