Imperishable Inheritance

In my tes­ti­mony, the part most often down­played is that of my eat­ing dis­or­der. For years, and to this day, I strug­gle with Anorexia. It’s hard to describe exactly what it is like, but the cycli­cal pat­tern of strug­gle has hit a tide again. When I gave my tes­ti­mony at Real Life, I was approached by my strug­gle with eating—and it was a man. It is so incred­i­bly dif­fi­cult to strug­gle with what has been deemed “nor­mal” by our tra­di­tional soci­ety but only to women. This is to each of you, male or female, who know the pain.

I strug­gled also with many drugs and drug deal­ing (cul­mi­nat­ing with a severe cocaine depen­dency), but none of it came even close to reach­ing the mis­ery from an eat­ing dis­or­der. It’s hard to put into words at first. I decided that I wanted to lose weight, and I set out to do it. And when I put my mind to something—it’s going to hap­pen one way or another.

When I started reg­u­lat­ing my intake of food I started instantly to lose weight. When you go from eat­ing hor­ri­bly to watch­ing it even a lit­tle, your body drops weight quickly. But over time, the weight loss slowed; and to con­tinue it I had to eat less and less. I got to a point, at the bot­tom, where I was eat­ing only a slice of bread and some non-fat milk each day. I also start­ing habit­u­ally work­ing out, and it only added the fer­vor to lose more and more weight. I would get up at 5 in the morn­ing to go and work out before school, and if I didn’t I felt ter­ri­ble the whole day.

One of the most dev­as­tat­ing parts of an eat­ing dis­or­der is the habit­ual weigh­ing. I had a set rou­tine to weigh myself every day. If it was even one pound more than it was yes­ter­day I plunged into depres­sion hop­ing that tomorrow’s weight would go down. In a mat­ter of about six months I had lost 60 pounds.

The thing that makes weight loss just that much more appeal­ing is all the com­ments you get. “Wow, have you lost weight? You look good.” I thought I had found the cure to ails of my lack of rela­tional inter­ac­tion (this all stemmed from a desire to be with some­one of the oppo­site sex). I found, to my dis­may, that the prob­lem was not the weight but me per­son­ally. It’s odd to try and fix and prob­lem with only the periph­er­als, and after much mis­ery you found out that the thing that held me back the most were inter­nal issues. I was very con­ceited and worst of all very manip­u­la­tive (some­thing to this day that I strug­gle with).

What’s worse is that you think even los­ing the weight will help, but after los­ing it all you have is this eat­ing obses­sion. From morn­ing until night, all I thought about was what I had eaten, what I was going to eat, and what I could not eat. To have such an essen­tial part of exis­tence become rumi­na­tions unleashed incred­i­ble amounts of mis­ery. It is hard to say exactly the pain of the dis­or­der, but it is impos­si­ble. I can describe what it’s like to come off a cocaine binge (also immensely ter­ri­ble), but I can­not ver­bal­ize the pain brought on by an eat­ing problem.

I did finally start dat­ing, but the only com­ments I got was that I was to skinny. I felt trapped: I’m to fat then I’m to skinny? What must I do to please every­one? And the habit­ual desire to please every­one else remained the root prob­lem. Through a slow process, I real­ized it’s not about pleas­ing oth­ers or even myself.

I still strug­gle with this a lot. I have got­ten much bet­ter through psy­cho­log­i­cal and psy­chi­atric treat­ment. There are a lot of Chris­tians who see anti-depressant ther­apy as some­thing un-Godly. They would accuse me of look­ing to a pill and not to God to find relief. It’s hard to explain to them that the pill helped me move all the rumi­na­tions aside to seek Him. There was a day that I was so frus­trated with being mis­er­able that after weigh­ing myself one last time (which I weighed 147 pounds and I was 6′), I pro­ceeded to smash the scale and drive over it mul­ti­ple times! I have not per­son­ally weighed myself since then, and I have no desire to do so.

I have found peace with the issue, but I know it will be a strug­gle until I die. The hard part is not only accept­ing what you suf­fer from but real­ize that God ordained it as such (Isa 46:10; Eph 2:10). Even though it’s a hard thought, it actu­ally gives me much con­fi­dence in my God and Savior.

Search me, O God, and know my heart; Try me and know my anx­ious thoughts; And see if there be any hurt­ful way in me, And lead me in the ever­last­ing way.
Psalms 139:23–24

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth passed away, and there is no longer any sea. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, com­ing down out of heaven from God, made ready as a bride adorned for her hus­band. And I heard a loud voice from the throne, say­ing, “Behold, the taber­na­cle of God is among men, and He will dwell among them, and they shall be His peo­ple, and God Him­self will be among them, and He will wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there will no longer be any death; there will no longer be any mourn­ing, or cry­ing, or pain; the first things have passed away.“
Rev­e­la­tion 21:1–4