Low on the Go!

control.

today, J and i went sharing.
i've been feeling pretty bold lately.
it seems as though everywhere i go, i hear wounded hearts bleeding.
today, when we went sharing, we met a girl...and i saw my own heart 10 years ago, bleeding and silently pleading for help.

i remember. grade 7 or grade 8. feeling as though i was a failure. feeling fat and ugly. feeling as though the girls in ballet were so good and so beautiful.

so thin.

by the time i was in grade 10, i remember things spiralling out of control. it was the year after i had been diagnosed with scoliosis, and it was the year i failed my first exam.

my ballet exam.

i had never failed anything in my life. i felt as though i had no control at all, over anything in my life. i had no control over God, over the pressures of life, over school, over ballet. i had failed, not because i was a bad dancer, but because of a physical deformity over which i had absolutely no control. i remember feeling ugly and fat that year. the girl with the crooked spine. the girl who was at least 20-30 pounds fatter than other girls in my ballet class.
the only thing i COULD control was how much i ate. i would return home with my lunch untouched, and when my mum would ask me why, i'd tell her it was because i wasn't hungry.

i refused to admit i had a problem. but the truth was, i did have a problem. i couldn't make myself perfect enough. i didn't have the strength inside me to be good enough, to change my appearance, to meet the mark of excellence.

i remember feeling hopeless that year. until i met Jesus for the first time. it was then that i realized that my worth didn't depend on success. that though i could never meet the mark of perfection, it didn't matter because Jesus' death on the cross had paid for all my imperfections, so i could stand before God, blameless.

today, when we were sharing with hailey, she told us right off the bat that she had an eating disorder, and that's why she didn't want to believe in God; she didn't believe in God because she had to find strength within herself. she said she needed to be able to control things which were going on in her life, and she needed to fight the battle on her own, without God. she talked about how she needed something tangible, and a relationship with God wasn't something she could feel or touch or control. she talked about how she wished she could re-write history, but when asked if God could rewrite history, she said, "no."

my heart broke for her, because i've been where she is. maybe not to the same degree, but i had all the same excuses. i fought the same battle with food and with control. i still fight that battle, to some degree. how i wish that she could know that all the answers she's looking for come from God, her creator. i wish she could know that God can give us new life, and re-write our history so that we are clean and new. i wish she could know that she'll never have enough strength to fight the battle on her own, but that when we are weak, we are strong, because God is most merciful and powerful.

i looked at her tiny frame, and i felt this sense of urgency i have not felt before. eating disorders wreak havoc on the body, and the truth is, most people die of eating disorders. i asked her if she would be willing to meet up with me again, so i could know she was still alive. but she said no.

i wonder if i'll see her one day in heaven. with a new body, not a frame where skin clings to bone with no flesh. i wonder if life will be breathed into her.

oh Lord, have mercy on this campus which is so in need of you, and yet prideful enough to reject you, even in times of deepest need.

Some sat in darkness and in the shadow of death, prisoners in affliction and in irons, for they had rebelled against the words of God, and spurned the counsel of the Most High. So he bowed their hearts down with hard labor; they fell down, with none to help. Then they cried to the LORD in their trouble, and he delivered them from their distress. He brought them out of darkness and the shadow of death, and burst their bonds apart. Let them thank the LORD for his steadfast love, for his wondrous works to the children of men! For he shatters the doors of bronze and cuts in two the bars of iron.