If You Only Knew

Close your eyes and envision this with me. 

You’re getting ready for your day… it’s a typical morning; skincare routine, makeup and hair done, and then you pick out your outfit. It all looks good in your head, you feel good. When you look in the mirror to see it all put together you see it; not the cute image you had thought up in your mind – you see the flaws, the imperfections, the parts of your body where your clothes just don’t lay the way you thought they would and the way you view yourself changes. You decide, “maybe I should just skip breakfast this morning and I’ll go to the gym for a couple of hours tonight.” One day like this turns into weeks and then months down the road you realize that you now go days without eating and you are always thinking about when you can get back to the gym to work off the little bit of food you may have had.

Wow… that escalated quickly, didn’t it? Unfortunately, for some of us, things like this can happen in the blink of an eye. Exploding from something as small as the glimpse we see of ourselves in the mirror to calculating down to the exact gram or calorie of what we put in our mouths. 

Growing up, I had always been the chunky kid. The one who just never really could get rid of that “baby fat.” The one who could never share clothes with her friends or shop at the cute stores because they just never carried her size. Then I turned into the overweight teenager who quit sports in tenth grade to be in musicals because it was just easier to feel like I fit there in some way. Fast forward, I turn into the very curvy woman that has the mindset that if people don’t like me the way I am, then I just don’t want them in my life anyway… but I so desperately just wanted to be loved and seen as someone worth something regardless of the flaws that I saw all over my body. 

I had gotten to a point where I walked around with this false confidence in myself where in public, I was this super confident girl; but alone, I flowed with negative self-talk and believed that no one would ever want me because of the way that I looked. Regardless of how awesome of a person I believed I was, I always allowed my body to be the determining factor of my worth in other people’s eyes. 

Eventually, because of some health issues, I decided to try and lose weight and I was successful. Over the span of a year, I lost over 80 pounds and got off all my medications. This sounds like an amazing accomplishment, right?! I should be happy with my progress and how healthy I had become – BUT. But when I reached my goal weight, fear creeped in. Fear that I was going to be another statistic of a person losing a bunch of weight just to turn around and gain it all back. That all the people that told me that I was an inspiration would just look back and judge me. That if I ate one wrong thing, I would put my weight back on.

I had put so much pressure on keeping my weight off that what was once a healthy lifestyle change, quickly turned into a major control issue and eventually led to being diagnosed with an eating disorder that would affect most areas of my life. Every thought that I had revolved around what food I was going to eat, when I was going to eat it, and when I was going to the gym to work it all off. If I couldn’t get a workout in that day, how was I going to make up for it tomorrow? And so on and so on. It became crippling where once I worked out because it made me feel strong and healthy to something I used as a punishment tool for any “bad decision” I had made throughout the day. I even went to the extreme of taking my meal with me to restaurants to avoid the not knowing of what was going in my mouth. I remember one day specifically going out on a team work lunch where I brought my salad out and was even praised for my discipline but in my head I thought, “if you only knew.” 

As I sit and reflect on this time in my life, I get a tear in my eye because I had never felt so alone in my struggle as I did during those moments of praise. I could not see a way out of my downward spiral. Now, I would love to tell you that the Lord just showed up and I have overcome all these struggles. That I no longer deal with fear of what others will think of my body if I wear certain clothes or if I am eating the “right” things but that would be a lie. What I can tell you, is that I have learned to invite people into my struggle. 

I have always been that someone who saw emotions and vulnerability as a weakness until I got to a point where if I wanted to get out of my pit, I had to invite others into it with me to be able to climb out. There is nothing like having to be vulnerable about something that you are embarrassed by; but I have learned that through my vulnerability comes my strength. I cling to the scripture, “His grace is made perfect in my weakness.”

There are weeks when I must tell certain people in my life to check in to see if I have eaten or to ask what and when I have eaten before I get a workout in. There are also weeks when I feel completely fine. I have days when I don’t think about my eating disorder at all and there are days when it is in every bite I take and every glance in the mirror. But, despite the struggles that I still face, I now know that I am not alone. I have a community of people that support me even if they don’t fully understand sometimes. There are people that I can be honest with and admit that I feel broken. I have a Savior that has given me truth to speak over my thoughts to help me shift perspective and to see myself the way He sees me.

I can sit here and give you all the typical cliché Christian sayings, but I know from personal experience that they do not always give encouragement or inspire change like we would like them to. What I can offer is a challenge. I challenge you that in the moments where it feels like your thoughts are overrunning every good thing, that you declare God’s truth over yourself – this applies to more than just body image issues; it can apply to every area of your life: finances, relationships, health, circumstances, and the list can go on. For me, I had to declare that my body is the temple of the Holy Spirit and that I was made in the image of Christ. That my body is beautiful and strong and does amazing things for me EVEN when I don’t believe it. Sometimes we must declare things repeatedly until we believe them.

I know not everyone deals with body image in the extremity that I have, but we all deal with things we do not like about ourselves or about our lives. All of this still applies. Declare truth and surround yourself with people who will support you in your struggle. Strip off the pride of suffering alone and invite them into your vulnerability. Know who you can give that part of yourself to and see that even if they are small, taking one step at a time will one day lead you over the mountain and maybe you will look back and see it wasn’t that big after all. 

Song Recommendation: “I Am Not Alone” by Kari Jobe