Thin Again Starting 10-10-10

God willing, yesterday was the last day of disordered eating for me. My focus has been off for five years now, and it's time to get back to where I should be. I lost 70 lbs. in 7 months in 2000-01 and kept it off for four years. I didn't diet, and I didn't become obsessed with exercise. I simply put God back in first place in my life and shifted the focus back to Him, letting Him order my habits (all of them, including my eating). When Mama died, I lost control. No. I just lost focus. Control had been given over to Him, so in some ways I guess I took it back. Not intentionally, but more incidentally in the midst of the chaos called intense grief. Losing my mother had a bigger impact on me than I realized. Until now.

By disordered eating, I don't necessarily mean just overeating--although that is part of the picture. I mean eating without focus. Absently munching on junk I don't need, barely thinking about it while eating. Going for most of the day ignoring hunger signs and then overeating the one meal I do eat. I haven't consciously gone to food for comfort, but I'm not sure that is always a conscious thing. Basically, it's throwing my body into digestive confusion by not being intentional with fueling it.

I took a book off the shelf last night that I've started to pull more than once in the past nearly-five years. Looking back, every time I've tried to pick it up, something inside me became almost angry at having to face the fact that I've probably gained back a good 40 of the 70 lbs. I lost. I honestly don't know, because I saw the scale as an arm of the Enemy out to destroy me. While I still don't ever intend to be a slave to a scale, I would really like to no longer fear it as one would fear an adversary.

I thought about doing this more publicly, posting it openly to my Facebook and asking for prayer, but for now I think I would like to just let God work in my heart and mind (and body) and search out what He wants to tell me and show me in this whole thing. I honestly believe the disordered eating was a direct result of the disordered thinking that set in when my world was rocked by my mother's death on Nov. 27th, 2005. My entire world changed when I became an orphan, and as hard as I have tried to remind myself that I am a daughter of the King of Kings and can never truly be alone, the loss has hurt more deeply than I've been able to word. I'm not sure I will ever be able to capture it in words, but I'd like to try. Maybe it will help to write it and read it back to myself.

I intend to read Thin Again and seek God's Word more diligently. We have so many great books in this house that contain encouragement toward a closer relationship with Him that there is no reason for me to be without reading material that will take the place of other activities that are more mindless and less focused (like hitting the Home and Notifications buttons on Facebook).

Maybe at some point I will share this journey by putting the link on Facebook. I will most likely share it from the beginning on RCW since it is my online house church and I trust my RealHaus sisters with my heart. I think I'm just feeling really small and vulnerable, and while I definitely want to be small again, I don't like this feeling of vulnerability one bit.

Ironically, yesterday before God fully laid it on my heart that "it is time", I jokingly asked Steve what amazing, mysterious, or cataclysmic thing was going to happen today, on 10-10-10. He said he hadn't heard of anything from any of the "sages" in the media. Maybe it was God having a bit of a chuckle when later in the evening, as I lay on our bed nearing midnight reading Thin Again at His prompting, I remembered today's date and the joke from earlier in the evening.

And so it begins. Thin again, starting 10-10-10. All poetry aside, I want this to be real.