Oh, To Live Without Food!

Today you are getting a treat! My friend, Abby, is doing the guest blog for me. She and I have bonded in many areas of our life. One area that we have leaned on each other for is our battle with food. Her battle is different than mine, but we end up with the same issues and some of the same problems. All-in-all food controls our thought life, taking away from our relationship with Christ. She has an incredible blog dealing with the lies we allow ourselves to believe. I hope you check it out!!!

As you read today, I pray that you will be encouraged by her words and rely on our Lord for healing!
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It’s so much better than it was. Truthfully, at my worst, I had an animated relationship with food. My imagination convinced me that an evil piece of my sister’s birthday cake would destroy me from the inside out. I hated, loathed, despised, cursed food. My poor mother was the de-facto audience to many of my tirades.

“I wish I could never have to eat again! If I didn’t need food, I could manage the rest of my life.” The most insurmountable element of recovery from an eating disorder, is that unlike most addictions, you can’t declare abstinence. I could not avoid the thing that caused me the most pain.

In retrospect, I believe my behavior with food was similar to Eve’s disaster in the garden of Eden. I wanted to best God, to be better than frail humanity.

Compulsive exercise was a depiction of power and capability. I drove my body as far as I could go, to the obliteration of exhaustion and knew what muscle failure felt like. Once, I dropped a barbell on my chest because I refused to admit my limits. On some level, I believed that by mercilessly exercising my body and restricting nutrition, I could achieve self-sufficiency - needlessness.

Day to day was an equation. If I wanted to eat a banana, I had to expend 120 calories. If I wanted to join the family for Thanksgiving, I had to knock out a 600 calorie 10 mile run first; like the man who believes he will earn Heaven if his good works outnumber the bad.

I grew up beneath the “salvation is by grace through faith,” mantra. I mean no disrespect to the Bible, but it truly became a mantra for me. I spoke it, preached it, read it, studied and did not believe it. Like so many good girls, those of us that were blessed to grow up in godly homes, I stepped out into the grown-up world with an unconscious doctrine of works.

Anorexia isn’t a modern problem. Compulsive exercise, or legalistic diets are not simply products of a poisonous media. They are a direct result of The Fall in in the garden of Eden. Way back with Eve, Satan kindled a evil thought - Eve could be like God.

~ Eve polished the shiny fruit between her palms, simultaneously turning the serpent’s words over in her mind. If I eat this fruit and gain the full knowledge of God, then I can determine my own destiny. I won’t need God’s rules, God’s garden or Adam’s companionship.

~ Millennia later, I rise from my knees agreeing gratefully that Jesus Christ has saved me. Within moments I am on my proverbial treadmill priding myself on my excellent behavior. See God? See all I do for you? Aren’t you proud of me? By bed time, my myriad daily mistakes march through my head. I worry that God will never want a failure like me. I must try harder tomorrow.

My food malady wasn’t much different; a works dynamic. If I was good enough, diligent enough. If I ran hard enough, spun fast enough. If I starved long enough, if I measured carefully enough - then, and then only could I eat.

Eve wanted to be self-sufficient and to not rely on God’s plan. In life, I often want to prove to God that I am good enough to save. In my relationship with food, I wanted to work hard enough to earn it or live without it. It’s all about me.

“I have not departed from the command of his lips; I have treasured the words of his mouth more than my necessary food.” Job 23:11

A major key to my healing is my admission before God that I am insufficient. He meets all my needs.

~Abby~

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