The Battles we Fight

On Sunday our church sang a song the music group Shane & Shane recorded called "You Have Already Won." There is a line in the song that always raises goosebumps of feels when I hear it. "I am fighting a battle that you have already won." This reaction is because it reminds me of one of the most important lessons I learned in my recovery from an eating disorder. To help you understand why it is so impactful for me, I need to describe a little bit of what my life was like living with an untreated eating disorder.

I started developing my eating disorder around the time I hit puberty, which was before eating disorders were being discussed. My disorder moved back and forth between anorexia, bulimia, and compulsive overeating. It also contained other components like compulsive exercise and self-contempt that ran to the core. It even included years of reading every new diet book that came out and labeling foods as either good or bad, and sadly the bad list grew to the point that my "ok" diet was very limited. Because the bad list was so big, consumption of foods on it created guilt and shame even if the food was perfectly healthy foods. That shame it ran deep and my thoughts about it were all my walking hours. During one of my anorexic phases I became so physically weak that I realized my heart muscle was probably being impacted and I frankly was tired of trying so I began to seek help. I eventually landed in a Christian therapist's office and found out that there were many layers to recovery. 

At times we worked on the root causes of my eating disorder and that lead me to work on some hard areas to deal with past events that had been traumatic and hurtful, allowing God and others into those areas that needed healing. We also looked at how the eating disorder served me, getting me to the place to understand that not only was it sinful, but it was also a maladaptive way of trying to protect myself from more trauma and from experiencing painful feelings of both the past and the present.  We also looked at how the disorder had impacted my relationships with God, myself, and others and began to picture what ways those relationships could be different. I could write whole books about the things I leaned in all of those areas, but what I want to focus on in this post is what I learned about fighting battles.

During the time I was in therapy, I often walked after my quiet time in the mornings. While walking, I would play worship music and pray. Some of those prayers were for others and some of those prayers were me processing with God the things we were working on in therapy. There was one morning I was struggling with the guilt and shame of believing I had blown it in some big way with food the night before, which could have been a binge or simply taking a bite of cookie not on my food plan. I was praying about my perceived failure and passed a lady I had never seen in my neighborhood.

After I passed her, I heard her yell out. I turned around, taking my earphones off and she said to me, "Girl, that battle you are fighting, your God has already won!" I know my mouth dropped open and she smiled and just waved me on.  

When I first started working with my therapist and dietician, the eating disorder behaviors were so automatic I didn't know what was behind them. I was so consumed by the disorder that I was surprised to hear others could go through the day planning meals, shopping for groceries, cooking, and eating without experiencing great amounts of anxiety, guilt, and shame. Over time it became apparent that to do some of the emotional trauma work I had to learn to pause the behaviors of the disorder to find out what emotions, triggers, and/or memories were underneath the strong drives.  

I was desperate because I wanted to be as close to God as I could be, but thought I had to get this all worked out to do so. My therapist began to plant the idea that God wanted me to call on Him for help, but in the moments, I felt the most tempted to use disorder behaviors I couldn't even think about Him. In one visit she suggested when I start struggling that I remove myself from the temptations and go outside and go for slow gentle walks, using my senses to notice things like flowers and smells and sounds. To be honest, I didn't think much of the idea, but luckily the suggestion made it into my brain. 

 

Not long after that, I was cooking dinner and resisting the temptation to start binging was so hard that I was shaking. I remembered her suggestion and turned off the stove and stepped outside to look for relief. I slowly started walking around the block, not realizing the connection of my outdoor walks to my prayer and worship life and soon found my mind was calmed enough that I could connect to God. I began praying, but they were not the prayers of asking for an instantaneous healing, they were desperate prayers of asking God to give me His power in my weakness to have victory over this single moment of temptation that felt bigger that the mountains surrounding the valley I live in. When I got home, I still had to face cooking dinner for my family and the temptations I was experiencing were crazy strong. Yet, I knew I was not alone in the moment and was determined to hold on tight to the Lord for the victory I desperately wanted. It was not until the next morning that the temptations had completely subsided, and I realized that I had been previously fighting battles in my own strength thinking Abba was far off because I was experiencing temptation. I now understood what the lady in the neighborhood meant and that it was in the battles I could grow closer to Abba. That closeness I gained came from a shared experience. 

That experience and that principle changed my healing journey. It took the shame out of admitting my weaknesses and my need for God's help. I called on God when adding an apple to an eating plan scared me so much, I cried. I called on God to help me forgive unforgiveable things others had done to me and the things I had done to myself to protect my disorder, and the things I had done to others. I called on God to help me face the emotions I thought would be too big and too deep for me to feel that needed to be felt and moved through to heal. I called on God to help me find the courage to confront things that needed to change, allowing Him to be a part of hard conversations I needed to have. I called on God when I needed to confront the self-contempt that ruled my life, driving my disorder. I called on God for the courage to allow God into the shameful places that needed to be healed and loved. I called on God to help me replace the lies I had believed about Him and myself that were so engrained they had been strongholds. I called on God, to find my voice to not only help myself, but others as well.

We can all recognize the battles between good and evil when they are big and see believers have guns held to their heads, while being ordered to renounce their faith. We probably recognize the battles being raged when we are witnessing to someone, and Satan is doing everything he can to blind him or her to the truth of who Jesus is. We may recognize the battles between good and evil when we see people calling lies truth and the truth lies. We recognize battles when people use lies to support their own agenda and those agendas are harmful to the most innocent or needy people. 

However, I am not sure that we understand our personal struggles or those struggles we see other's going though are also significant battles. How often we set time limits on each other to "get better" or to be cured.  And if it isn't in our timeline then they must not be repentant or be trying hard enough. I think sometimes in church circles we want Jesus to be "enough" so hard that we don't recognize the different things He might use in a person's life to bring about healing and that healing might look different than we think. It might even a lifetime of depending on God to get us through one temptation after another. 

I for one needed Jesus in the form of care givers to break through the layers of denial that eating disorders have. I needed personal conversations with them to sort out the misunderstandings I had of the God of the Scripture. I needed someone to walk with me though the dark places that were unknowingly impacting how I viewed God, myself, and life. And most of all I needed one brave woman I had never met to stop me and prophesy the truth that the battle I was fighting was already won.  

(2 Cor. 12:9, Ephesians 3:16, Phil. 4:13, Col. 1:1, I Peter 5:10)

       

  

 

Oh, Those Faithful Waiters

Our church recently started a study on the book of Luke. In the first two chapters there are three people mentioned that brought to mind a struggle I used to have with waiting. First, there was Zechariah who was a priest. Him and his wife Elizabeth were righteous in the sight of God and faithfully observed the Lord's commands and decrees. They were, in God's own words, very old and childless, which in those days carried great shame as people in their culture assumed being barren was a result of God withholding blessing from a couple because of sin. In spite of their childlessness and all that would come with that, they remained faithful for years and years. 

Second, there was a man named Simeon who was living in Jerusalem. He was waiting faithfully for the consolation of Israel. That would be the equivalent of believers like us living with an expectation and a longing for Jesus's return. Simeon was filled with the Holy Spirit, who had revealed to him that he would not die before he had seen the Messiah. 

Third, there a prophet named Anna. She, like Simeon and Zechariah, was very old. She had not had an easy life. She had the joy of getting married, but her husband had only lived for seven years after the wedding. She was a widow for eighty-four years and had never left the temple after he died. She was someone who worshipped night and day, and someone who fasted and prayed. Before I tell you more about these people, I want to tell you why I am so drawn to and in awe of them. 

For years I had struggled with the waits we all have in this Christian life we live. When I prayed for something, I could easily accept yes or no answers. But it was the waits that would cause me to spiral into a funk and I didn't know why. Then one night at our couple's Bible Study the pastor said that instead of our usual discussion he wanted to talk about waiting on God. After he opened us in prayer, he asked us what was hard about waiting. Everyone was giving great answers, but I couldn't identify what was so difficult about it for me. As he progressed through the Bible Study, he shared a verse from Psalms that says that God has His ear turned to those who wait on Him. I immediately blurted out that's it! The pastor asked what I meant. I told him, that whenever I prayed for something or discovered a promise that had a wait attached to it, I often felt unheard, overlooked, maybe even invisible. I am an extreme extrovert and as a young person if I made a request or asked for something and no one responded I believed I didn't matter enough for others to meet the needs and didn't matter enough to make the request more assertively. 

That night I realized that if God had His ears turned towards me in the waiting that it was an open invitation to keep asking. It was also an invitation to keep talking to Him until all the lies I had believed about Him or myself , had been replaced by truth. It was an invitation to keep talking until all the unbelief with which I struggled had been identified and replaced by a much deeper faith and until I had expressed to Him any pain experienced and let Him melt it away with the soothing balm of His perfect, extravagant love. I admit I haven't always been as faithful as Zechariah, Simeon, or Anna, but I am getting better at it. 

Let's look at the results of our faithful trio of waiters. In Zechariah's faithful waiting he got to meet an angel at the altar of incense. The angel told him he and his wife would have son named John who would bring great joy to them and be filled with the Holy Spirit while still in his mother's womb. John's job was going to be to call Israel to return to the Lord after 400 long years of silence and He would pave the way for our Jesus. Because of Zechariah's faithfulness, John, leapt in his mother's womb, immediately recognizing Jesus in Mary's womb. John wrote beautiful words, declaring that the God of Israel had visited and redeemed his people by raising up a horn of salvation for them and that they might be able to serve him without fear, in holiness and righteousness and that his son as a prophet would give knowledge of salvation to his people for the forgiveness of their sins. 

Simeon in his faithful waiting, was able to take Jesus into His arms and bless Him who he had been faithfully looking for, declaring that he would be able to depart this world in peace for he had seen with his own eyes God's salvation prepared in the presence of all people as a light for Gentiles and the gory of God's people the Israelites. 

And then sweet Anna, who as a widow faithfully served in the temple. She, like Simeon, was in the temple when they brought the baby Jesus for the purification ceremony and immediately recognized the Christ and gave thanks to God and began speaking of Him to all who were waiting for the redemption of Israel. declared for all to hear. 

And there are others we know who experienced long waits. Abraham and Sarah waited a long time for a child, Israel waited a long time for a land for His people, and the host of faithful people listed in Hebrews 11, many of which waited for God to save them. Some of them suffered and died in their waiting. They were tortured, refused to accept release, knowing in the resurrection they would have a better life. Some were stoned, some sawn in two, some killed by the sword, and some were destitute, afflicted, and mistreated. And God, Himself, commended their faith and declared that this world was not worthy of them and that they had been made perfect. 

It was important that I shared that not every faithful waiter has the same outcome in this life as Zechariah, Simeon, and Anna because so often we are a people who attempt to bargain with our God, believing that if we serve Him, if we attend church every week, if we have quiet times built into our lives, if we pray often enough, and a host of other religious activities that God is obligated to answer our prayers as we want him to. 

What if it is the waiting that purifies our faith and takes us from a people who are content with God's benefits to a people who are not satisfied by anything but Him?  That is what we see in the faithful waiters described at the end of Hebrews 11 of the people who were found faithful even unto death.