Hey all! I know it’s been a while since I last posted. Don’t think for a minute I haven’t been thinking…I’ve been doing a LOT of thinking….and acting on those thoughts….and I’m eager to catch you up on what God’s been doing.
Last year as I faced the reality that I have an eating disorder (ED) I said I would be transparent about it through this blog. You have been with me through ‘the good, the bad, and the ugly made beautiful.’ That’s the subtitle of my blog. There has been a lot of the good and bad but I haven’t quite seen the ‘ugly made beautiful’ too much. Until now.
Thanksgiving 2016 was rough for me. There was a lot going on and it was my first holiday with an acknowledged eating disorder. I was just focusing on the plan my dietician and I had developed. It has my undivided attention and quite frankly, it was a real fight. In the midst of it all the Facebook page Beating Eating Disorders became a long distance friend walking the road with me. They were literally RIGHT there to encourage, challenge, listen and cheer. They literally helped me make it through the holiday when I was so tempted to just disappear into my old ED behaviors to just survive the holiday.
It was through that entire experience where I believe I turned a corner in my ED recovery. Something felt different inside. The ED controlled me less, my self-confidence was a little stronger, and I was more focused in doing what I knew I needed to do, not just what I ‘wanted’ to do…or what my ED wanted me to do. I was experiencing a little freedom from my ED. And I believe it turns out some of the emotional exhaustion I experienced in December was partially due to the internal war being waged against my ED (on top of everything I enumerated in my last post). I talked about it more with my counselor and dietician and started being more open about it on my Facebook page. I was, in essence, ‘coming out.’
Shortly after all this a thought went through my mind. I was finding myself helping others and encouraging others in their ED fights when I wasn’t that far down the path myself. A phrase one of my pastors said in a teaching kept coming to mind. He was teaching on growth and discipleship and asked ‘what does it take to help someone else?’ The answer was simply ‘to just be one step ahead.’ And a crazy thought was born. I started developing a new blog for eating disorder support. It started out on WordPress and I have since transitioned it into a complete website: http://mystepahead.com. I decided if I could help someone else as they begin their ED recovery journey I wanted to share all I could.
I spent December writing and designing the website. I firmly believe being Christian with an eating disorder is even more difficult for the extra guilt and condemnation it brings and I wanted to dedicate a section of the site for that audience as well so I included a section called ‘Ragamuffin Central’ where we talk about those things. The blog was moved over to the site and on January 1st I launched my website and have been growing it since.
In addition to that I had 2 other blog entries published on the Beating Eating Disorders website as holiday blog posts and had another just published a couple weeks ago with another slated for publication at the end of February. This organization has become near and dear to my heart and I began to feel the pull to be an advocate for eating disorder awareness and
encouragement. Oddly enough around the same time a way became available for me to become more actively involved with the team on a regular basis and I am now part of the Beating Eating Disorders team. Beyond that I started to get the itch to share my story in a more public forum. I have felt for a while that God wants to use me in larger ways and unexpectedly this eating disorder thing seems to be the niche. I have become comfortable with sharing my struggle more openly on Facebook and on my website, and just last week I sent letters to two universities mainly asking for opportunities to share my story during National Eating Disorder Awareness Week Feb. 26-March 4 of this year.
If you’re getting whiplash reading all this I’m right there with you! To go from ‘I just need to survive the holidays’ to ‘hey, may I come share my story in front of your thousand students?’ in basically 60 days is a pretty wild ride! I kinda cock my head a few times as I type.
There is only one explanation: GOD! I embraced that “I AM valuable” to Him at retreat last October and it kind of started to run free from there! I am getting some crazy ideas of things to include in a large presentation in terms of creative arts (that is a ways off) but I really believe God is setting me up to catapult me forward. There are many who struggle with an eating disorder – Christian and non – who need to hear encouragement and hope and the love found in the person of Jesus Christ.
I have no firm clue where this is leading though I have some pretty big ideas if it goes where it could go. For now I’m just going to focus on my own recovery and ride this wave wherever God takes it. I will continue to blog here about my personal recovery and use the website as a means to encourage others and share things I have been learning. I hope you will follow both. Let’s see where God wants to take this thing. Are you up for an adventure?! LET’S GO!
Comments