It’s the start of Lent, Ash Wednesday to be exact. (And Valentine’s Day. Random). There’s something about Lent that draws me to it, to be intentional about the things. It’s the reminder of how Christ suffered and died just for me.
I like to do a Lent study. This year it’s from Well-Watered Women, which it is a lot of years, called Victory in Jesus. Today she said that “Jesus is your victor over sin, your deliverer from slavery, your life from death”. There’s nothing overly profound there, but it’s what she said next.
That stung when it hit right between the eyes. I live that way a lot more than I care to admit. I hold myself to a level of perfection that could never be attained. I think everyone around me is expecting and depending on me to do everything correctly. It’s as if I feel like I hold the fate of the world in my perfection.
Good news, friends. I don’t. Because my perfection is terminal…it both has an end and will be the end of me if I don’t accept grace.
Sit back. This will be a hard pill to swallow (just kidding)…I mess up. And when I do I usually make a quite big mess. I’m a go big or go home kind of person, so if I’m gonna make a mess, I might as well make a big one, go all in.
Sometimes I don’t even realize that I’m leaving a mess trailing behind me until I look back eventually. And at that point it feels like it’s too big. That’s kind of what happened the last few weeks. Because…gonna get real (not like I haven’t a million times here)…I am working off a relapse.
Why am I about to talk openly about that? I mean I wonder myself to tell the truth. But what I know is every time secrets are brought to light, the devil has less hold there. There’s shame in silence. And I know we have to recover out loud sometimes to keep others from dying quietly. To keep us from dying quietly. I am in recovery from an eating disorder. His name is ARFID (avoidant restrictive food intake disorder…cuz I can’t even have a normal ED). In December I celebrate 18 months of recovery.
I was feeling good about all the things in December, confident that I finally had a decent relationship with food and with freedom from weighing food and tracking food, I felt like I had freedom with food. I was considering the idea of saying I celebrate recovery from an eating disorder. But pride comes before a fall…and sometimes in the middle of the fall…but rarely after.
In my “freedom”, I started restricting again. At first it was unintentional. My medication for my genetic misprint caused me to not think much about food and rarely be hungry. That would have been correctable without the dirty relapse word, but when I realized what was happening, I chose not to correct. I liked what the scale was doing, and since I went back to using it every day I was watching it happen. I liked that I needed to purchase jeans in a single digit size because my jeans were falling off of me. I got excited when I found a Patagonia coat at the goodwill in an XS and it actually fit.
My doctor noticed. He said we should adjust my medication. My response was “absolutely not!” Also in my head I was thinking, do what you want because I put it in the syringe every day so I’ll do what I want. I’m not the most complaint patient ever. I’ve gone rogue before.
My first clue should have been when he upped the med that was protecting my eyes and I couldn’t tolerate it (and it caused extra weight loss) so he cut it back down to once a day. However being that I had a 90 day supply, as soon as the scale added a pound I started taking it twice a day again. Except that it made me sick. So I had to cut it back down. Looking back that should have been my first clue.
Then at the first of the year I was so excited that I was healthy enough to finally fast with my church. I asked my dietician and doctor for guidance, which they gave, so I assumed I was good to go. (Turns out they all thought it was risky business but no one said that).
I got on the scale the day before the fast was to start and I paused. I was only 4 pounds from my minimum allowed weight. He’d already lowered it once so I doubted he would again. I thought for a second, I should not do the fast. I don’t have enough room there to mess around. But my next thought was, no it’s fine. What’s the worst that can happen?
It put the final nail in my already closed coffin. Let’s be real. It didn’t cause the relapse. It was just the straw that put me all in to the relapse. After about 2 days, rational brain showed up for a second and I realized that my thoughts were not on Jesus but more like, ooo I can still do the restriction thing pretty well. Go me. Rational brain also noticed my clothing becoming looser. Rational brain said we should stop.
Monkey brain said it was fine. And I let them wrestle it out for about half a day. Then I reached out to my sponsor. I didn’t want to quit the fast cuz it was hard…because truthfully it wasn’t hard at all. Thank goodness for rational brain and conviction and my sponsor. I realized it had to stop. But not before I was already now 2 pounds underweight. In 2 1/2 days I had managed to lose 6 pounds.
The disappointment I felt was that I had failed at the fast…again. Because of my past poor decisions, I couldn’t even do that right. It felt shameful. Everyone was still trucking along and I was not. Granted when I came out of the fast there was no celebration meal. I eased up to bare minimum.
The doctor said you have to gain the 2 pounds back and “I knew that was a bad idea”. The dietician said track your intake. I personally knew that was a bad idea cuz it would get me in trouble. So I used my old excuse…tracking triggers me. Unfortunately I forgot that in a moment of recovery when we were talking about the tricks I used to use, I already told them that one. I tracked one day…700. The next day barely 800 and that was trying.
I said “that’s close to 1200” and he said, “on what planet are you only supposed to eat 1200 calories a day?” Listen that was my last goal. When? Like 2+ years ago.
He calculated my BMR, you know the amount of calories my body burns by sitting and breathing. It was 1800+. My response…ABSOLUTELY NOT! But out loud I said I’d try with never the intention to try.
It deteriorated from there and long story short I found myself with a muscle mass of next to nothing. This once pretty strong chick was not anymore. And I knew I was in trouble.
So that’s the evolution of my fall this time. I tell you that long story to tell you there’s a lot of points where fear of failure and perfectionism were terminal, they were detrimental to my very existence. There were also a lot of times in his grace, God tried to get my attention. I ignored him as best I could and did what I wanted. It would be fine.
But it wasn’t. Yet, there was so much grace in it. When I admitted my relapse, the only place I was facing condemnation was between my two ears. Everyone else supported and loved me well. It took me about a week to love me well again, but everyone else was doing it. I felt so much shame and guilt but yet everyone was just throwing love my way.
One person was even boxing up his leftovers and giving them to me. And honestly that was God’s provision because the first week he did that was my rock bottom week. If there wasn’t food in my fridge I might I have given up entirely. I called it my manna, God’s provision in this wilderness. The week I admitted my relapse, there was a note in it.
He didn’t even know what was going on. But I felt seen and loved by God through that note because God knew.
This week there was a package of Goldfish crackers, the one snack that even in my restriction I would eat on occasion. And I smiled because God probably put that one there too.
Here’s the thing. I 100% hate that I had to even use the word relapse in relation to myself. I hate that it happened. I want to question why I’m not better than that. I want to judge myself harshly. But I also see the beauty that exists in it.
In the struggle and the searching, it drew me closer to God because I didn’t get helpful answers from people (probably by design). In reflection, and because I feel like God told me, I can see that I never truly surrendered my will and have been trying to do it by sheer willpower the entire 18 months I was “successful” and that is not sustainable for the long haul. What I know now is I cannot do this. I don’t even want to. But I do want to be healthy and to be used by God so that requires me to allow him to do the things, which includes eating enough food to sustain life.
I’d love to say right now I’m happy and healthy, but truth be told it’s quite miserable. I am having to increase by 100 calories every 2-3 days with no access to my scale so having no idea what is happening there (though mercifully tomorrow is a weigh in day). I ate more calories per day this week than I’ve eaten in 3+ years. It’s not comfy. Also trying to do it without eating junk makes it challenging.
But there’s so much grace here. I have whined a bit…maybe a lot lately. But I am leaning into the fact that this “failure” and this bout of being uncomfortable is going to end with something beautiful…complete surrender and freedom from trying so hard. I may never be perfect and that’s actually a good thing.
Whether we perfectionists like it or not, perfectionism is terminal. Choose grace instead. The same grace I give to others, I deserve to extend to myself. Because Jesus died so I would be free from striving and trying to do everything according to the law. He just desires for me to surrender, to live for him and to accept the grace he so freely offers. Maybe healing is on the other side of hard sometimes. Yet again, the only way out is through. So lead on.
This Season.... 