I grew up in a christian family and got saved when I was very young, but I went to a weak cold church that I hated going to. Eventually we’d had enough and moved to Whitewell and over the months I began to realise that I had to do something about the mess I was in.
I think that everyone has their failing points and it didn’t take me long to find mine. I’m not writing about it because it’s something I’m proud of, and certainly not because I want anyone to know, but at around 12/13 I started dieting and from day one it had me, I was hooked.
The details are not important, the point is, that you don’t have to go out into “the world”, into drink, drugs and that whole lifestyle to find your own personal hell. I found mine in my own room and in my own mind. Having an eating problem is almost like being a schizophrenic. There’s one terrified part of you that knows you’re being crazy and that you need help, and the scheming, lying, desperate slave-driver who’ll do absolutely anything to loose more weight.
I knew all along that the Lord was there but there was a huge barrier between us, and that was my fear and lack of faith. I was too scared to try and get better because that meant facing my greatest fears. As crazy as it sounds putting on weight was more terrifying to me than death, and given a choice I would have chosen the second.
Like everyone I’ve had a few crisis points in my life, and awful as they are they are so often what teach us the most important lessons. It would be so easy as a Christian to live life skimming the surface of what God has for you, and to be held back by fears, but with him nothing is unfixable and nothing is impossible (I’m proof of that). There is nothing more sobering than realising what you are without him, so base, so self absorbed, unfaithful and so far from innocence.
I realised the other day that I’m like some old moth-eaten armchair with broken legs and a stinky stained cover. But my God spotted me lying on the scrap-heap (perfectly happy to be miserable there) and had an idea of what he could make me into, something decent-looking and usable. As if it wasn’t enough to be willing to use me at all he had to pay a fortune to get me in the first place. The problem is that I have to let him work on me, and so many times I’ve undone all the work he’s done on me (and on occasions thought he might throw me away).
I hope that I’ll always remember where I came from, it would be wrong of me to forget it. I’m so utterly privileged to have been rescued and worked on, and most importantly loved. So between my bouts of stupidity and bad eyesight I want to be all his, I love him and I don’t just want to skim the surface.