When I was in recovery for my eating disorder(s), I read a lot of books about trying to make peace with a body that I couldn't make meet my unreasonable expectations. Some of the books were recommended by my counselor, some were recommended by others in recovery, and some I just stumbled upon when I ran out of other books to read. For awhile, I devoured these books (pun completely intended). But a little while after that, I decided the best approach to recovery would be for me to bury all these books away somewhere and pretend that my problem had disappeared. This actually sort of worked. I know it's a bit counterintuitive, especially considering that I turned out to be a counselor and as such I know that denial is not exactly the healthiest approach to a cure. But for me, I actually found some balance when I stopped focusing so much on myself. Balance for me turned out to be where I started. At my most anorexic, I was 50 pounds lighter than I am today. At the height of my binge eating, I was 30 pounds larger. Once I decided I was done with recovery and that I was all better, my weight actually returned to where it is now which is the same place I was when I started back when I was 14. Even last year when I couldn't workout for 6 months because of my knee, I didn't gain any weight. I lost muscle tone and fitness, but my size remained unchanged. In the world of eating disorder recovery, the experts would call my current weight my "set point" since it's pretty much where my body naturally hangs out when I'm not in state of disordered eating.
Anyway, I say denial "sort of" worked because even if my body is at my set point, my mind can still get pretty crazy pretty often. As much as I enjoy denial, the fact is that I am not all better. I don't understand why not, really. When I was going through an ED moment last year, panicking about my softening lines, a colleague assumed I was stressing because John had said something negative about my body. Not so at all. I managed to land a husband who adores me and married me at this set point even if it's still a higher point than I want to be. Of course, John's feelings for me have nothing at all to do with the jiggle in my thighs or size of my jeans, but that fact alone is enough to baffle a body-obsessed woman. You would think that if denial didn't work, unconditional love and acceptance would. But not so much. That's because my craziness isn't about a search for outside approval, it's about a need to find approval in myself. This could be as simple as me wrapping myself around the probable truth that I may never be "better" as long as I am on this earth. My condition may be the thorn in my side that God will leave me with to remind me of His grace and my helplessness apart from Him. Maybe I need to stop raging against the thorn--not to put it back into the denial closet, but to learn to walk with it and stop trying so hard to pull it out. The fact is, after all, the God doesn't always choose to heal. And if the healing of my emotional/mental/physical disease is not His will, then I need to start pursuing that which is His will--peace in the midst of turmoil, strength in the face of spiritual war. If God won't blast through the mountain in my life, He will show me a way over it. I can't claim to be an overcomer if I have nothing to overcome.