Ending the War

".......understanding the relationship with food is a direct path to coming home after a lifetime of being exiled. Perhaps that home is what God has always meant it to be."

I am wondering if this is God's last path to take me down to bring me completely home and back to Him. Has He allowed me down this path, this dysfunctional relationship with food,  in order to lead me to Him? Where is He going with this? 

".....so many perfect girls were raised entirely without organized religion, and the majority of the rest of us experienced "spirituality" only in the form of mandatory holiday services with a big-haired grandmother.....Overlay our dearth of spiritual exploration with our excess of training in ambition...and you have a generation of godless girls...raised largely without a fundamental sense of divinity. In fact, our worth in the world has always been tied to our looks...not the amazing miracle of mere existence." 

WOW. How true this is. Our worth in the world has ALWAYS been tied to our looks. It has always been about how pretty we are, how thin we are, etc, etc. We have never been taught by society to just relish the "amazing miracle of our mere existence." That last line hit me like a ton of bricks when I first read it. I have always had conditions in my life. At first, it was about being smart enough, responsible enough, a good daughter, a good sister and measuring up to who my father wanted me to be. Once I got out from underneath that, it was too late. I now measured myself in the same manner. When you have had something so ingrained into you (you will never measure up, you are not good enough) for your entire life, it is hard to believe anything different. You start believing it yourself. It is hard to bask in the beauty of the miracle of your existence.

"Women turn to food when they are not hungry because they are hungry for something they can't name: a connection to what is beyond the concerns of daily life......But replacing the hunger for divine connection with Double Stuf Oeros is like give a glass of sand to a person dying of thirst. It creates more thirst, more panic. Combine the utter inefficacy of dieting with the lack of spiritual awareness and we have generations of mad, ravenous, self-loathing women. We have become so obsessed with getting rid of our obsession, with riding on top of our suffering and ignoring its inherent message, that we lose the pieces of ourselves waiting to be found beneath it. But fixing ourselves is not the same as being ourselves." 

I can relate to this a great deal. Food has always been my comfort. It has always been my way of dealing with things in my life. I was not "allowed" to talk about my own feelings in my father's house. We were taught that we just needed to be quiet and obey; push the feelings down and just be obedient. It was the only way you didn't get in trouble and to keep the peace. I have definitely grown into a "mad, ravenous, self-loathing woman." I am often mad at the world for no good reason. I am ravenous to fill the emptiness that still resides within me. I loath myself; my appearance, my personality, etc. It is hard for me to find something that I really, truly and honestly, like about myself. But I admit, I have always thought of it as having to "fix" myself. I never realized that maybe it is just a matter of being myself.

"The relentless attempts to be thin take you further and further away from what could actually end your suffering: getting back in touch with who you really are. Your true nature. Your essence."

I need to find out who this is. I need to discover who I really am. I need to find my true nature; my essence. Along the way, that has gotten lost and buried beneath all of the pain and hurt that have happened in my life. The true me has gotten hidden behind so many walls that I don't even know where to begin at chipping it down. But I know there is a way. I know there is Someone who can help me. I know there is a heavenly Father who knows the true me and He loves me for it; for just being me. He will help me.

"Compulsive eating is an attempt to avoid the absence (of love, comfort, knowing what to do) when we find ourselves in the desert of a particular moment, feeling, situation. In the process of resisting the emptiness, in the act of turning away from our feelings, of trying and trying again to lose the same twenty, fifty, eighty pounds, we ignore what could utterly transform us. But when we welcome what we most want to avoid, we evoke that in us that is not a story, not caught in the past, not some old image of ourselves. We evoke divinity itself. And in doing so, we can hold emptiness, old hurts, fear in our cupped hands and behold our missing hearts."

I cannot pinpoint the exact time when I started using food as a comfort. But as I am looking back to my childhood and uncovering old hurts, I am sure that it started as an attempt to avoid the absence of love. I did not feel loved and secure in my home as a child should feel. I grew up in a home where affection was not given and love had to be earned; it was conditional on your behavior, your obedience and your merits. So I used food to fill that void. I used food to replace the love that was missing.

Because I was taught to not talk about my feelings, that my feelings were not important, I have a lot of old hurts and wounds that I have never healed from. Things that I did not even realize were still affecting me. Things that I had long since buried.

God is taking me down a path to revisit those old wounds. He is helping me to revisit those moments and to deal with my emotions and feelings so that I can cup it in my hands, lift it up to him and let go. Only after completing that process will I find my hidden heart. Only then can I heal. Only then can I find my true nature; my essence. Only then can I begin to be healthy.

*Disclaimer~ All quotes in italics came from the book Women Food and God: An Unexpected Path to Almost Everything*

I am linking up with Angie over at Angie's Healthy Living Blog for Watch my Weight Wednesdays. 

Hopefully I will gain some good recipes and insight to help me.