“I Surrender All”

Preoccupied with thoughts of how I would fit a run into my busy Sunday, I wasn’t paying attention to what was going on around me until I was jolted back to reality by the plate of communion juice being passed to me. Holding the tiny communion cup, my prayers were quickly dissolving into musings about how many calories were in the communion meal when I noticed the song that was playing in the sanctuary, “I Surrender All”. Tears began rolling down my face as I finally admitted that while I been giving up many of my eating disordered behaviors over the past couple years, in the deepest part of my heart I still loved the thinness and feelings of control that anorexia gave me more than anything, including my precious Savior.

Instead of lecturing me and telling me I was a worthless idolater as I had feared he would, God showered me with mercy and grace and as I confessed my adultery against the perfect lover of my soul, He took away my shame instead of adding to it. In that moment and as I studied his Word later that day, God began to whisper gently into my life, telling me that he wasn’t angry with me, that he didn’t expect me to suddenly recover from a serious, multi-dimensional illness, and that he didn’t want me to go through the pain of giving up my control of my weight because he was cruel, but rather because he desired me with passionate love, because he longed to satisfy my aching soul with his perfection, and because he had a plan to use me to spread his love and his glory to the many people he yearned to save.

Instead of commanding me to get rid of the disordered thoughts right that moment, he flooded my soul with a sense of peace as he gently explained that he knew the depth and the difficulty of the battle for freedom I was and would be facing, and that he wanted to be the most powerful tool in my recovery. He wanted to be the motivation that kept me going on days when every bite was a struggle, he wanted to be the love that sustained me when I broke off my relationship with ED, he wanted to be the source of my worth when I stripped away the anorexic identity I had relied on for three years to make me feel valuable. He wanted to be hope that served as an anchor for my soul in the turbulent storm of eating disorder recovery. He wanted to be the one I turned to when nobody else could understand the depth of my pain and my struggles. He wanted to be the one who would hold my heart when I was crushed under a weight only he knew. And more than anything, he wanted to be the one who stood between me and my demons saying, “I have defeated death, and THIS ONE IS MINE.”

I did not recover that day, but for the first time in three years I knew I could. Now, over a year later, I am able to thank God every day for freedom.

 RELATED:

My Recovery–A Picture of God’s Grace, Laurie Glass

Breaking Free, book resource by Beth Moore

Hungry For Hope, live conference