Legalism, the Gospel, and Disordered Eating

I wrote down my story quite a while back, but have yet to do anything with it. It's a bit long, I know, but it's my life. Wherever you may find yourself, today, I hope that it can give you hope and encouragement. For those of you who don't really like to read, I made a recording just for you. If you have any questions, feel free to comment or shoot me an email: 

             As one who became a Christian at a relatively early age, I sort of envied people who have the dramatic conversion stories. The ones which make a person just throw up their fists and say, “Right on, God!” I’m telling you now, as one who’s seen some scary places of bondage: never envy someone else’s story. The Lord has allowed you to walk through the things you have for a reason. I would never change my past, but walking through these places is not something I would advise. Learning God’s principles by listening to what Christ has said is really ideal. Unfortunately, I tend to run my own way full-throttle.

I am writing because I do not want to begin to justify enslavement to food and health as “a phase” that I could have gotten through myself. I tried. In fact, the more I tried to control my situation, the worse it became. If there is anything that I want you to get from this it is to turn to Jesus with your wounds, right away. Don’t pick at them until you’re bleeding out. Without a doubt, the Father heals the hurting. He binds up the brokenhearted. So, why not go to Him first? He created you. He knows how you really work. He knows exactly what is or is not wrong with you. He has infinite power to remedy. Why can’t we just trust Him to do what He has said? He has always proved Himself in the past, hasn’t He?!

This is just one example of God’s faithfulness. To begin, I must say, my intent was good. I wanted to honor God with my body. I wanted Christ to be my sole sufficiency, but somehow this desire was twisted to a crippling self-reliance. Satan used his half-truths to reel me far away from the truth and from God who loves me.

a healthy 120lbs

I remember where it all started. One day, my friends and I were eating pizza, and I started feeling sick. A gross feeling of fullness and a loss of self-control washed over me, and I hated it. I remembered several verses about gluttony, and how the Lord warned against it. True, I wanted to please the Lord, but I think I was much more concerned about my pride and my self-control than the fact that I had sinned against Holy God.

Honestly, I had been listening to the world a lot, too. I had heard a lot about families in Africa who eat only one time per day. From the internet, I was bombarded with how much exercise everyone should get each day, how little people should eat, and how to never finish a meal. Finally, the dining halls kept assuring me that the best way to eat was to eat a lot of stuff with essentially no calories at all. Combine all of this counsel from everywhere but the Lord, and this is a recipe for disaster!

Ironically, all the research and dwelling on health led me down a path straight to death. I determined that I would have a certain amount of calories a day, exercise more, and “be disciplined.” My weight was never an issue, but I wanted to live a “healthy” life and not become one who simply loses control. If only I had listened to the Lord and what He desired for my life and my body, then I would have saved myself a lot of struggle. 

-20ish lbs

After one semester of eating partial meals, jogging and dancing harder than all others in my classes, obsessively exercising whenever I could, and essentially paying penance for any sins to my new god, I had lost a lot of weight. I rationalized it saying that if all people lived “healthily,” they would be tiny, too. I enjoyed the idea of being rebellious against the overindulgence of my culture. Though I’m not sure of the exact number, I lost at least twenty pounds, dropping from a very healthy 120lbs to around 95. I was a skeleton, but I was pleased. . . kind of. . .

I began to realize how much it was consuming my thoughts, but I brushed off the voice of the Holy Spirit. As long as I thought I was in control, I didn’t care. All along, there were deadly partial truths I believed. Satan would bring to mind a verse from God’s Word out of context, and I would nod my head in agreement. “Did God really say . . . ? Surely, you will not die . . . ,” he would whisper. I longed so much to make the one true God happy, but I didn’t see I was only appeasing the god of self.

I had forgotten the most basic truth of knowing Christ: “He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit” (Titus 3:5, NASB). Soon, my eating habits became a way to earn back the grace God had already given to me as His child. If only I ate well, then God would be happy. He would see just how much I was doing for Him and smile at me. Then, I would be super spiritual, gaining a couple extra gold stars in heaven. Yes, there’s no wrong in working to please God. However, my motives were completely skewed. I wanted to live radically, counter-culturally for Christ, but at heart, I was a Pharisee. I am a Pharisee more often than I would like to admit.

It wasn’t until later that I seriously thought twice about what I was doing. Many people began to comment on my weight loss, and I was scaring myself at times, too. I remember waiting in hunger pains for the time I had prescribed a snack. Once, I woke up starving in the middle of the night. I grabbed an apple and mourned over what I had become as I reluctantly bit into it. By this time, however, I didn’t know how to stop. I did not know what was normal or healthy anymore. I knew I was not where I should be with the Lord, either, so I ignored His calling to lay everything aside. I was obsessed, and it is ONLY the Lord’s doing that could have brought me out of this place. Fortunately, He never left me. Unfortunately, this struggle continues and so does this story.

As I went home, I was confronted more and more with people who kept telling me how horrific I looked. I knew, I really did, but how was I to explain what had happened? So honestly, I lied. I said that enough walking on campus and a new emphasis on eating well was what did it. Most people probably didn’t buy it, but that was the answer I gave, and it was a sort of truth. I knew I had a problem, though, so I turned to the Lord for help . . . kind of. I said that I would give my eating habits over to Him, but I kept the practice for myself. I would not completely give over the control that I thought I had. In retrospect, I have never been more out of control in my life.

But this led to a new whole new chapter of my story. I wanted to gain weight, but I was afraid. Weight, the one thing I had never previously cared about in my life, became a marker of obedience. I ate a bit more, prayed, and poured into God’s Word, but I began to exercise even more. In so doing, I was still living for the god of control.

Later, I traveled to Canada as a church intern, but my problems became worse. The family I lived with had a lot of children and a tight budget. So, I saw it as a service to this family not to be a burden in any way. I replaced my exercising time with time spent with the Lord. Still, I was not taking care of the Holy Spirit’s temple, because I refused to eat much at all.

When I returned home, I was still in this mindset. I know there are so many people in the world with nothing, and I wanted to spend myself on behalf of them. The last thing I wanted to do was eat food which could go to someone else, even if it wouldn’t. My heart was heavy for those who are hungry, and my provision for them was to not provide for myself. I felt guilty for being blessed instead of properly thanking God for the things with which He has blessed me. Now, it sounds ridiculous, but the lies we allow ourselves to believe often stretch just that far.

Now, my problem was that I wore my mistakes every day. I hated hugs that I once loved, because they were usually followed by a remark about the feel of my bones. I hated a kind hand on my back, where my spine and ribs protruded. I thought everyone knew my issues without me even saying a word, and I hated it. I wore the truth like a scarlet letter. Never before had I loathed my appearance so much. Ironically, my attempts to be healthy and strong only made me weaker.

Even more ironically, I let people’s opinion lead me into the very thing I hated the most from the beginning: gluttony. Every time someone would poke or prod at my skeletal figure, I became anxious. Once again, I did not trust the Lord to allow me to gain weight naturally, so I would eat myself sick to prove them wrong. Afterwards, I would pay penance to the health god I had constructed by eating less later or exercising more. Discrediting God’s faithfulness in my struggle and His unyielding grace through it all, I was a Pharisee, following my laws and missing God’s plan. I am a Pharisee more than I like to admit.

Forgetting the two laws that Jesus declared as the core of everything, I did not love the one, true God with all my heart, soul, mind and strength. I was not putting others before myself. I was attempting to somehow merit the grace that I did nothing to gain in the first place. If only I could ______ enough, then God would be pleased with me.

What I failed to see that He was ALREADY PLEASED WITH ME!!! All God wants is for me to love Him, following Him with all my might (Deuteronomy 6:5, 10:12, 11:1, Leviticus 18:30, Micah 6:8, Joshua 23:11). Yes, God is holy. He is just and righteous and worthy of great fear, but He is also loving and infinitely gracious. He doesn’t leave us alone to live this life, either. As Christians, we’re not only given a new nature, a clean slate, a relationship with the Father, but also we have the Holy Spirit. He guides us in God’s will every day if we would only listen to Him!

One huge thing the Lord taught me through this struggle is the fact that I am not above any sin. It is only by His grace that I am alive, today. It is only by His grace that I am made right with God. Those of us blessed to come to know Him at a young age should rejoice in it and thank Him every day that we did not have to learn many things the hard way. All people have the same sinful nature, and it is ONLY by the grace of God that I am not the serial killer, the glutton, the adulteress, or the thief that I declare I would never become. That’s the beauty of the Church: we’re just a bunch of patched us misfits for God’s glory. I am no better than the next person, and I have seen that. Humanly, I am no different than those who don’t know Him, except for the fact that the Holy Spirit finally made His truth click in my mind. Praise Him for it!

Like I said, it's been quite some time since this has been fresh, but the healing process still isn’t easy. I have to continually pray for guidance, because I don’t even know how to live. I cannot understand the one crucial thing that everyone can do: to eat normally. The only way I have found to live (in general, but especially with this) is to give it over to Christ, to trust my identity in Him. He will take care of me. Control and weight is no longer my focus. I’ve got a race to run. 

present day