Sowing Tears and Reaping Joy, Chapter 2

Ed and I were on-again-off-again through college1.  Then, after I married an Army officer at age 22, he stalked me like a jealous boyfriend.

He showed up in our bedroom when dying sunlight seeped through the blinds and illuminated our naked bodies. “Remember what you ate for dinner? You look like you have a food baby.” Ed was vicious.

He showed up in the bedroom every single weekend morning. “Get out of bed, lazy fool. You’re better off going for a run than cuddling with your husband.”

He showed up in the kitchen, leaning over my shoulder. “Why don’t you serve him a double portion, then you can just eat a tiny bit. Or better yet, just make yourself a salad.”

He showed up in the living room when we wanted to watch a movie. “How can you sit there and let calories slowly turn to fat? At least do some sit-ups while you watch TV.”

Ed spent so many years badgering me, that I’d forgotten what it feels like to be hungry, what a genuine craving is, how to cut a pie at Thanksgiving, scoop ice cream for birthday cake or share a Papa John’s pizza with my husband. I turned to Ed with every choice, “Am I good or bad if I eat this?”

My husband, Patrick, hardly knows it, but he is my knight in shining armor. He is my God-sent hero, consistently coming between Ed and me, severing that fatal attraction. Patrick first took me out in college. Despite my selfishness, confusion and divided loyalty, he never criticized or left me. Much like Jesus, he quietly, patiently loved me, capturing my heart piece by piece until there was nothing left for Ed.

The Army moved us to Fort Lewis, Washington, in 2008. From there, Patrick deployed to Afghanistan for a year. Ed visited occasionally. I tried to resist him, enlisting the aid of a therapist and a dietician. I limped along, above the dangerous line on the doctors’ weight charts, but far below what my body needed to stay warm in Washington.

Alone one afternoon, I ventured down to Percival Port. The Olympia Farmers’ Market on the edge of the Puget Sound is renowned. I parked blocks away behind a used furniture store then followed the calls of vendors and the flocks of hippies toting their recyclable bags. Rounding the final corner, I stopped, awed by the spectrum of colors and the vibrations of life emanating from the market.

A red, three-sided barn crouched over rows of rough wooden tables. Like a huge umbrella it defied the gray, wet skies of western Washington. Craftsmen and farmers’ booths spilled into the bulging parking lot. On one end was a seller of herbs. Lavender, basil and dill mingled on the breeze. I ducked beneath a low hanging fuchsia plant.

The apple man at the far end of the market’s breadth became my favorite by season’s end. He stacked apples and mushrooms three crates high in a large square around himself and his gray haired father. Once in a while, his young son helped on a Saturday afternoon.

“You’ve never tried a Honeycrisp apple? That’s a crime! Oh, and did you see this mushroom? It sells for $35 per lb. You can’t buy them anywhere else in Washington!”

Between the apple man and the herbs were cinnamon roasted nuts, Emu lotion, tables toppling beneath the weight of bountiful harvests. Beets, broccoli, cucumbers, squash and vegetables I’d never heard of. A crabber set up his booth when he was in port.

I watched the crowds around me milling, smiling and tasting. Hippies in their tie-dyed scarves and dreadlocks held an air of life-hunger mingled with indifference toward social expectations.

I peered inquisitively at the sellers, faces round and rosy with contentment, satisfaction and pride. Food, bounty and harvest were the source of this joy. There was gratification in dirty fingernails and well-fed waists, smudged cheeks and tired backs. Happiness found in the fruits of hard labor; in sharing flavors and nourishment. Sharing life. And this was good.

My fingers tingled with excitement. I felt invited into the community that began with seeds and soil and culminated in a colorful feast. My cell phone vibrated against my thigh.

“Hello?”

“Hey Abby, it’s Megan.”

Megan and her husband were the only two people I knew in the whole state of Washington. I have no idea why she called, I plowed over her words in my enthusiasm.

“Can you come over for dinner?” I could feel the market’s energy seeping into my pores, suddenly I would burst if I failed to release it. “I’m at the market and I am going to buy oysters and red wine. Please, please come join me?”

Life is a two-step, an organic thing. It must be received and it must be re-gifted. Held too long in tight-fists, it will die.

Life cannot be controlled, manipulated or malnourished. Life cannot be lived alone, but Ed’s greatest ally is solitude. Life will not tolerate Ed.

Ed, anorexia, began to withdraw when my husband bravely entered my life. As friends encircled me, I felt the pulse and freshness of life. The more I pressed what little life I had into the hands of others, and hungrily accepted the relationship they offered, I reaped joy a hundred fold.

Things were changing, a harvest was coming. But what of the famine years? What of the starved intimacy of marriage, the languishing closeness of sisterhood, the wilted camaraderie of mother and daughter and the shallow, neglected friendships?

God was about to show me that He can restore even ruined relationships. Redemption was only beginning.

“Most laws condemn the soul and pronounce sentence. The result of the law of my God is perfect. It condemns but forgives. It restores - more than abundantly - what it takes away.” Jim Elliot

First published at Haven Journal, March 28, 2013

Born to Deliver, A Book Review

Born to Deliver, A Book Review

Maybe the most compelling story isn’t the one we identify with, but the one that breaks our hearts. It’s the story we pray never comes true.

The book, Born to Deliver, is the personal story of Kathy Brace and the slow, painful, permanent way that Jesus drew her to Himself. At the tender age of fifteen, Brace found herself pregnant and abandoned by her boyfriend. Her alcoholic father had deserted her, her mother and her brother Eric years before. Caught up in her own pain and the numbing mechanics of providing for a family as a single woman, Kathy’s mother was emotionally unavailable. Through a series of bad romantic relationships and illegitimate pregnancies, Kathy’s brother was her only reliable friend.

Loneliness echoes through the pages of this story. Though she has never experienced unconditional love, the structure of a family or the comfort of a committed husband, a longing resides deep in Kathy’s heart. More than anything she desires a happy life. But she has no idea where to find it, and no real understanding of what it looks like.

If only I knew what it actually looked like so that I would know when I found it.” (pg. 30)

From a stark home for unwed mothers or wives with unwanted pregnancies, to an empty, cold green delivery room, the reader’s heart sinks a little heavier with Kathy’s own heart in each chapter. I could almost feel the bruises and scrapes when she threw herself from a moving car, not caring what could happen. I shook with her when she held a gun to her head, and I shivered with her against the cold metal table in a back alley abortion clinic.

Every chapter of, Born to Deliver, has a new climax, a painful experience that seems a little sharper than before. However, a strand of hope winds its way through Kathy’s story. With a cliffhanger at the end of every chapter, there remains a conviction that light is just around the corner. With another page, another day, another year in her life, hope is coming. Jesus will rescue His daughter, His bride.

First published at Start Marriage Right, Feb. 7, 2013

Love Thy Body

Love Thy Body

It’s not just what is inside that counts. We tell ourselves that. We tell our children, so they won’t look too hard in the mirror. We don’t want them to judge their peers by skin color, size or shape.

“It’s only the inside that counts.” What we mean is that character is important. A good work ethic is priceless. Gentleness is admirable. Patience is Christ-like. But it’s not only what's inside that counts.

We tell ourselves and our children that the outside doesn’t matter. But it isn’t true. Tell that to the woman with breast cancer whose body is being eaten away by physical invaders. Tell that to the Indian man with leprosy whose skin is deteriorating. Tell the little blind boy that his eyes don’t matter, the cripple that his feet don’t matter, the burn victim that her skin doesn’t matter.

Bodies bear the mark of God. When God reached out to redeem His creation, He came as Immanuel, God with us. He came in flesh.  He came to look like us, touch, walk, hurt, heal, be like us.

A warm bosom was the first scent of earth-life to fill baby Jesus’ lungs. Mary’s body pushed, contracted and yielded to nature bringing a wrinkly, red baby into the world. Then soft breath, whispered words, gentle lips, trembling hands welcomed, caressed and tended. Life to life.

Dirty, leather-shod feet carried Jesus over the hills of Galilee, Nazareth and Samaria. Ugly, worn, blistered, they brought the healer to the broken, the leader to the lost, the Savior to the cross. As he washed and dried the feet of his own disciples the night of his arrest, did the Creator marvel at the familiarity of each heel and arch?

It is the body of Christ, bearing permanent scars that physically stepped into my place, took my death and rescued my life, even my body. Bodies matter. Intimate moments are constructed by and contained in bodies.

My first niece just turned one-year-old. She lives hundreds of miles away from me. Oh how I miss her. I miss her licorice-black, Precious Moment’s eyes framed with tiny lashes. I miss the softness of the top of her head. I love her face most when it’s smeared with beets or chocolate at breakfast. I love every inch of her oh-so wonderful body.

My mother’s shoulders are the most perfect shoulders in the world. They are broad enough for four daughters to rest their heads at once. Her shoulders slope gently into arms soft and strong; arms which hug me when I sob and hug me when I laugh. Her hands braided my hair when I was little and hold the phone now for hours when I just need to hear her voice.

Oh and those eyes! My daddy’s eyes sparkle with tears at the most elusive, sentimental moment. Those eyes chided me and praised me. The comfort of those eyes lulled me back to sleep after nightmares.

I know the tendency to discount bodies. For half my life, I hated mine. I whittled it smaller and smaller with starvation and long workouts. I measured my arms and legs with my fingers, furious if they grew larger than an arbitrary limit. How dare they strengthen, or fatten or grow or change. How dare they defy my control!

Slowly, Jesus has been persuading me of bodily value. These legs, bigger than they’ve been in years, bend criss-cross-applesauce and my puppy sleeps between my knees. These legs kneel to wrap Christmas presents, get on my niece’s eye-level and pray. These legs, which have long outgrown my fingers, carry me shopping with a friend, to volunteer at the homeless shelter, to walk to my neighbor’s home.

Recently, I found a news story and photo from 1995. It was titled, The Rescuing Hug.

“The article detailed the first week of life of a set of twins who were born 7 weeks early. Apparently each were in their respective incubators, one of them was doing better than the other and on day 4 after their birth, the weaker twin's vital signs were fading rapidly. The nurse in charge of the NICU that day had tried everything she could to save the weaker twin but nothing was working, she then decided to bring both twins together as a last resort. She fought against the hospital rules but finally placed both babies in the same incubator. When they were together, the stronger one of the two threw an arm over her sister in an endearing embrace. The weaker baby’s heart stabilized and her temperature rose to normal right away.” (article excerpted from InspiredDaybyDay.com)

Hands, feet, breasts, stomachs, legs, harshly judged too large, too small, too fat, too thin, are the means with which we express our Maker. Bodies are the means for rescuing life, comforting hearts, raising a child, being a lover.

Telling our children that what is inside is all that counts will not spare them from eating disorders. Believing that the outside is insignificant won’t prevent racism or prejudice. Believing that bodies have intrinsic, Christ-like value will instill in us and in our children the respect God intended for His creation.

What is inside does matter. It’s just not all that matters.

First published at Haven Journal, Dec. 2012

The Cause and Effect Relationship Between Depression and Eating Disorders

The Cause and Effect Relationship Between Depression and Eating Disorders

Depression is both cause and effect. It is this dichotomy that makes it so personal, hard to diagnose and deadly. Depression creates a vicious circle, spiraling its victim lower and lower. I should know.

My dance with this elusive enemy began at age fourteen. Until that fateful year, I was happy-go-lucky, spontaneous, talkative, intelligent and healthy, the product of a "perfect" family. To the casual observer, I had no reason to experience depression.

Contrary to popular opinion, a "perfect" environment often breeds depression. I felt an unspoken pressure to deserve my perfect world. I wanted please my generous parents - make good grades, excel in sports and help at home. As the oldest of four girls, I longed to be a good role model, an exceptional, mature little woman. Among my peers, I wanted to be pretty, as a perfect girl should be; I wanted boys to like me.

I never believed I was good enough. I was always at least second best, which in a competitive society is the first loser. Depression was the effect of my perceived failure and became the cause of an eating disorder.

"Failure. You are so average and replaceable. When you're gone, you'll never be missed. People like you are a dime-a-dozen. Why don't you at least do something extreme, something no one else will do. You can eat the least, run the farthest, be the thinnest. At least you'll be exceptional at something!"

Mantras like this marched through my head every night. Tallies of calories consumed and rattled through my thoughts every waking hour. My mind became less and less my own.

The feeling was bittersweet. There was a high from achieving what I had set out to do: be the best at something. But I had a sense of ever deepening depression; my family and friends rallied around me not with praise but with concern and frustration. As my mind sank in starvation, I grew more and more hopeless.

For myself and I believe many others, depression must be treated as what it is: both a cause and an effect. At wits' end, my parents enrolled me in an inpatient program for eating disorders. I received counseling for my anorexic behaviors and for my depression, as well as medication for a chemical imbalance.

Slowly, and often, against my will, I began to gain weight. Treating that symptom, allowed my mind to grasp the truths that the counselors were teaching me. Joy grew in proportion to my physical health.

However, simply treating the outcome of my depression (anorexia) wasn't enough. Twice, I left the program too early and slipped quickly back into old thoughts and habits. When I finally continued receiving counseling past the minimum of physical health, I addressed the issues of perfectionism, compulsion and fear that had fueled my depression and subsequent anorexia.

Today, I am almost surprised every morning when I wake up with enthusiasm and expectation for the day. I look in the mirror with a humble satisfaction in my body.

There are many disciplines which help me maintain my recovery. I read the Bible daily and spend a lot of time journaling and in prayer. I walk my dog and breathe deeply in both the sunshine and the rain. I spend time with people and focus on a few close friends instead of trying to please everyone. I have found that I actually enjoy being alone. I am happy with myself, and that it's OK.

Posted on Yahoo Voices, May 25, 2012