It is a Choice--And it's Not Over

I remember like it was yesterday as we stood in the dimly lit kitchen late into the night. I held myself up on the counter top because my whole body aged. He leaned against the sink and she stood across from me with eyes that exposed my sin. He has just come in from cleaning out my car. It had been building for a while by then, the lying and covering sin and the confession only to give in again.

We're done with the lying. Your words are empty and meaningless. If you choose to continue in your sin, even just one more time, you're out. 

I had battled it like this for years at this point and I remember believing I was free. God met me at Mercy Ministries three years back and from then on His grace held me. I wouldn't be alive if it weren't for what God did during my time at Mercy. Through the years from then to now, I was continually lured and enticed by the desires of my flesh--and I chose to let them rule me. A week without throwing up and a week consumed by it. And just six months ago I believed that throwing up once a week was freedom. Mostly because I was living life fuller and God's provision was evident. From the outside, no one knew. Because I wasn't consumed like before—its not like I was doing it twenty times a day, I rationalized.

This is not that big of a deal. I know you guys don't get it, but this is nothing compared to how it used to be. I really am okay. Great even.

So, thorn in my side I wrote off bulimia as something that I would just have to learn to manage. Yes, I was learning to manage my sin. And I really did think it was the victory promised.

Until this night where we stand together and yet very much separated as the consequence of my sin left me with a decision to make. Them or food. This mom and dad and siblings who love me or a number on a scale.

I don't think I need treatment. I can do this. I'll stop.

The truth is, I didn't want to give it up. Their counsel went against what any professional would say. Quitting anything cold turkey never brings lasting results? But I knew that God had worked a miracle to bring me to this house in the middle of no where Arkansas to restore me to Himself through the love and grace this mom and dad were giving me, and so in the quiet of my room I humbled myself before Him and told Him to fight because I didn't think it was possible. All I knew was that I wasn't ready to leave this family. Rules were put in place for my good and while it was hard, the discipline was in love and it was exactly what I needed.

When it was all over and all the hard words were swallowed down, a little bitter still stinging in my throat and a list unending of my failures and comparisons in my brain, they held me tight and that's when I realized just how much God loves me. That night it became real. Vision for a hope a future mattered more then food and the size of my pants.

Today as I look back six months or so, I am so grateful for God's grace in my life. The grace this mamma and daddy lavished on me. And more then anything, the way the holy spirit lived (and continues to live) inside of me. It is simply a miraculous work of God that He would equip me to walk in full freedom from an eating disorder. He really does fight for me because I couldn't do it.

I still can't do it. But today, His grace is sufficient.

This week I watched a mamma choose Jesus over her baby girl. I watched her hug her (not so) little girl goodbye, knowing that this might be the last time she saw her alive. We gave this little girl, my friend, my sister in Christ over to her sin because God does the same with us. Because we can't do this for her. Because she has to choose. I still don't fully understand how this is love, but I know God is and I know He calls us to be obedient to love her in this way. We love her so incredibly much it hurts. I helped her pack a bag and stood in the doorway as she went off into the dark night, unsure where she would sleep. We were going to move in together in a couple weeks. One choice and everything changes.

Whether it is what movie to watch or what to make for dinner--we all make choices and they lead one of two places. Life or death. God urges us to choose life, that we and our children may live.

I am learning to choose life. To speak life. And to believe that God does redeem lives--even the ones that I deem impossible or way too lost to ever 'get it.' Because that was me. Because apart from Christ in me, I am the bulimic, the drug addict, the liar, the murderer. But He gives me a new name--redeemed. It is a choice to believe it. It is a choice to live it. 

It's not over for T. It's not over for me. And it is not over for you. Let us choose life...life in Christ.

But exhort one another every day as long as it is called today, that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. For we have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end. Heb. 3:13