Deformed

Today started out as a fairly normal day, I wasn't feeling well, and I was tired, but I was doing ok. I went to therapy and I was still doing ok, and the therapist thought I had made a lot of progress this last week and so we were both happy about that. After therapy, I had a podiatry appointment, I've had foot pain for as long as I can remember. I wasn't too worried about it though. Before I went to the podiatrist, I got a phone call telling me my new glasses were in, and I was excited about that, because I think they look much better than the old ones.

Everything changed with that one podiatry appointment. I thought maybe it wasn't a big deal and I was just being a little sensitive about the pain, but today I found out that my feet are deformed, and that is why I have pain. The doctor told me that I would have to wear only a certain kind of running shoe with special inserts in them made just for me, and that I would have to wear them all the time, no going barefoot, no flip flops, no pumps. Tomorrow I have to get up early and drive to major city to get my shoes.

I'm crushed, because I want to feel beautiful, and wearing these shoes is going to limit what kind of clothes I can wear, after all, I can't exactly wear a pretty dress with running shoes. I'm going to have to adapt into a jeans and t-shirt kind of girl. No more cute pedicures, or silver toe rings, or anklets. I question why this has to happen to me, especially when I tend to think I'm a crappy person anyway. But then I feel guilty because these are first world problems, some people in other countries don't have shoes, or if they do they only have one pair. So while I get upset about only having one pair of shoes, many in other countries feel so blessed to have one pair of shoes. I should be thankful. These shoes are going to give me the support that my foot needs. I should be thankful that I have access to shoes and inserts that will make my life easier. And yet I'm crying about how "ugly" that is going to make me.

I disgust myself sometimes, and this is one of those times. People in third world countries have so much left and here I am crying over having to get a good pair of shoes just because I feel like I will be ugly. I keep playing the word "deformed" over and over in my head, forgetting the part of the Bible where God says that I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Maybe he thinks I'm beautiful with deformed feet, maybe he thinks I'm beautiful in running shoes. I know he loves me, he loves everything about me including my feet, he's the one who formed those feet with his own hands, and he can decide to make them different from other people's feet if he wants to. Maybe I should forget about my "de"formed feet and just accept that God formed them just the way he wanted to.

First Day!

The last couple of days have been rough and emotional for me. Today was very rough emotionally and I broke down crying but I really needed to. This eating disorder treatment thing is really hard, it's one of the hardest things I have ever done. Even though today was a really rough day as I fought with myself all day, this was the first day since I can remember that I have 1) not binged, 2) not purged or 3) made healthy choices. I should be excited about this but inside I am worn out and extremely emotional and very unsure of myself and so it is hard to be excited.

I feel so empty and so alone. I want to celebrate my accomplishment but I tell myself that it isn't something I'll be able to repeat, and I tell myself that I am stupid for struggling with food like this in the first place. I mean, it's just food, how stupid is it to struggle with something so simple? I am ugly and I know it. I'm on the verge of crying and I don't even know why. Shouldn't I be happy that I accomplished this? My body aches all over from a big week at work. I am trying to stay on top of my school work.

I should be happy, and yet I worked so hard to accomplish this that I am completely worn out.

Tough Weeds

This year I'm trying my hand at a little gardening, and a few weeks ago I poisoned the weeds to try to kill them, and nothing happened. So I poisoned the weeds again, and this time they started dying. Today I bought the cheapest weed eater I could find, fired it up, and chopped up those weeds. Then I got a shovel and dug up the roots in the soil and pulled them all out. There are still things left to do, like prepare the soil properly, and plant the seeds. The seeds will hopefully sprout, grow, and produce food. However, the process of growing involves a lot of preparation.

The process of growing is messy, it sometimes hurts, and it can take a while. Sometimes there is a lot of dying and uprooting that needs to happen before any growth can ever take place. And sometimes, it's a little easier. I have some sage plants in a pot, and all I had to do for those is put dirt in a pot and plant the plants. Sometimes the soil is already fertile and the plant has already been started, and the process of growth is a little easier.

Once the plants are planted and growing, there are still weeds that grow and need pulling out by the roots, and the plants need watering. Sometimes they get a lot of water all at once when it rains, and sometimes they get a little water from the hose or watering can.

Working through eating disorders is a lot like my gardening. Before any growth can really take place, there are lots of counselling sessions, lots of uprooting weeds of lies and negative thoughts, lots of hard work, lots of cutting up of wrong ideas or nasty words and actions of others to forgive. There is digging, lots and lots of digging, there is lots of uprooting. After that, there will need to be a foundation of fertile soil before any real growth will take place. In my yard, the weeds were so hard to get rid of because they had been growing for a long time. My personal weeds have been growing for an awful long time too, so I am not going to experience growth overnight. Sometimes that frustrates me and it seems like I'm not getting anywhere, but going through the process that I am in the yard has also been frustrating and has seemed like I'm not getting anywhere. Slowly but surely, however, things have been happening, and each thing needs to be done in order and each things takes time. It's just the way it is.

Why I Share my Struggle with Eating Disorders

Some people want me to keep quiet about my eating disorders, telling me that it's best that people not know, that things like this are personal. Having eating disorders, particularly for as long as I have had them, is very embarrassing. It seems like food issues should be so simple to overcome, after all, it's just food. To realize that eating disorders have dominated my life is a big deal. So why not hide my struggle?

I don't hide it, because I strive to be brutally honest. So far I haven't had one person who has been mean about my issues with food, and I've had support from unexpected places. One night I was at the church and the youth pastor offered me a big bowl of candy. I took them but then had second thoughts, although I was having trouble saying no. So I told him about my struggle and he pressured me to give them back, which I did. That was very helpful to me, and he was very encouraging telling me that I should be happy about that decision and that I should be proud of it and tell my therapist.

I find that if people know what I'm struggling with, they pray for me, they keep me accountable (by asking me if I really should eat three donuts), but most of all, people support me. I need the support of my friends and family to get through this, because honestly, it sucks and it's tough. Some days are really rough and some are ok, and some are good. Something I've had for seventeen years isn't going to go away quickly. The rough days are made better when people show their support. Sometimes I can't see the way clearly and I need to depend on others who can see it.

Which is why I choose to be honest about my struggles with eating disorders. If I had cancer I would need the support of family and friends, and this is the same kind of thing.

Getting to Know Myself

Today my therapist said that I knew a lot of things that I hated about myself, but she wanted me to tell her what I liked about myself, and I couldn't answer the question. She said that it is important that I come to like some things about myself, and that it's important to gain my own identity rather than just being the person that I am told by someone else to be. As a Christian I know that my identity is in Christ, but I also know that Jesus made us all unique individuals with individual talents and purposes.

I often feel like people don't like me and if they are nice to me I obsess about it and wonder if they are just humoring me, I even do this with people that I consider to be my friends. I worry about it so much in part because I'm not sure I like myself and I'm not sure I'd be friends with myself. Every day I look in the mirror and I believe that I see an ugly person, a stupid person, a horrible person. I try to pretend that I have self-confidence but the truth is that I don't have any.

I worry that if I ever get skinny, I'll still never be beautiful. To me it seems that only beautiful women are successful and so if I'm never beautiful I won't be successful. I know that the Bible says that I am precious to God but actually believing that is tough. I wish I could trust God with my identity, that I am who he says I am, and I told him that today while I was on the treadmill. I've found that my best prayer time comes when I am on the treadmill. I often talk to God in the same way I talk to my therapists, he is after all the Great Physician. So, treadmill time is God and I time, where I talk to him, and try to listen to him.

Therapy is hard work and one day I hope that I can believe I am valuable. I want to know who I am, I want to get to know myself.

Results of Lent

As anyone who has been following me for any length of time knows, I started Lent with two specific goals that I made public, as well as several others that I kept private. I had planned on blogging every day of Lent but as I started posting I figured it would all be boring to most people anyway and so I didn't. However, the main thing for me was to spend extra time focusing on God and my relationship with him, which is important because right now I'm so busy I can hardly see straight. I'm taking four college courses, I graduate from my first degree in July, I work 30 hours a week at an awesome job that for the most part I love. I'm going to therapy for my eating disorders, I'm doing some yard work and planting, and I'm working out. Something has to give, and a lot of times it's my time with God that ends up being cut out. 

So spending extra, focused time was good for me. My two major goals were 1) to give up cussing, which I haven't been perfect at but after almost 40 days, I cuss much less than I used to, and I go some days or even a few days in a row without cursing at all! For me that's huge. My other goal was to not consume any caffeine, which I managed to do and hopefully I will remain caffeine free because caffeine is an issue for me. What I wasn't planning on was for God to totally shake me up the way he did, although I'm glad that he did. There was a song that the band sang at church several weeks ago that I had never heard before but that really spoke to me and I have played it over and over since then. It's a song called "Lay Me Down" and it's a really rockin' song. But singing the words "I lay me down I'm not my own, I belong to you alone..." was amazing. I find that when I sing things, or recite things, that it's a declaration, and when I make such declarations, God takes them seriously. 

So between my extra focus on God for Lent, and taking the time to actually listen to him, and the song "Lay Me Down" really speaking to me, God told me I needed to get help for my eating disorders. Starting to deal with them has been very scary for me but I know that God is the great physician and that he heals. So on resurrection Sunday, I certainly will be different from what I was at the beginning of Lent. It is because of Jesus and his resurrection that I can be healed from my eating disorders and I am trusting him for that healing (well, today, anyway, today has been a pretty good day).

First Day

So today was my first day of treatment/therapy/whatever for my eating disorders. It ended up being ok but getting to know a new doctor is always rough for me, even though she seemed really nice. I feel really vulnerable talking about my life with someone I haven't built a relationship with yet. But there wasn't any alarm bells going off in my head about the doctor, and I think we will get along fine. Talking about the doctor, she wants me to do one thing that I was very afraid of. She wants me to keep a food journal. I was afraid she'd want me to do that, and actually I have no clue why it scares me so much but it does.

I have to say thank-you to all the people who have been supporting me, I really appreciate it and I need your support in getting well. Although I don't know some of you very well yet, you're all the support I have. It's interesting really, I feel more aware of the presence of God by trying to get better. I feel like he is happy that I want to get well, he wants to make me whole, as someone who doesn't struggle with food. Thank-you to all of you who have told me truth about myself that I have been unable to believe. I need you to keep telling me, I need lots of truth right now.

I've faced some pretty tough things in the past few years. First I gave everything away and packed my whole 21 first years of my life into two suitcases and moved to the other side of the world to marry a man I had known for 7 months. Then I left fundamentalism and at the time it felt like I had lost everything but in the end I gained so much. This feels tougher than any of that, this deals with something that I've been struggling with for seventeen years. But then again, Jesus healed the woman who had the issue of blood all those years. He wants to heal me, I know he does, and that is exciting but I'm scared about the process.

I am going to try to ,make the effort every day to wear nice clothes and makeup because those are things that make me feel good about myself. I'm going to keep persevering in my quest to eat healthy and work out.  Today was an important day, it was a step towards healing.