Shame

I Prayed that God Would Get Out of My Life!

My name is Kelly. Here is something that happened to me that I hope blesses you….

In 1984 after struggling for years with pornography and masturbation, I was a youth pastor in the Midwest. Working for my brother the pastor. I fought and fought with my thoughts and finally went out in my car and purchased porn. Felt horrible and tired. I was so frustrated. I tried and tried to live a clean life and just failed over and over again.

“Damn, what is the point?” I asked myself. I then sat there alone in my room and calmly prayed a new prayer to God. This was a prayer that I’ve never prayed. I prayed that He would get out of my life. I prayed that I would not be a Christian any more. I prayed and boldly asked the Holy Spirit to leave.

Then I sat there alone in my room feeling even more alone. The desire for porn was gone and it felt that God was gone too. I didn’t feel guilty but I did feel very alone.

Day after day I walked in an Oak grove talking with God. I didn’t feel like a Christian anymore and it was a weird experience talking to him outside of the “family”.

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Hate: the Root of Addictions

I came into the world in 1949. My father was a radio and TV repairman.The US army had trained him to be a radar technician during world war II, and he transferred the skills to civilian life. According to my parents, Peoria was a rather dismal depressed area at the time, and my father moved the family to southern California.

My early memories are fragments, snippets here and there. I remember asking my father if there was a God when I was very small. His answer was “I believe in a Supreme being.” But that is not to say our home was a religious one. At some point in my very early years I remember attending a Calvary Baptist Church with my parents, and even going to Sunday school. But my parents stopped going to Church for reasons which are not known to me. I do remember attending Sunday school but I was so young I cannot remember much of what went on.

Despite their occasional attendance at church, my home environment was less than Godly. Like many homes there was a war going on between Mom and Dad (if you were lucky enough to even have a Dad) and I became a casualty of that war.One morning when I was about 5 years old my younger brother (3 years old at that time ) and I were playing with wooden blocks in our bedroom. Vaguely I recall Mom and Dad had been fighting.Dad left the house and my brother and I continued playing with the wooden blocks. Mom came into the bedroom screaming, “I told you kids not to play with those blocks.” My brother said, “run!” and we both ran into different parts of the house. Mom cornered him in the service porch and I heard the screams as she beat him. Then there was a sinister silence. Then she came flying into the living room in a boiling rage. “Now, its your turn!” she said. And, indeed, it was my turn.

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Secrecy and Lies

“You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor.” Deuteronomy 5:20

Who would have guessed a doll could teach me about secrecy and lying?

When I was a child, I received a much-desired china doll, actually named after Florence Nightingale. So, obviously, when my mother bought her for me, I was thrilled, so thrilled, I shared my excitement with the wrong person: my dad.

“Earthquake, thunder, fire and fathers.”
Japanese Proverb

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Binge Eating

Binge-eating disorder is characterized by recurrent binge-eating episodes during which a person feels a loss of control over his or her eating. Unlike bulimia, binge-eating episodes are not followed by purging, excessive exercise or fasting. As a result, people with binge-eating disorder often are overweight or obese. They also experience guilt, shame and/or distress about the binge-eating, which can lead to more binge-eating.

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Eating Disorders: It Takes One To Know One

The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun. Ecclesiastes 1:9

It’s been said “It takes one to know one.” I now see this concept repeated in my life.

The first occurrence? Well, that was at the apex of my anorexic condition. I was a college freshman, hell-bent on distancing myself from my teenage overweight body as possible. Hence, the serious restriction of calories, interspersed with starvation periods and excessive exercise (up to six hours a day).

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Anxiety, Panic, OCD, PSTD, Social Phobia

Introduction

Anxiety Disorders affect about 40 million American adults age 18 years and older (about 18%) in a given year,1 causing them to be filled with fearfulness and uncertainty. Unlike the relatively mild, brief anxiety caused by a stressful event (such as speaking in public or a first date), anxiety disorders last at least 6 months and can get worse if they are not treated. Anxiety disorders commonly occur along with other mental or physical illnesses, including alcohol or substance abuse, which may mask anxiety symptoms or make them worse. In some cases, these other illnesses need to be treated before a person will respond to treatment for the anxiety disorder.

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What is Anorexia Nervosa?

Anorexia nervosa is characterized by emaciation, a relentless pursuit of thinness and unwillingness to maintain a normal or healthy weight, a distortion of body image and intense fear of gaining weight, a lack of menstruation among girls and women, and extremely disturbed eating behavior. Some people with anorexia lose weight by dieting and exercising excessively; others lose weight by self-induced vomiting, or misusing laxatives, diuretics or enemas.

Many people with anorexia see themselves as overweight, even when they are starved or are clearly malnourished. Eating, food and weight control become obsessions. A person with anorexia typically weighs herself or himself repeatedly, portions food carefully, and eats only very small quantities of only certain foods. Some who have anorexia recover with treatment after only one episode. Others get well but have relapses. Still others have a more chronic form of anorexia, in which their health deteriorates over many years as they battle the illness.

According to some studies, people with anorexia are up to ten times more likely to die as a result of their illness compared to those without the disorder. The most common complications that lead to death are cardiac arrest, and electrolyte and fluid imbalances.
Suicide also can result.

Many people with anorexia also have coexisting psychiatric and physical illnesses, including depression, anxiety, obsessive behavior, substance abuse, cardiovascular and neurological complications, and impaired physical development.

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Pins and Needles: Chronic Abuse and Trauma

Our formative years present the potential for self-harm to thrive. Our early experiences, for better or worse, shape us. And sometimes, that shaping can take the form of addiction. Hypervigilance often results from certain incidents, in which trauma somehow established our need to self-medicate.

“… When a child grows up afraid or under constant or extreme stress, the immune system and body’s stress response systems may not develop normally. Later on, when the child or adult is exposed to even ordinary levels of stress, these systems may automatically respond as if the individual is under extreme stress… Adults with histories of trauma in childhood have been shown to have more chronic physical conditions and problems. They may engage in risky behaviors that compound these conditions (e.g., smoking, substance use, and diet and exercise habits that lead to obesity).” “Effects of Complex Trauma,” http://www.nctsn.org/trauma-types/complex-trauma/effects-of-complex-trauma

My first memory, a traumatic one at that, was when I was three years old; my parents decided to move the family’s sewing machine from one floor of our house to another. But they neglected to remove its drawers, filled with hundreds of needles and pins. Inevitably, I toddled downstairs, stepping on many of them.

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The Heart: A Wild Creature

This statement, from its anonymous author, recently caught my attention:

“Hearts are wild creatures. That’s why our ribs are cages.”

Its focus, the heart and the rib cage, hit home. For I have had a disordered history with both.
My obsession with the thin physique created my descent into anorexia and its painful heart issues.

“…I could count all of my ribs. I still wasn’t thin enough; it wasn’t good enough…”*

As I’ve been in recovery from eating disorders, food, weight and body image issues, yes, I’ve had to deal with my heart. That, therefore, includes the related topics of passions, desires and idolatry.

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God Chooses the Improbable

“You did not choose me, but I chose you…”John 15:16a

I know what you’re thinking: “God chooses others, but not me.”

You think it’s because of your secret, don’t you? The awful thing in your past — that abortion or that affair; your divorce; the rape; the sexual abuse; the shameful business failure; your drug usage; alcoholism; criminal past. etc. Like the clumsy, nearsighted child no one picks for playground sports, you want God’s favor, His grace, but it seems beyond your wildest dreams. It’s not.The poem “The Chosen Vessel” tells how God picks a vessel to use: “Take me,” cried the gold one. “I’m shiny and bright,”I’m of great value and I do things just right.” But God passes by the gold, silver, brass, crystal, and wooden urns, and chooses the vessel of clay. The poem explains why:

Then the Master looked down and saw a vessel of clay.
Empty and broken, it helplessly lay.

No hope had the vessel that the Master might choose,
to cleanse and make whole, to fill and to use.
“Ah! This is the vessel I’ve been hoping to find,
I will mend and use it and make it all mine.”

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