Enough is Enough

I was a freshman in high school the first time I tried making myself throw up. I was determined to be the next Carrie Bradshaw, and convinced myself that I needed to be 20 pounds skinner in order to even scratch the surface of being fabulous. So I spent a whole Saturday afternoon leaned over the toilet, sticking all sorts of objects down my throat in a desperate attempt to become bulimic until my eyes watered from the hard chokes of the mere acid that I purged. When I realized God must have built in some supercharged anti-gag reflex that resisted the powers of fingers, chopsticks, and pens, I Googled guides on how to throw up, trying to figure out if it was worth it to drink ipecac, since I didn't want to kill myself, but only give myself an eating disorder. After three more weeks of trying, I gave up, resigned to the fact that some angel from Heaven must have had his hands placed down my stomach to save me from myself.

Six years later, I'm 14 again. After a close guy friend implied that I needed to lose weight winter quarter, I saw clearly what I had been denying the past year by avoiding mirrors, and spiraled out of control. How could either of us have known what would follow: that what had sprung from good intentions would lead me back to square one. I started counting calories like an obsession, looking up and logging every single thing I ate, and then forcing myself to go to sleep starving so that I wouldn't go over my daily limit. When that stopped working, I started going to the gym three times a day, in the morning right when I woke up, in between classes so that I wouldn't eat lunch, and then again at 11pm, to make sure I zeroed out my calories before I went to bed. At night, I would lie awake, grabbing the fat around my stomach wishing I could somehow claw it away with my nails so that I could stop needing to cover it with big sweaters. When I would finally fall asleep, I would be haunted by nightmares of running away and trying to hide my body from people I used to know when I was skinnier, or hearing people I didn't even recognize call me a "fat-ass." I would wake up with that word pounding in my head, reminding myself that I was a failure and shaming me from even talking to people. The few times I would actually let myself go out to meet new people, I would subconsciously grab my throat, hoping they wouldn't notice the layers of fat that would form around my chin whenever I laughed. 

And this is how sin entangles you. It doesn't even look like sin from the outside. It looks like something permissible, beneficial even. You're convinced it's containable, that you have it under control, until you don't. It looks like a little girl screaming and laughing as she runs in and out of the ocean. She starts at the edge, where the tide first hits the sand, where the water tickles her feet and it feels cool. She hesitantly walks in a little deeper and runs back out giggling when the water hits her knees. Then she's hiking up her dress, afraid to get it wet, and walks to where the water will now cover her bare legs. It's harder to run out now, but she can still do it, and challenges herself to go in once more, this time the last time, this time just a little deeper than before, and the water hits her faster than she predicted, the water is higher than she remembered, and it overtakes her until she's drowning, gasping for air, her soaking dress pulling her down while the waves crash over her. 

In the same way, my sin never looked like sin from the beginning. It looked health, it looked like fitness, it looked like being a good steward of my body. But when counting calories wasn't enough, I went in deeper. When working out wasn't enough, I went in even deeper, still convinced I was so close to dry land. And when that wasn't enough, I was back to 14 years old, leaning over a toilet, trying desperately to make myself throw up after each meal, drowning in my own fear of being a failure while failing at even throwing up.

I grew bitter at God, bitter that He had designed me to look the way I did and designed me so that I couldn't just go to bulimia as a quick-fix for my problem. I stopped going to church and large group regularly, and stopped praying entirely. So I closed my eyes and let myself drown, falling deeper and deeper into unknown territory, until I couldn't even remember what it was like to not wake up in the morning looking up pictures of models and then mentally go through what I was allowed to eat that day and what I would have to do at the gym by the end of the night. 

I didn't realize how bad it had gotten until my old small group leader Renee visited one day, and handed us back letters we had written to ourselves a year ago. I suddenly remembered every single thing I had written without even opening the letter, all the hopes and dreams I had as a freshman who had experienced firsthand the transforming power of Christ's love and was now ready to take on the world, or at least my piece of it, for Christ. I remembered looking forward to passionately sharing the gospel and growing in my relationship with God my sophomore year, and even small group leading my junior year. But at that moment, at the end of what I had imagined would be a fruitful sophomore year, I was just as pathetic as I was when I was a freshman in high school, worshipping Seventeen magazine and Jessica Alba's body and thinking that was life. I could now do 50 push-ups and run 10Ks, but I was miserable, lonely, ashamed, worn out, and so, so far from God. I truly had nothing to show for. 

I gave myself the deadline of May 3^rd on my 20^th birthday to humble myself, repent, and come back to God. Two days after my birthday, I prayed honestly for the first time in months and admitted to God I couldn’t make it in this world without Him. I felt stupid, not knowing how to say how alone I felt, and then just saying aloud “I feel alone.” I felt like I was talking to a wall, probably because I was literally facing a wall when I was praying, but it felt stupid. And I think I imagined that God would send down some fiery thunderbolt and zap my heart and I would feel this electric shock throughout my body and feel instantly holy and loved and at peace, and never ever ever again want to count calories or go to the gym ever again. But it didn’t work like that. Monday morning came, I got dressed to go to the gym, worked out, showered and changed into a new set of gym clothes, and prepared to go the gym again later that night. I ate lunch, and counted my calories, and went on the Women’s Health Magazine website to look up new workouts, like I always did on Mondays. By the time I got to dinner, I realized my day had looked exactly like it did the Monday, Wednesday and Friday the week before, and that nothing had changed. But I hadn’t wanted it to. I wanted to be on good terms with God but still hold on to my lifestyle and my attitude and my habits. So a very wise discipler held me accountable against my will so that I wouldn’t go to the gym again at night.

          

The next day I repented again, and waited for the thunderbolt of self-acceptance to zap me and make me never ever ever want to count calories or go to the gym again. When that didn’t happen, I repented again the next day and the day after that, until I realized I had probably mixed up the God of Greek mythology, Josephine’s imagination, and the Bible somewhere up in my mind. So I patiently waited on the Lord, not exactly knowing what to expect.

The change wasn’t overnight, but slowly and surely, my heart changed. I stopped weighing myself every morning, and stopped going to the gym three times a day, until it was done to two, and then down to one, until two Wednesdays ago, the first weekday all quarter, I didn’t go to the gym at all. I started allowing myself to have dessert every once in a while without beating myself up about it later, and to actually laugh without holding my throat. I started to enjoy the fellowship that God had graced me with, and realized how much I had missed being a part of the body of Christ. I started to view my inability to be bulimic as a blessing rather than a curse, and the Christians who had held my hand every step of the way as the true angels that had saved me from myself. Most importantly, I enjoyed His presence and Him alone.

Chris Gee asked this morning at Crossroads, “How much more do you need to be 100% satisfied?” Someone had asked me this same question a few months ago about how much more weight I needed to lose before I was satisfied. I said just a little more. But we both knew I was lying. I would not have been satisfied if I had lost five pounds more, ten pounds more, or even twenty pounds more. Even when I was twenty pounds lighter two years ago coming in as a freshman, I remember eating raw broccoli for dinner, even when I was already a size 0, but striving to be still skinnier.

I tried walking away from Christ because I was convinced I had found something better but couldn’t. I invested my time in something else and wasted it. I poured my heart in the things of this world and broke it. I wanted more, just a little more, but it wasn’t enough, and could never have been enough. I know now that only Christ will be enough, so enough is enough.

           

I don’t know if I’ll ever be at a point where I can stop mentally counting calories before I eat, or if I’ll ever completely accept what I see in the mirror, but one thing I do know, “forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 3:13-14)

            

My end was destruction, my god was my body, and my glory in my shame, with my mind set on earthly things. “But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables even to subject all things to himself.” (Philippians 3:19-21)

                      

So I end with this, I cry with the same cry for God that David prayed in the desert:

"O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you;

my soul thirsts for you;

my flesh faints for you,

as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.

So I have looked upon you in the sanctuary,

beholding your power and glory.

Because your steadfast love is better than life,

my lips will praise you.

So I will bless you as long as I live;

in your name I will lift up my hands.

My soul will be satisfied as with fat and rich food,

and my mouth will praise you with joyful lips,

when I remember you upon my bed,

and meditate on you in the watches of the night;

for you have been my help,

and in the shadow of your wings I will sing for joy.

My soul clings to you;

your right hand upholds me."

          

-Psalm 63: 1-8