Spiritual Reflections of a Recovering Bulimic

The entirety of my worth and acceptance has been based on a number on the scales and the number on the tag of my jeans. I’ve spent literal years of life hating on me. After two and half years of counseling, I still find it to be a battle I fight every day. I will fight it till I die; or so I’m told. It’s an odd battle. It’s an important battle. I mean, how do you actually win a battle against yourself? That’s what it is. It’s a battle I fight against me for health-emotional, mental, and physical. I guess it’s the same for most who deal with eating disorders. It’s a question of what is the most hated: Ones own person, the body one is forced to reside, or the state of living in which one is.  It’s really just all a quest for contentment. However, contentment is a foreign concept because all actions become based on that hatred for oneself that are harboring within and the desire to just be different from who one is. Contentment becomes a fairy tale idea.

I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t self-conscious of my weight or body type. Seven of my short twenty years of life have been spent in obsession over weight and looks. I can honestly say that I’ve never been content with the body God gave me. I very clearly remember the day I realized my five foot, nine inch, athletic body could never possible fit into a size two and my bones alone weighed more than my goal weight.  I was devastated.

So recently I’ve been reading a book called Ruthless Trust by Brennan Manning. In the second chapter, he talks about gratitude. Pointedly, he says that a grateful heart is a trusting heart. A grateful heart realizes the goodness of God’s nature. It knows the character of a God who works all things together for its good. The grateful heart trusts the true nature of God to care for it. It sees beyond itself and thanks God in reverence for the gifts He’s chosen to bestow upon it.

I immediately thought about my constant discontent and all my inward grumbles about my body. Then I thought about the many people I’ve seen here in Thailand. I could see in my head the pictures of the man who literally slithered on his stomach down the side walk. I thought about the man with a dent in the side of his skull the size of a softball. I thought of the lady whose skin looked melted off her face. I thought about all the men, woman, and children I’ve seen missing arms and/or legs. I thought of those who are deaf and blind. I thought of those who have had terrible things of such done to them and those who were born with these different disabilities. They all long to have what I have: A healthy body.

I spent a few minutes processing the pictures and praying. I found myself in a reverent gratitude toward the God who has made me thus. How could I ever have the audacity to complain about my body? I am healthy. I can walk. I can run. I ride my bike every morning to school. I can speak. I can hear. I can think. My body functions perfectly. The things I can see as “problematic” or a “nitch”, or “unfair” are too miniscule to even acknowledge. I sat in the presence of my God in silence. I was utterly ashamed  of my discontent. Yet somehow, in that moment, my shame wasn’t condemning. I found that I was loved and accepted and I was grateful to God beyond a place of spoken word.

What’s the fairness in all this? How was it decided that I was born to my working-class family in the U.S.A., while someone else was born to a starving family in the slums? I was cared for and loved upon. I learned to know and love Jesus. Then I see so many people without hope or love. I see children without a home or family. I guess these are things that I will never understand, or at least not until I get to Heaven. I’m not really concerned with the answer. I mean really, how concerned is God with fairness? He sent his perfect son to earth to die so I can have a relationship with Him. Really, how does that one work in the fairness scale? I realize that I can’t figure this out, nor do I want to. In fact, my only part in this is to thank God for His beautiful gift of life and be aware of the blessings He’s lavished so generously on me.

I can no longer look in the mirror and detest all I see. I can only look on in humbleness and reverent gratitude toward the God who “hath made me thus.”