"O Love That Wilt Not Let Me Go"

“O Love That Wilt Not Let Me Go”*

O cross that liftest up my head
I dare not ask to fly from thee
I lay in dust life’s glory dead
and from the ground there blossoms red
Life that shall endless be.

*George Matheson (1842-1906)


My Anorexic Nervosa was fully evident by the time I was 15.  The worship of thinness and beauty in society presents an unrealistic ideal body image. I obsessively tried to maintain this through sports — mainly long-distance running.  I have learned in my recovery that the real problem is much deeper than this, and I can recall this struggle beginning as early as 8 or 9 years old. By the age of 22, I was both Anorexia and Bulimic.
 
“Eating disorders are among the most difficult mental illnesses to treat.  Anorexia in particular, has stymied many of psychiatry’s best treatment efforts. The illness has the highest mortality rate of any mental disorder, with patients dying from the medical complications of starvation or from suicide"  (This quote is taken from a New York Times article on 3/15/16.)

I grew up in a Christian home. I was baptized as an infant and I grew up attending Sunday school and church.  I read my Bible and tried my best to live like I was a Christian. I struggled deeply with uncertainty over sin, and I carried this grief long before I began to lose weight and show signs of an emerging illness. I understood right from wrong, and I felt tremendous guilt over anything I did that might not be right according to God’s law. I prayed for healing and I journaled with prayer requests and scriptures relevant to the beauty of God’s creation and his design for the female human being, but the disease continued to take control.
I had long been faithful in praying to be made well, and the healing experience healing was the valley of the shadow of death. Sorrow, sadness, and suffering were the merciless companions God used to strip me of the vanity I had created for myself in an attempt to secure my well-being apart from Him. To my surprise, God intervened in my life with His cross, and for a long time, I found it to be even more painful than the disease of eating disorders itself.

Having an addiction is no different than heading straight for the grave; it is this serious. My eating disorder was an impossible attempt to make myself righteous before God.  This way of thinking only offers death; we must instead have Christ, who has taken the burden upon himself.  Through faith, we are righteous because Christ's righteousness replaces what we could never offer.  It is easy to see how sin leads to chaos and ultimately death, but we may be surprised to see how a preoccupation with our (good) works will also lead to death.  We presume (good) works cannot lead to death, but the letter of the Law produces death because it is a rejection of Christ and God’s mercy. It leads to death because we can’t help but believe we might acquire salvation through our own efforts. Without Christ, both roads lead to death. Salvation comes through faith alone. The cross restores this faith. I write this on my healing experience:

The life I strived for lies at my feet.  I have not been reconstructed as I had hoped, but the beams and timbers of my own self-sufficiency continue to smolder.  Broken glass from the rose colored windows of self-help promises make it dangerous so I must be careful where I step. The cross on my back has emptied me of my pride and my strength. I feel the realness of my sin.  I feel the purifying fires of tribulation and my salvation has become tangible to me as never before. Bravely, I call this healing because Christ is saving me from myself.

Before I began to heal from eating disorders, I had a misunderstanding of the Gospel. I believed in works over faith - the law as a code of conduct to be met by my own efforts.  This manifested itself brilliantly in my battle with food.  Anorexia is a disease of measurement and precision and Bulimia is a disease of shame.  An emaciated and malnourished body is starving for the life and nourishment of the Gospel.
 
“Then he said to me, prophesy to these dry bones and say to them, ‘Dry bones, hear the word of the Lord’.” (Ezekiel 37:4)
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Unbelief is the root of sinful behavior.  Healing is not about being made better, but it is about being made new.  We are either slaves to sin or slaves to righteousness. "For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body ruled by sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin-- because anyone who has died has been set free from sin" (Romans 6:6,7).  To speak of death for the sake of resurrection is to say that healing is the experience of the saving work of Christ where the sinful areas of our lives are brought to an end so that we may be raised up in a new life of faith which rests in the provision of God alone. “For the righteous shall live by faith” (Romans 1:17).

By way of holy anguish, God has separated me from this sinful ailment.  Like a skilled surgeon, God has removed a terminal illness from my body, and now I remain under his cure.  God’s plan for change within us goes to the heart of the matter. He deals first with the cause, not the symptoms.  I have been given complete freedom from eating disorders. I can also attest to a complete physical restoration, including restored bone density, a common condition that accompanies the disease.

Embedded within my eating disorders were my own strict efforts of obedience that are nothing more than a dead end. We will never reach the obedience or righteousness demanded by the Law.  Because Christ is the fulfillment of the Law, we are set free from the Law:  “He was sent to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners” (Isaiah 61:1).  When we live by faith, the Law can no longer work death within us.  Make no mistake about it, healing comes with a huge cost. It comes with the cost of losing your old life in exchange for a new one.