Slabs of Meat and the Love of God

"America is one of the most immoral countries in the world...our media has reduced humans to slabs of meat." --Donald Miller, Blue Like Jazz

Whether we are looking for them or not, every day the media sends us images touting their idea of beauty. It's a very limited vision of beautiful--thin bodies; tanned, clear skin; silky hair; straight, white teeth; long legs and large breasts on the women; broad shoulders and toned muscles on the men. We are all vulnerable to these images and the havoc such images can create on our own self-perceptions. Adolescents are especially at risk because their self-images are so shaky as is, so it is no wonder that eating disorders tend to begin during the impressionable years between 12 and 22. Mine did. And what I hate about that imprssionable age is that I started down a path of behavior that would quite literally shape who I would be for the rest of my life. 14 is too young to decide on a college major and a career path, the government even deems it too young to vote in an election. Yet at the age I was able to choose to listen to voices that would enter me into a lifelong battle that quite frankly I'd rather not have to fight 15 years later.

To be fair to my 14-year old self, I honestly didn't know any better. I went on a diet to lose a few pounds because I thought I'd be happier and less depressed if I looked a little better. I must have had a predisposition that led me into trouble with the diet, maybe there is an eating disorder gene since there seems to be a gene for everything else. Or maybe it was just a combination of a previously established low self-esteem coupled with a home environment filled with many mixed messages about appearance from my father. People say eating disorders have nothing to do with weight or food. They're lying. In my case, the eating disorder began because of weight and food. Sure, there were underlying problems such as depression and poor self-image, but rest-assured that the weight and food played a big part in my condition and still do. In fact, my low self-esteem was and is based largely on physical appearance and cop-out or not, Hollywood doesn't help in the matter.

At 14, a few pounds turned into a few more until I had shrunk down to a size 4 and still felt like my legs were too thick. I would never have sought help for my "condition" if my habits hadn't swung full circle during my junior year in college when I went from meticulously counting every fat gram I put into my mouth to putting every fat gram I could find into my mouth. No, I'm not exaggerating. During the swing from anorexia to binge eating, I would sit down and eat an entire jar of peanut butter with a spoon in one sitting and finish an entire bag of candy (not the snack bags, the big bags you get for the kids at Halloween) in one afternoon. I sought help not so that I could finally develop normal eating habits but rather so that I could find the will power to return to starvation. I wasn't happy when I was thin, but at least I thought I looked good.

So, why bring all of this up now? Well, back in November I decided that I wanted to lose a few pounds again. I joined Weight Watchers because the only question they asked was whether or not I had an "active diagnosis" of bulimia. I haven't had true symptoms of bulimia since college, so I thought I would be fine. Turns out, any type of diet (call it a lifestyle if you want, but focusing on what I am eating still spells diet to me) can set off the binge trigger in someone with a history of eating disorders, active or not. And this happened for me in a big way. Even though I didn't learn that it was to be expected until I read an article about it several weeks later, I quickly found myself returning to the very thought patterns that got me into trouble when I was younger. And even though I only followed the Weight Watchers program for a couple weeks, I just finished off a dinner of cookies tonight, a couple months later.

And I feel stuck. God loves me and wants to deliver me from my self-addiction, but I'm still stuck in a culture where every day I'm reminded of what I'm not. Of course I realize we're all more than what we look like, but the rest of our country doesn't realize that, or least doesn't act like they realize it in a real way. I need God to deliver me from more than just self-obsession, but I also need deliverance from giving a rat's ass about what other people think of me. God's opinion should be the only one that matters. Should be the only one that matters. Should be.

So here I am with a stomachache from too many cookies, a heartache from always letting God and myself down when it comes to this daily task of eating, and a headache from analyzing myself too much and pondering the reason why I always come back to this point. I could spend all night cursing the immoral culture that wants me to be thin and cursing myself for buying into the hype and missing out on what really matters (which, by the way, I do know on some level is not a number on the scale), but that would just get me back to this place tomorrow and I'm tired of being here.

Donald Miller writes something else in Blue Like Jazz that I find so profound when I look at it in light of my own life. He writes, "And so I have come to understand that strength, inner strength, comes from receiving love as much as it comes from giving it.... God's love will never change us if we don't accept it." I want God to deliver me from my self-addiction, but He can't change me with His love for me if I don't receive it. And I mean receive His love more than just in my mind where I already intellectually accept that God loves me, but receive it into my heart, my soul, and my spirit. Receive it so that it is in the marrow of my bones and that it becomes what I live by. Even with so many years as a Christian under my belt, I don't think I've done this yet. Actually, I know I haven't done this yet because the evidence of me not receiving God's love is written all over my negative thoughts and actions towards myself, which of course spills over into negative thoughts and actions towards others.

I'm the worst kind of sinner, there is no doubt, but God loves me anyway. Really loves me. And He wants me to receive this love so that I can love others in return. He wants me to stop obsessing about myself and start obsessing about Him and His cause on this earth and His cause in this immoral country where He's planted me. I honestly believe that if I let it, His love can cut the chains that I have used to reduce myself to nothing more than a slab of meat. His love can set me free, but only if I accept it into every part of me and let it govern me where I have previously been letting society dictate who I am.

Posted by Kim at January 14, 2007 06:53 PM