Day 4

Today I am going to do something different.

I had this idea pop into my head yesterday while I was sitting in class. Yea, I was't really paying much attention in class I admit, but I did hear some words from the teacher that sparked my interest. He was talking about faith. He was talking about how faith was from humans to God. I thought about that for a moment and then an idea flashed through my mind. What if faith is actually goes two ways?

I thought about faith in God more of a promise than a belief. Take the idea of marriage for example, two people commit themselves to each other and make promises. Not only does the bride vow to trust the groom, but she also vows to the groom that he can trust her. There is two different aspects to this relationship, and the same is true of the church's relationship to Christ. The church is Christ's bride, therefore not only does the church trust Christ, but Christ has to also trust the church! Sometimes we see our relationship with God as us just trusting Him and having faith in Him, but if we were honest with ourselves would we be able to say that God can also trust us and have faith in us?

There are two parts to accepting Christ into your life, one being that you choose to trust Him, the other being that you choose to follow Him (let Him trust you).

I know as humans we can never be perfect, but I challenge you to reflect on this and examine your life. Can you honestly say you trust God? If so, can you honestly say that He can trust you? Why or why not?

God gives us so much evidence how how great He is and how we should trust Him, and when we trust Him we follow Him, and when we follow Him He can trust us.

Day 3

Job 38

In the midst of my disease I started to question God. By this time I had been moved from my original hospital down to an intensive rehab program in Virginia, 8 hours away from home. I was depressed, malnourished, anxious and addicted weight loss and yet I still didn't feel I was "sick enough" to need all of this help. I remember saying goodbye to my mom and dad as they walked out the front doors of the facility and walked downstairs to meet the other 15 girls that were stuck here for 2 months with me. During my first week there I had never been so angry with God. I was so mad that He didn't make me the way I though He should have. I had tried so hard to change the ugly mess He had made, and when I said ugly mess, I meant me. I complained about everything, the food, the therapy, the other girls, the rules, my body, literally everything.

One night I found myself in the bathroom crying. I had just exercised and was looking at myself in the mirror. For the first time I noticed the dark circles under my eyes and my my sunken in cheeks. I realized for the first time just how bad I looked. I cried out to God that night and that was when I had a huge realization. I realized that God had not not done this to me, that I had been chained up by the intrusive thoughts that I let take a hold of me. Then I realized something else, I realized that only God could break these chains and set me free.

When Job questioned God why all of these bad things had happened to him, God answered Job in a very powerful way in Job 38. God has laid the foundations of this earth and tells everything just where it should be, He commands the whole earth and everything on the earth. How can I possibly question this God who knows me so well could ever not be in control of my life?

Being frustrated with God seems like a natural choice when something bad is happening, but how can this God who commands the whole earth not be in control? God has His reasons. If God isn't seeming to make sense right now in your life, I challenge you to read Job 38. God always has a plan, and the reason why we can't make sense of it at the moment is because it is far to big and wonderful to ever imagine. 

Day 2

"For though they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God or show gratitude. Instead, Their thinking became nonsense, and their senseless mind became darkened" Romans 1:21 (HCSB)

The days went by so slowly my first week in the hospital, I couldn't stand it. I started to go crazy. I had been a compulsive exerciser the past few months, doing endless workouts at my house hiding it from my parents. In the hospital, however, it was not so easy to sneak exercising. I could not break my obsessive workout routine so I would go into the bathroom at the hospital and do it there. It turns out I wasn't as sneaky as I thought. I woke up the next morning to get my daily weight taken when a nurse approached me with some sort of device in her hand. She explained to me that I would have to wear a heart rate monitor so that the doctors could see if I was doing any physical activity that I shouldn't have been doing. I felt defeated and hopeless. I was not sure what I would do now, and I started regretting asking for help in the first place. 

By the time I started my eating disorder behaviors I had been a Christian for a little less than a year. I was so on fire for God when I was first saved and I wanted to please Him so badly. And then the media started to catch my attention. I would see other girls, whether it be models in magazines or the actresses on Tv, I would compare myself to the unrealistic images that the world was throwing at me. I would ask God why He made me the way he did and why I wasn't as beautiful as I would have liked to be. I was ungrateful. I started thinking unrealistically and my mind became very dark. I needed to find light, I needed to surrender to God completely. 

Are you upset about something in your life and you feel like God isn't being reasonable about it? Make sure you take a step back and recognize what God has done for you, even if what is happening in the present might not seem to make sense to you. If you feel that mind is getting "dark" or you are thinking "senseless" thoughts, maybe it's time to refocus your attention on God.

Introduction and Day 1

Introduction

God has done many things throughout the course of history, He parted the sea, He healed the sick, He walked on water and even rose from the dead. He did so many amazing things in history and He is still continuing to work in the world, but I believe that there is one specific thing that God did that was, is and will still be the most amazing thing ever. He created. He created the whole earth and everything on the earth. He created everything and called it “good”, yet he made one thing in particular that he set apart from the rest of creation, something even better than the rest of creation, something that was made in His image. That something was you. You are a human, a wonderfully and specially created person. The God who did so many amazing things in history has made you with His very same hands. And that God has something to say to you..  something so powerful and so awesome that a lot of people can’t even believe it… He wants to tell you that you are beautiful.
             In my own life I have struggled with loving the way I look. Through many years of battling anorexia, depression and anxiety, I can see that God has been working in my life and I cannot help but to share the great joy and peace that I have found in Him. This truth that I wrote in the above paragraph (that you are indeed created beautifully) has been pressed into my heart and I have such great joy sharing it. Throughout what I will be saying in the following readings, you will be able to hear my stories and hear what God has been laying on my heart. Please understand that some of what I might say will be challenging and even graphic at some points, but I encourage you to press on in reading and listen to my story.
           

Day 1

"For am I now trying to to win the favor of people or God? Or am I striving to please people? If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a slave of Christ" Galatians 1:10 (HCSB)

In late December of 2007 I found myself having to make a decision that would in many ways change my life. I had to choose between sickness or recovery. Of course the choice seems obvious to many people, but not people who have an eating disorder. I had been eating less than a quarter of the daily calories a person my age should and had been a compulsive exerciser for nearly the past 6 months. I was in some sense addicted to loosing weight. Oh, and want to know the worst part? I Had just turned 12 years old. 

Why would a twelve-year-old girl want to starve herself? I now know why. That twelve-year-old girl was trying to please people. At that age I had felt many feelings a young girl should not have to feel. I felt anxiety about my family which had been broken and then mended and then broken again. Not only that, but I started feeling like I didn't have many friends at school. I was lonely and isolated. It only seemed like I could do one thing, and that one thing was to please others. I had seen many models on TV and in magazines that made me question why I looked the way I did. I thought I could win the favor of others by changing the way I looked, not yet realizing that I could please God just the way I was. 

The first time that I had to make that decision between sickness and recovery, I choose recovery. I chose to be admitted that night into a pediatric unit in a nearby hospital in which I would spend the next week all by myself. Sitting in a hospital bed in an eating disorder unit seemed surreal to me at that point in time. I had felt that I worked so hard to get to the extremely low and unhealthy weight I was at. So why then did I choose recovery? I chose recovery because I was miserable trying to win the favor of other people, I decided that I couldn't possibly get anywhere the way I was headed. I chose that day to please God instead of people. Now I am not going to say that it was an easy or quick journey to get to where I am today, in fact it took years. I am also not going to say that I was focused on getting better the entire time, because I had many set backs, almost to the point of giving up on recovery and even on life itself. But I do have one thing that I am sure of, God was with me the entire time. He was by my side every step of the way, whether I choose to acknowledge Him being there or not, he was.

Start thinking about what you do to please God and what you do to please people. Do you find that you try to please people more than God? Why? I challenge you to take a step back and put things into perspective.