Give Me // Your // Eyes ~ Anorexia

This is the hardest post I have ever written. I did not want to write it. In fact, I never wanted to write it because I never wanted it to happen, but it did and now, with the strength and grace of God, I am. 

We had never been so overjoyed then when my mother was healed. I don't think I could ever thank God enough that He chose to deliver her back to full, abundant, health. I have a wonderful relationship with her now and I love her very, very much. She is my role model. However, it did take a long time to get to where we are now. I always loved her, and I always will, but when she was first healed we butt heads and clashed all the time. I had been the caretaker of our little family for five years. When she came home she took over her rightful position. I was no longer needed to fill that position anymore. I was 14 and I had found out who I was and where I belonged. I was the cook, the cleaner, the encourager, the mother, the keeper of our little family beside my dad. In the blink of an eye, I was no longer that person, my mom was once again. I struggled deeply. I had to restart those years I had spent "finding myself." I was forced day after day to learn to become something I thought I was not. 

I threw off the life I had lived those five years, happy to forget the trial, but now I wanted to know who I was. Who was I? I had a mission for years, every day I woke up with armor on sword drawn, but there was no battle to fight anymore. When I looked at myself I only found flaws. I wanted validation. I wanted a place, confirmation that I was enough. "Love me!" My heart screamed, "Tell me I'm enough please," but it would be years before I would realize who had been telling me that all along. I no longer knew who I was in my family, with my friends, or even by myself. I looked for validation in the eyes of others and knew I came up lacking. I was not enough. I was not pretty enough. I wanted people to like me, but I only became disappointed. Why should they?  

I threw myself into dance. The one thing I thought had not and would never change in my life. I danced, but the more I threw myself, the more I fell short. I was not skilled enough. I was not talented enough. I was not thin enough. Three months before I did not even know what the word "fat" was, but now I knew it all too well. It raced around my head on repeat. The lengthy, bottomless pit, adolescent I had been, had filled out, a litlle too much in my mind.

At first, I tried to do things properly, to eat healthier, exercise more. I tried, but after a while I just became frustrated, it was not quick enough. Dress code in ballet changed and my image became the center of attention. It was the only thing at the barre that I saw when I looked in the mirror. It became of the utmost importance to me. I did what you probably could have guessed was coming. I stopped eating. At first, it was just one day a week, then I added one less meal, then one more, until I was swallowed up in a vicious cycle. As a disease does it spread and it took over. Day and night it controlled my thoughts. I did not want to admit I had a problem, but I did, and I did know it.

My desire to become accepted by others became a desire to become accepted by myself. I looked in the mirror and I hated who I saw. I got thinner and thinner, and yet still I saw something that needed to be changed. I got the compliments I had yearned for. People looked at me and envied me. The more looks, the more compliments, the more it fed my fire. This is what they had wanted to see, wasn't it? I had finally become who I wanted in the eyes of others, but I still did not meet my own approval. I pushed on. I no longer had real thoughts. I lost all except, "thinner = beauty = do not eat." It had consumed me from the very second I choose to skip that first meal. I lived to die. My skin changed color, my hair started falling out, my nails were brittle and chipping off, I was always cold, and I had no strength. Worst in all of this, my dream to become a better dancer, my desire to glorify God, wasted away because I no longer had the energy or strength to pursue it. I knew if I continued this dream would die, and I was terrified another would die as well, my dream to grow up and have a family. This is who I had chosen to become.



As I walked along the edge of this cliff, I could hear God calling my name. I would be lying if I said it was easy, but I did want so desperately to be free. This, the first real thought I had: Freedom. I turned back. I ran as fast as I could into the arms of Someone who would never change. Someone who saw who I was then, who saw who I was now, and loved me. He loved me every step of the way.

I wanted this nightmare to stop. I wanted to be rid of everything that had happened. Spring and Summer passed easily, and I remained unbound. As the fall semester loomed in front of me, my past did as well. I had been scarred, mentally and physically. When I walked into that dance room I would face not only the person looking back in the mirror but every other person in there. Judgment overwhelmed me. I could feel their thoughts penetrating me. I could feel them judging me, and I didn't want it. Betrayal quickly came. Betrayal to the thoughts that were true. It was an addiction, an addiction to be thin and "beautiful." Each day I fought with the words of God and the words in my mind taunting me. I wanted to be rid of myself. I quickly started my journey to the cliff's edge again. It was not drastic starvation I resorted to the time. I had other means. My confidence grew bigger, the smaller I got. Little did I know it was confidence built upon sand. What would happen if I lost my means of obtaining "thin"? I pushed on. Holding off until summer came, when I could once again grasp freedom, when I could once again run home to my Father, if only until Fall...
No more.
This cycle had to stop. I had to chose to stop it. The choice was mine. Here I had flesh or Father weighing in the balance. I had to choose to say no. And that's the truth, I had to choose to say no. As the Lord had placed Adam and Eve in the garden with a choice, so had He placed me, you, and every other human being on the planet with a choice. I had to say no. I will not say it was a quick victory. It wasn't. It has been a slow quiet journey to triumph. Some days easy, other days hard, but I knew Truth, I had tasted freedom. I did not want to be defined by this earthly struggle. I did not want to keep this act up. I hated it. As Paul wrote, "I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate, I do." (Romans 7:15) I had had enough, it had to stop. When I stood before the Lord's throne, I did not want this to be my accomplishment. I did not want this to be my life's story. That I spent all my days fighting for the world's trophy. When I stood before the Lord I did not want to say to Him this was the definition of my life, that I had chased and idolized what others thought of me, that I believed the word's of the devil over His own, that I spent the entirety of my days fighting for something that fades with the earth. To tell Him that He was not the focus of my entire life. That I had made no investment into eternity. What I was fighting for would disappear with the wind, is that what I wanted? To stand upon His heavenly court before Him and open my white clenched hands only to watch in shame and horror as sand shifted through my fingers to the floor. My life had to be worth more than this. I wanted Him to be the focus of my days, not myself. I wanted to believe Him because He was truth, He always would be.

No more do I live in a constant circle centered on myself. I have made wrong choices in the past, but that is what it is, past. I am no longer fighting against anorexia. I am clothed in the armour of the Lord and I share my testimony only to bring His name glory. He is the one who brought me away from the cliff and He is the one in whom I choose to believe now.

I am not proud of the years that have been swallowed running from the One Truth. Every day, even now, I struggle. The choice is mine. I have to choose to see myself the way God created me. I am enough because He is enough. He has made me enough. I do not need to look for it anywhere else. I do not need to be accepted, praised, complimented, by anyone. My validation is in Him. He has and continues, to show me what true beauty is. I am beautiful. I am fearfully and wonderfully made. There is nothing I could do to change that. No circumstance can change who I am. He has created every day of my life. Every breath I have taken, every breath I will take. He has made me beautiful, in Him. I am broken, I am scarred, but... I am not defined by my past, I am refined by His.  

//Father give me Your eyes so I can see//

I have chosen to see the beauty in God's creation. All of it.