Tara Shoemaker

 Holdren

What will you write?
You will need to be very very honest. Which, if you've been hiding your eating disorder and hiding your emotions and hiding all your self-loathing, will be hard for you to do.  But hey, nobody needs to read it, except your counselor and you.  Neither of  those readers needs to be lied to, now do they?  Especially if you want to get the root of what's going on...and eventually get better? Do you really want to keep dealing with this?

That's what I thought.  So be honest.  
Just to help you be brave, I'm going to include (ok, I'm going to edit some parts out...this is the internet after all.  If you want the deleted parts, just email me!  I'll tell you everything!  But, then it will be quid pro quo, so, be ready!) my letter here. I just stumbled across it the other day, and I think it might resonate with some of you, and help you to write your own letter.

Dear Body,

First knee-jerk response:  I hate you.
But, that's ungrateful, unChristian, and unreasonable, so I take it back.

I am humiliated and shamed by the parts of you I cannot control.  
So, I want to control everything about you.
I'm pretty sure that when God made humans "in His image," He meant some metaphysical, spiritual capacity kind of way.  He didn't mean in a farting, burping, snotting, puckering, dimpling, calcifying, swelling, bloating, and especially not menstruating and cramping kind of way.

Maybe in a fiercely beautiful dancer kind of way.
Maybe in an embrace kind of way.

Love notes to my body:  Swimming underwater.  Dancing (not ballet!).  I tried to say sex, but there's the sense of being outside yourself, watching and disdaining. You won't behave, body, so I have had to starve you and run you near unto breakage.  And still, stubborn thing, I could not win. There was limping and creaking and farting and acid and aching and inflammation, and always the acne, no matter whether I redoubled my efforts, vowed resurgence or vigilance.  Whether I tried drugs or therapy, you would not comply. And, always the returning "gloom cloud" of my junior high journals, without circumstance or reason, the serotonin thickening like jello, till the synapses are mere flint sparks fizzing out, their messages undelivered. The wires are down, down I say, and it feels like a dirty trick.

I have seen the body in death, and worse, old age. None of this seems relevant to an omnipresent, omniscient, and all-powerful God.  I also know the body doesn't "matter" to God insofar as it is a healthy and holy temple and able to be of service. So, body, serve.

I can't just give up on you, and let you go on, lolling in obscene obesity, sloth, gluttony--exactly what you would do if I let you. I alternately console and berate myself for my efforts. However inconsistent, at least I am still trying. But so tired of trying. I could say I'm doing better than some? But feeling better by comparing myself to "normal" people is pointless.  Role model:  Jesus. What about Jesus' body? I wonder. Tan from the relentless sun, lean from his meager supplies, and toned from all that walking, no doubt.  Not tempted by whoopie pies, peanut butter, or a Recees cup? Let me satisfy, says the Bread of Life, when I want to gorge on Oreos? Jesus shared our fleshly temptations, but did he ever face an Oreo? Okay, so the Oreo can't be as bad as the actual devil, whom he did face, but I'd like to read a few verses that address the Oreo, all the same. As the model of self-depravation, His beverage of choice was the cup of suffering! If is Jesus my model then: I must be satisfied. Be sated. By Him. Like Him. If I whine because I can't gorge myself on Oreos, when there are people who can't even breathe on their own, I am indeed pathologically shallow. 

Be not afraid...of humiliation? Of fat? Of ugly? Of all the body cannot do? It's stumbling, limping, malfunction? It's pruney crust and mortal weakness? The horror!  The horror!*

Ok, so, dear body, if I can't hate you, then, indifference.  I'm grateful for the essential functions. I'm grateful my assemblage doesn't prevent me from work or service. And, thanks for the babies, no really, good job.  But when I slough off this mortal husk, good riddance.  Bring on the heavenly gear, the effulgent spirit clothed in heavenly robes. Bring on the release. Oh, immutable joy.

Yours till then, concentrating on the gratitude part, 
Tara

*Mr. Kurtz's final words in  Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad.  Read it. 

 So, did you step on to the scale this morning, reluctant to fully assess the damage of yesterday's feast?
 Or, did you leap on the scale this morning, see a smaller number, and congratulate yourself on a day of successfully limiting what you ate?
 Neither one of those is wrong, exactly.  For people without eating disorders, that is.
 But for those of us who've dealt with the exquisite anxiety of counting every calorie, calculating how to "work off" every calorie, and in general  not being able to think about anything else , a holiday can feel like a master class in how to fake it so your whole family doesn't know the emotional turmoil you are feeling.
 For birthdays, my one friend used to beg her mom for a fruit bowl, instead of a cake, so that she wouldn't have to face trying to not eat it.  When you get older, and you have to plan for and cook that monstrous amount of food, only to sling it around the table with hospitality and kindness instead of putting it all down the garbage disposal so you don't have to try to resist it.  
 So maybe yesterday went well, or maybe it didn't.  Remember, it's a not a win or a loss.  You are working on building a relationship with food that is healthy, just as if it were another person. If you got a little salty with a friend one night, you'd try to do better the next time you met, right? The good news is that today is another day and you can try it again.  The really  good news from yesterday is that Jesus left behind an empty grave and found a new, perfect and heavenly body, and so will you someday! Whatever misery the scale brings you is temporary.  It is mired in humanity, and it is  not your final destiny. Because he loved you (that's right, the person you might think is so unloveable), Jesus underwent an agonizing experience just so you could have hope in that very fact. 
 I'm not saying it's easy to get through today, it isn't.  It sucks.  You're sad, defeated, and so so tired of the whole cycle.  It's exhausting to hate yourself that much.  I get it. But grab on to that hope! You're going to put one foot in front of the other today. Seek to pursue those impulses which might be the Holy Spirit trying to lead you tiny step after tiny step out of this sad, tired place to one of peace.  
 It might sound too good to be true, but I promise you that it is possible.  God moves mountains.  Changes the hearts of kings.  Do you really think a little serotonin rearrangement is to much for him? I'm not promising an overnight  shazaam kind of cure.  It took you a while to develop all those toxic thinking patterns, and it will take a while to un-program them.  But, you can do it . . . because the Holy Spirit will walk right beside you as you do.  Just don't stop walking, not today, not ever.