Lies and deception. Truth and redemption.

I sat alone at the kitchen counter and glanced nervously at the clock.  12:30.  Lunch time.

My mind raced.  How was I going to get out of lunch today?  Everyone would be home any minute and I needed an excuse by then.

            “I don’t feel good” … “I’m not hungry” … “It’s that time of the month” …  No, I had used all of those recently.

            The sound of a car engine in the driveway startled me.  Time’s up, I though as I frantically cast around for ideas.  Then it hit me.  Leftovers.

            I hurried to the fridge and grabbed last night’s styrofoam Chinese takeout containers.  Smearing cashew chicken sauce and a little rice onto a clean plate, I stuffed the containers back into the fridge and deposited the plate by the kitchen sink.

            When they came in and asked what I wanted for lunch, I motioned to the sink and said simply, “I was hungry, so I dug into the leftovers.”

I held my breath, wondering if my lie would work.  Nobody questioned me and as I turned away, I wondered what lie I would tell to get out of dinner.

            That memory is only one in what seems like a million memories of the lies and deceit that I once used to cover up my eating disorder.  When I wasn’t lying about what I had eaten, I was putting on a façade of a sweet albeit reserved girl with no problems.  My goal was to trick people into believing that everything was okay, when really I was falling apart.

            Yes, Erin, but that was 10 years ago.  Why are you bringing it up now?

            Because eating disorder awareness is the only way to bring the hope of redemption into the hopelessness of eating disorders.

            Eating disorder awareness to me is primarily about 3 things.

1.      Bringing awareness to people who are struggling. Looking back it’s easy for me to realize how deeply I was involved in my eating disorder.  Even though I was restricting, fasting, religiously counting every calorie I put in my mouth, looking at thinspo, and subscribing to every “pro-ana” blog and tumbler I could find, I never thought I was skinny enough to have an eating disorder.

2.      Bringing awareness to others.  Because eating disorders are clothed in lies and deceit, many people have no idea that their loved ones – children, sisters, cousins, friends – are struggling.  People need to know that this is real, possible, and even common.  They need to know the warning signs and how they can help.

3.      Anytime something is brought from darkness into light, it glorifies God and blesses others.  That’s what I recently told one high school girl struggling with bulimia.  (Dang it! Now that I’ve said it out loud, I have to keep myself accountable to it!)

God directly commands His children to tell others about the redemption He brings to their hopeless situations.

After safely crossing the Jordan River on dry ground, the Israelites were commanded to take 12 stones from the middle of the river and set them up as a testimony to God’s faithfulness and provision.

Let this be a sign among you so that when your children ask later, saying, ‘What do these stones mean to you?’ then you shall say to them… ‘the Lord your God dried up the waters of the Jordan before you until you had crossed, just as the Lord your God had done to the Red Sea, which He dried up before us until we had crossed; that all the people of the earth may know that the hand of the Lord is mighty’ (Joshua 4:6-7, 23-24)

If you only get one thing out of my blog series this week, let it be this: the hand of the Lord is mighty.  Mighty to heal.  Mighty to redeem.  Mighty to love.

            God wants us to tell our stories of how He brought us from where we were (slavery, lies, and deception) to where we are (freedom, truth, and redemption).

My goal this week is to tell my story, to bring eating disorders from darkness into light, and (hopefully in doing so) to glorify God and bless others.