The value of emptiness

Trigger warning: talks/themes about self harm/eating disorder

I've been trying to let this statement sit with me all day

“the value of emptiness”

its the title of my devotional this morning. And it definitely resonates with me after the week ive had trying to find purpose in my eating issues.

On the 22^nd of February I decided to really change my “Diet”, I didn’t want this to be like every other time in my life where I'm focus is on loosing weight, because in the past (and probably even to this day) any focus on diet and exercise has been driven by the worlds views on “fat people” which is if your ‘fat’ you are ‘less than’ and the only way to have worth or to be ‘successful’ or to be loved is to be thin or fit into the worlds view of body standards.

 And let me just say I FULL admire this new movement around body positive and accepting all bodies no matter there shape or size. The key to smashing shame is to not be driven by it anymore. However for me its my health that needs to be my focus and my forefront and the shame is absolutely dumped on me by the worlds views (and being bullied growing up as well as men saying unhelpful things like ‘you would be so much more prettier if you just lost weight’ but that's another blog for another day) is so valid, if weight was the issues the 84kg I lost 11 years ago would of solved all my problems right?

So now I sit here in the same pain with food, my body and how I seem myself as I did 11 years ago asking myself how am I back here? Why am I back here? This is so much more then diet and exercise because I have proven to myself that I can restrict my food to 300cal every second day and work out for 6 hours a day 7 days a week to loose more weight then I ended up weighing within 9 months. If self discipline is all I need, sign me up because I can work within that framework.

This new journey has seen me coming up against the same pains as before except I have all this new awareness.

I didn’t add any exercise in for the first month because I knew I KNEW when I did, the balance would start slipping. And that first week was hard. Oh just 5 more minutes on the treadmill, a few extra weights here and there and here I was moving all my coping mechanisms into this excises, the same thing I did 11 years ago I switched out cutting myself for pushing myself in the gym to the point I'm throwing up. And yet we praise people for this form of self harm? Bit shit huh?

So apart from my close friends and support I have kept this quiet. Part is the fear of failing, once again I try and fail and I don’t want to look a fool. But the other part is this awareness is the positive feedback from others feeds my dysfunction. I've lost 17kgs but I want to dress to hide my body because I don’t want anyone to see me because it will drive me to want to up the excises and lower the food intake. This small voice inside still yaps away telling me I will only ever be worth something if I’m not ‘fat’. I will only ever achieve my dreams if I'm ‘smaller’ and the biggest lie of all I will only be loved if I'm skinny.

My head knows what a crock of shit that all is. But my heart is so scared, its afraid of what is its all true.

Its all well meaning, but well meaning isn't enough. There's a lot of well meaning people out there, but it feels like a bit of a cop-out

So I have been doing well with the managing of the food, through my birthday and Frances my sister passing away. So in my head I'm like ‘man if I can get through this tough time and not binge then surely I’ve overcome this or God has healed me’ only to find myself this past fortnight about to having a conversation with my accountability person because last night I had a massive binge, and the deep pain of shame swirling around telling me more bullshit I don’t need to hear.

Today I was brave enough to open my devotional (Embraced:100 devotions to know God is holding you close by Lysa TerKurst, shes my favorite author I recommend checking her out) for the first time in monthsss only to be met with the heart of God speaking to the emptiness I spent 4 hours trying to feed only to come face to face with the beast we know as shame spewing bullshit at me once again. And this only became really clear to me from a conversation from my GP on Thursday where we decided to go ahead with the process of applying for Bariatric surgery on the public system and I said to her “I cant fully commit to this surgery if I cant get to the bottom of how I'm eating and this bingeing stuff” she stopped looked me in the eye and said:

‘Aleisha, your trying to stuff a hole inside yourself’

and it hit way different then that sentence had ever before. Because I know this, I binge to fill a void inside myself, what that void is, I'm not sure. But I know this. Yet it was like God in that moment spoke to the void inside and it was screaming

“the longing you feel for me, the separation from your father is the void you are trying to fill”

Fuck. If it was something practical like an iron deficiency or an allergy, there's been so much medical research that I could go and be practical about to help myself right?

But the longing for God, that void inside like how does one even start? Isn't it enough that I’ve COMPLETELY TRANSFORMED MY ENTIRE LIFE and turned my back on the world to follow you God, isn't it enough I live a life so far from what I once new and I am so committed to my recovery enough for you to fill my void.

And then God meets me where I am, speaks to me through my devotional and people who love me to help me understand he isn't a works based God, he is not to be boxed or to be understood. He is a God who loves us who loves me and wants me to come into a place where I can fully understand that in the deep parts of my soul, where true freedom is. And he will be relentless in his pursuit of me and my full freedom in him. This is why I continue to be met with the same issues. God wants me to see the value of this emptiness I feel so I can go to him to be filled.

What does that look like? No clue. But I do know it starts with grace.

A good friend of mine shared his own journey to realizing grace for himself in his own life and own issues and how we must not buy into the shame as its the shame that causes us to hide in our dysfunction and then we get trapped. 

If we understand this gift of grace we can move past our mistakes, committed to not doing them and also not beating ourselves up as a way to hopefully not repeat past behavior. I am a person where I believe if I'm hard enough on myself it will stop me from doing the bad thing over and over. But it never works. I just get in this shame cycle where I come off hating myself to the point I don’t want to be alive.

As I type this my dinner is cooking, and the voice of how many calories I ate last night is getting louder. But I choose to not listen to that voice. This battle isn't fought in me not eating to combat the shame I feel about last night. The battle is fought in the conversation I just had with my accountability friend, in where she just held me and told me how loved I am and how God sees me with such grace. Its fought in me choosing to nourish my body with good veggies after the hammering it had. And its fought in my being brave to somehow trust that God will lead me home, fill this void in my deepest parts and love me unconditionally. 

I will continue to face all this every day, with a hope that the day will come where food isn't hard, where I see myself as worthy no matter my weight, size or looks. Where I am healthy on the outside as I am becoming on the inside. Where I see food as not comfort but as a source of fuel and nourishment and in that journey I'm also able to see God in the same way, my source.