Finally, I am content with my body, realizing that I am fearfully and wonderfully made, and I have unique beauty. Now I no longer compare my looks to others and feel insecure if I'm not the most emaciated person in the vicinity. Now that I'm not striving to be the thinnest in the land, I'm able to appreciate the way God designed me. Other people's beauty doesn't take away from mine, because theirs is a different kind.
Note to self
New habits mean a new way of life. Our natural impulses are often wrong. Nothing of significance is accomplished without a deep, driving desire.
Clothing
You cannot buy an identity. Browsing the racks and choosing from the limited options available does not define someone. Buying more expensive threads does not give someone class. People are not what they wear.
Prayer for true beauty
God, please forgive me for rejecting, disrespecting, and harming my own body. From now on, regardless of the world's twisted beauty standards, may I treat my body with love. May I be conformed to God's image and standard of beauty. May I be the person God created me to be, for that is true beauty.
Reflections on recovery
A few years ago I struggled with anorexia, but God healed me and now I am content with my physical form; though I may not fit Babylon's ideal of beauty, I have my own unique, God given beauty that I wouldn't trade for Babylon's counterfeit.
After my dad passed away, depression and the spirit of rejection departed from me. After that I became more confident and emotionally stable...and I recovered from anorexia, which is rooted in self rejection. Compared to who I was then, I hardly recognize myself.
Last night I revisited anorexia, researching the psychology of eating disorders, and I was a textbook case: a young woman in a demanding graduate school program who experienced childhood trauma...anxious, with OCD tendencies...a slightly autistic perfectionist. One article described anorexia as a fat phobia of sorts. That was true in my case. If I ate a normal amount, I feared I would become fat overnight...which is very irrational in retrospect.
Looking at pictures of malnourished people is almost physically painful for me now. Indeed, anorexia was painful. When I was anorexic, somehow I thought being underweight looked good, but now that illusion is gone.
No doubt I damaged my body after two years of that nonsense. Is that why I have an arrhythmia now? Though I didn't look like the stereotypical skeletal anorexic -- because people look like that only in extreme cases -- some of my symptoms were quite severe, such as anemia, low blood sugar, and hair loss. Anorexia aged my body.
Compliments on my thinness solidified the disorder. But those compliments were mostly in the beginning, before I started to look sickly. At that point I actually received less attention from men, but I desired the sickly look. Inside I felt so sad and fragile, and I wanted to manifest that to the world.
A prayer for the body
Father, thank You for creating this body for me to live in. Your work is amazing. You have created every unique body with such brilliance and intricate care.
Forgive me for not treating my body with respect. This body is actually Yours, not mine. Yet instead of treating my body like a temple of the Holy Spirit, I have tried to conform to the image of the world. God, I repent.
May I always treat my body with respect from now on. Foolishly, I have treated my possessions with more care than I have treated my body, yet the body is more valuable than any item. Forgive me for the ways I have carelessly harmed my health. Father, I pray for mercy and complete recovery...thank You.
Feeling out of sorts
Lord, I still feel sick, tired, and weird from fasting...dizzy and surreal, with odd pains in my body. Will I have a heart attack or organ failure? Oh, what a fool I have been. Did I destroy my health by starving myself?
Anorexia is spiritual identity theft
Not all that appears spiritual is good. For instance, fasting isn't always a holy practice. After all, even Satanists fast. Most fasts are actually done for carnal reasons, such as the desire for a more youthful appearance.
Just as I ended my last fast, I happened to be looking at a quote on my bulletin board: "I would rather be what God chose to make me than the most glorious creature that I could think of; for to have been thought about, born in God's thought, and then made by God, is the dearest, grandest and most precious thing in all thinking."
This isn't a typical twisted message about worshiping oneself. The world tells us to forge ourselves into who we want to be, but this is about glorifying God by surrendering the self to Him. What I learned from this fast is that God loves me as I am, rather than the "perfect" version of myself I've been striving to be. God isn't impressed by the underweight ED Free who lives in strict ascetic discipline. God is restoring the real ED Free...the one who laughed and ate and loved. Maybe part of growing up is becoming less austere.
Christians are called to be mature adults. The adult, not the child, is the full, complete, perfect form...though our culture idolizes childhood. Adam and Eve, the ideal human beings, were born as adults.
Satan hates who I am in Christ and wants to stop me from being who I am meant to be. He tried to kill, steal, and destroy my identity. Doubt, shame, and condemnation are some of the strategies he used. Yet God replaced the evil lies with truth.
Conflicting voices
Lately I've been waking up at night in fear, with chest pain and hunger, and I realized I am not healthy.
When I look in the mirror, I see my bones protruding. Slowly I have been starving, and I am to blame....This fragile, empty, melancholic reflection is not who I am meant to be. Beauty isn't a number, a size, or a passing fashion.
God, I repent! Rather than choosing death and slowly wasting away, I choose life. This is the work of a lying demon. The demon gained a stronghold through the lie that I am not good enough, and I fed the demon as I starved.
But God will never lie to me. All those nagging, tormenting thoughts are the voices of demons. The Holy Spirit never nags. He only speaks the truth.
Eve before the Fall was naked and unashamed, innocent and radiant, a true beauty....
Recovery
Finally, I am at peace with my body. God has helped me through anorexia, a problem rooted in deep internalized shame. Now I am thankful that I've found my happy weight, my body is healthy and functioning well, and God has created me with a uniquely beautiful appearance.
May I continue to be content with the way I am designed, caring for my physical form as a temple of the Holy Spirit and trusting God, the Great Artist.
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