I am at a place in my life where I spend my days crying out to God to help me, asking my mother for a counselor, only to be ignored. Counseling is taboo here I am assuming due to the outcome of my father's time in a treatment center and how it changed him for the worse. I know this doesn't happen to everyone.
The last month and a half I have been relapsed into eating disorder behaviors, but there has been a tiny amount of progress in overcoming this setback. But I have my days like today where the triggers are overwhelming. I know it's due to my grandmother's death, feeling like everything is out of control. My food is the one thing I can control. Crying out to God to help and send me someone to help me, is the only thing I can really do. And so I ask for help, but no one comes to rescue me, really.. but God does show himself with the people I am associated with.
This week has been one thing after another, where God meets me where I am at. I stand in my room and ask God to be with me. I feel so alone. Then he shows up in a message, a book, a tweet, a picture, a blog etc.
The other day I was in the shower and I was having a hard time, I felt alone, I hated my body. I think my self hatred sometimes just reflects my feeling of being unloved and worthless. So the only thing I could was cry out to God to help me. And he did... I got out of the shower and got dressed and sat down at my computer and right in front of me was the link to Constance Rhodes' blog.. That was exactly what I needed to read at that moment. My issue with body image is on overdrive right now. I am praying it gets better. summer is coming, and I don't want to hide from the world. I want to go to the beach and wear shorts this year, not jeans and oversize t-shirts to hide my body.
God also sent me a status message from Teasi Cannon to shape my whole day a couple days ago. Ok it wasn't just for me, but it seemed like it. That status message was the first thing I saw even though it was hours old and my friends had posted things I could not see, because this status message was frozen on my screen so it was the first thing I saw, I could not scroll my ipod.. seriously God knows what we need when we need it. I will admit sometimes I fight status messages, and add a no verbally talking to my ipod screen, regardless of that, Teasi seems to be someone God is using in my life at the moment.
God is still
using the book Hollow it's still my main resource. God still shows up on those pages. I am also working through
Hope for the Hollow. Both are written by Jena Morrow.. and both are
helpful. Hope for the hollow is the book that's making me work really
hard right now. It's painful at times, and is taking longer than 30 days, since I don't have the emotional energy to read it every day. The other day was day 10, the subject was surrender.
Honestly, I was like.. no way do I want to surrender my eating disorder,
without it, what else would I have. I know I am clinging to this because
everything else feels like it's been taken away from me. I spend my
days alone with no one to talk to, so it's here with me, almost comforting.
But I also know it will also destroy me if I don't work hard in getting
out of this, and so I am working and using all my resources that I have. I follow Jena's blog and when I came to write on my own blog tonight, she had a guest post which starts out with a quote from the book Hollow, that quote makes me cringe, not because it's so bad but because it's convicting. It's maybe not cringing, more like.. sigh.. not now.. It's from Chapter 21, a chapter I am very familiar with. Even though I talk a lot about going back to chapter 4 and 5 when I am struggling with food... chapter 21 is a chapter I have returned to many times, it's a hard chapter. In that chapter, Jena has just switched counselors in treatment, and the new counselor calls her out on her low calories intake.. this is not the quote in the blog but it's a quote I remember often when at the grocery store while choosing my food. "“Eating more than a couple hundred calories a day is a normal activity. You weren’t doing that, were you?”" Seriously why does anyone have to bring up chapter 21, I'd rather run from it, I have bits and pieces of it etched in my memory. I sometimes do not want to be convicted of my behaviors, I don't want to give them up. But I know I need to. honestly.. I should read the whole book cover to cover while i am struggling and see what God does. But I am afraid. Part of me doesn't want to give up my relapsing behaviors. the other part of me wants to live life again and be able to sculpt babies and crochet, I know I can't do both.
Last week I bought 2 kindle books, I have read one of the books. Thin Places by Mary DeMuth. I have known about the book for almost 2 years this June, but I pushed it away, until last week. I need a lot of counseling regarding my past, but this week it was helpful to see I am not alone. Reading Mary's story is painful, there are parts of it that is like reading my story. I could not stop crying while reading the book, although I am having a hard time remembering most of what I read. Normally I would keep a blog and talk about it chapter by chapter and how I relate to the book, but right now it's too hard to do, maybe later. But having God show up on those pages, and letting me know I am not the only one who's gone through this is awesome. But it's painful, and triggering of emotions.
The most helpful part isn't that she survived being abused, it's that she survived being abused by kids. Her use of the word boys is very helpful with my own story. As the majority of my abuse was done by teenage boys, as well as another kid. I have felt so alone in this, no healing has really taken place in all these years. I think for me because the blame and shame is still there. I don't know if I will ever heal or if I do how long it will take but at least I am learning other people have gone through similar.
I am not alone. I am thankful God has shown me that he's here with me, even when I don't think he is.
