A to Z Blogging Challenge: The "V" Edition

A few years ago, I went to counseling to understand why I was doing the things I was doing, specifically, compulsive eating.  I went three different times, the first time, I quit.  The next two times, both counselors told me they didn’t know what else they could do to help me.   

I was so far into my pit that God Himself had to come after me and pull me out.  The fact is, He pulled me out more than once because I dove back in a time or two…eagerly and willing going back to the place that had been my emotional home all of my life.  I was deeply entrenched in self-loathing, so far in my pit, that being outside of its insulation was unfamiliar and uncomfortable. 

The lies about myself that satan dangled before me in my pre- and primary school years were so much a part of my life by my teens that it became part of my personality.  Because of my faulty thinking, while in junior high and high school, I was very susceptible to experimenting with “outside influences.”  Drugs.   I had already tried my first cigarette when I was in the fourth grade.  Later, I tried pot, pills and alcohol, but because of God’s abundant mercy, I never enjoyed them.  My drug of choice, always, was food.  Even though I wasn’t terribly overweight through high school, I already had the obsession for food.  Eating a dozen donuts or a whole pack of cookies…or a whole box of pop tarts was normal for me.   I learned to do it in secret, of course, to avoid the humiliation of others knowing what I was doing.  I would diet, lose weight, then start the whole process again.

When you don’t like yourself, it’s hard to believe that others like you, and everyone wants to be liked, to belong, especially a teenager.  Because of the self-loathing, the missing identity, the lies I believed that I was somehow unloveable, I made choices that altered the course of my life, including marrying a 29 year old man I barely knew who turned out to be very abusive.  When you add an abusive situation to an emotionally battered girl, you get someone who has no clue who they are, who can’t understand why they continue to make one bad choice after another.   After my divorce, I made some very, very bad choices.

Believing lies about who we are truly a vicious trap.  If we believe it, we’ll take care of destroying our lives with any further help from the devil. 

When I returned to Christ in my early 30’s, I brought my baggage with me, and I kept a death grip on the lies I believed, not letting God have them even for one minute.  My life was very hectic at that time.  I was working two jobs and I was helping raise three teenagers who liked to keep me on my toes.  By the time my life slowed back down to a normal pace, I was extremely overweight and extremely unhappy. 

It was at this time that I truly began to seek God for help in this area of my life.  But I was deeply entrenched in the lies I believed, and for 10 years, I tried it every way but God’s way.   

I obviously like talking about myself…I am already well over that blasted 500 words mark…so, I will continue tomorrow.  I didn’t even get to my V words…vindication and value!  And now I’ll have to come up with a W word to go with it…