>Cleaning the Mirror

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“It’s like He sees who you could be, and that’s what he remembers.”

These words of wisdom came from a dear friend, and were brought to life for me by another friend that I’ve known since high school. We were catching up last night and I was telling her about how education is such a good fit for me because it combines my passions for people and for learning. I told her how I had never really paid attention to people like I do now, and how my master’s program is almost like being in high school again, only this time I planned to be more socially successful. She looked at me and said, “That’s funny, because I sort of always saw you that way. Everybody loved you!”

This struck me as mildly ridiculous. I never felt fully accepted by my peers when I was growing up, except for my friends, and even those relationships were not nearly as deep as the ones I have cultivated in colleges (and some of these are expansions of friendships I had in high school). Now I am very secure in my friends’ love for me, but I wonder if maybe that was there all along and I just couldn’t see it.

Aren’t our friends sometimes better at seeing us than we ourselves are? I could have said something very similar for her. She was an avowed atheist throughout high school, but I saw the way she passionately pursued knowledge and thought, “Man, she would make such a great Christian!” And now God’s gotten a hold of her and I cannot wait to see what amazing things He will do through her life. I’m not claiming to be any sort of clairvoyant about people; all knowledge is God’s knowledge and sometimes He imparts what He knows about us to other people to pass on to us.

The same pattern happened during the “crucible” period of my recovery from eating disorder. Each week while I was attending my support group, I asked for God to show me something new about myself to replace the twisted images and thoughts. And He did, only they turned out to be all things that I already knew but had forgotten. A physical representation of that process was reintroducing foods like carbs and dairy…I’d tasted them all before but made myself give them up along the way. God was showing me how He saw me and how others saw me, and my weight and physical appearance were actually negligible parts of the person they saw. I still struggle with body image and probably always will, but it’s been a joy learning to see myself the way others, most importantly God, see me.

1 Corinthians 13:12
For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.

I Can See Clearly Now
Johnny Nash

I can see clearly now, the rain is gone,
I can see all obstacles in my way
Gone are the dark clouds that had me blind
It’s gonna be a bright (bright), bright (bright)
Sun-Shiny day.

I think I can make it now, the pain is gone
All of the bad feelings have disappeared
Here is the rainbow I’ve been prayin’ for
It’s gonna be a bright (bright), bright (bright)
Sun-Shiny day.

Look all around, there’s nothin’ but blue skies
Look straight ahead, nothin’ but blue skies

I can see clearly now, the rain is gone,
I can see all obstacles in my way
Gone are the dark clouds that had me blind
It’s gonna be a bright (bright), bright (bright)
Sun-Shiny day.

P.S. I think I’m going to get Lasik in September.

>God is my Champion

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Psalm 3

O LORD, how many are my foes! How many rise up against me!
Many are saying of me, “God will not deliver him.”
But you are a shield around me, O LORD;
you bestow glory on me and lift ^b]”>up my head.
To the LORD I cry aloud, and he answers me from his holy hill.
I lie down and sleep;I wake again, because the LORD sustains me.
I will not fear the tens of thousands drawn up against me on every side.
Arise, O LORD! Deliver me, O my God! Strike all my enemies on the jaw; break the teeth of the wicked.
From the LORD comes deliverance. May your blessing be on your people.

It’s hard for me to keep up posting on here since I write everything down in my journal but I have to decide what to share, and then make time to make it a little more coherent. About a week ago I was having some major body image issues again, and the temptation to purge became extremely strong. But as I prayed in desperation, I saw in my mind the face of a friend whom I had asked to pray for me the night before. The thought of him, and all the other people who love me, praying for me stopped me short of sinning against my body.

How great God is for protecting His own victories! He is not army that invades, vanquishes, and destroys; He stays and rebuilds the land and governs wisely. Before my recovery began, I knew that my eating disorder would hurt the people who cared about me, so I never told anyone just how bad it was. I figured they wouldn’t understand, and I was right, but I was wrong to think they wouldn’t care. A crucial part of recovery for me was the ability to talk about it, first to other women who had or were experiencing the same things, then to my spiritual sisters, then to my parents, and finally to the world at large. In this way I constructed a system of accountability, but not in an oppressive or coercive way. I was open with these people because I knew they loved and cared for me; in the same way, they could better love and care for me because I was open with my weaknesses. There were a lot of things that helped turn things around for me, which I will write about eventually, but this was one of the most important ones, the true knowledge that I was loved by God and people and that there was no need to hate myself.

Here’s proof of how far I’ve come…I went downtown Sunday with some photography buff friends to model for them, and when I saw the shots, for the first time since I’ve been at this weight I actually thought, “Hey, I really like the way I look in these!” And that is such a huge breakthrough for me. Thanks, Paul and Shing, for making me look pretty, and thank you, God, for making me pretty.