Perfectionism, Disodered Eating, and Total Freedom!

Growing up, I always wanted to do things right. Precision has always been important to me, even from a young age. It's a beautiful reflection of the heart of excellence that God put in me, and there's nothing wrong with it in itself.

But resulting from some dark and scary things in my past, this beautiful gift became corrupt. I so desired the approval of authority figures, and I believed the way to accomplish this was to do everything well. I worked hard and accomplished much, but even my well-doing and authority-pleasing didn't set me free from fear or enable me to find what I was looking for in life. And in my obsession to appear "just fine," I swept the unsightly things under the rug.

Sophomore year of college would be the time during which the pile under the rug would trip me up.

During this often tumultuous year, hiding became hard. At the beginning of the school year, I found out that I was one of a team of 3 women who would co-lead a Bible study of Freshman women. While I was glad to hear that I had gotten such an opportunity, I really felt inadequate. That led me to feeling pressured to perform well. See, my arrival at Duke that Fall didn't go so well. I'd road tripped with family, which was hard. Things had always been hard, but words were said on this trip, and I had a hard time dislodging their arrows from my heart. So arriving at school in that state made me feel like a failure. My soul was therefore on a mission to find approval. Because I didn't have time beforehand to mentally prepare for my leadership role, I felt like I came in a step behind and never caught up.

Back then, I didn't like  surprises. I thought I needed lead time to mentally prepare by knowing what I would say, how I would respond, and basically scripting myself. Because if I just went in off-the-cuff, I may make a big mistake! I didn't really trust myself to just flow and to have the outcome be great.

And you wanna know the funny thing about it? I never even knew this was true. I would have said back then that I was a pretty confident young woman. I was poised, I spoke eloquently, and I had a lot of friends. So didn't this mean I was confident? Maybe, but the question is, "In what was I confident?" I wasn't confident that I was inherently beautiful internally. I actually thought quite the opposite: I trusted my ability to hide by only letting people see what I wanted them to see. It was as if whatever was in me was inherently bad, and I had to recreate it! 

Soon my plan to recreate myself began falling apart like a sandcastle. I'd based part of my identity on my academic abilities, and that was shaken as some of my classes got harder. As for relationships, a guy I was interested in dating became a source of fear and concern. We'd talked and hung out a lot Freshman year, but suddenly he seemed to be changing his mind about me. He was a senior, and he told me that in his final year of school, he needed to press into the relationships he'd had for the past 3 years. In other words, he didn't have any further interest in pursuing me.

Yet the mixed signals and affection he continued to show me confused me. I really wanted this relationship, because I felt like it was one of the few places in which I was safe to be myself. But rather than really being myself, I began trying to be whatever I thought he wanted me to be so I didn't lose him. I disliked myself for being fake, but what I disliked more was the gaping loneliness and emptiness in my heart! And no matter what I did, he still didn't genuinely pursue me.

The family, relational, and academic factors ushered me into an emotionally downward spiral. I couldn't control the circumstances in my life, so I grasped after what I could control. I stopped eating, for the most part. I went from 3 meals a day plus snacks to one solid meal, if that. I nibbled here and there to take the bite off of my hunger, but I certainly wasn't healthy. I lost almost 20 pounds, and what I saw in the mirror concerned me. 

I didn't refrain from eating because I thought I was overweight, but because of fear. I was shutting myself down, in a way, to protect myself from pain. Sometimes we treat objects in our lives in the same way we treat people, as a way of displacing our pain. It's kind of like when a child says, "My teddy bear is sad because he feels like Mommy is mad at him." Clearly he means that he is sad. For me, eating and letting anything foreign into me made me feel like I was being controlled, because in many of my relationships, I was. I didn't realize this at a conscious level, and I didn't know I had the power to stop it. So I only controlled what I felt safe to control, which was food. I kept most of it out, unless it was entertaining and delicious, which was also usually unhealthy.

Yet during these months of pain and fear, God overflowed so much love to me! The first big life raft He sent me was a Bible study I attended. The student leader who usually led us was out that night, and the woman who substituted shared a testimony with us. Recently engaged to her boyfriend, she told us about the previous year when they had broken up. She'd been devastated, but God met her in her sadness. She explained how He'd shown her through the Bible that the kind of love her heart needed was first found in the love God gives her daily! When that relationship with Him is well-established, her sense of self is firm. Then, whether she has a romantic relationship or not, her confidence is never shaken!

I'd heard this message before, but this time it really went deep! God healed a place in my heart instantly, and I remember how free I felt! I recall getting up the next morning and being happy for the first time in a long time! When I went outside to go to class, I noticed the perfect sky and flowers for the first time that Spring. I even got to have lunch with my friend who'd just broken up with her boyfriend, and I got to share my newfound freedom!

As for the food issue, God continued to take me on a deeper journey. Because the sadness of the relational issues began to break away, I began to eat again as normal that year. It would be another year until the deep heart issues came to full healing, though, which was accomplished through talking and praying with caring friends. God healed me, and the issues are now gone without a trace!

I want to encourage anyone with eating issues. Disordered eating is defined by anything that disables you from enjoying food in a healthy way, whether your symptoms are textbook or not. No matter what your needs are in this area, there is rich and abundant hope for you! I have heard people say that eating disorders are impossible to heal, but that's a lie. I am living proof! God knows what harms us, and He knows how to heal you! I can't give you all the answers you need, but He can. Ask Him, and get your hopes up! He stands ready to blow your mind!