On This "Paleo" Journey [& the first twelve weeks]

Typically, I tend to shy away from this kind of posting, probably in light of my past. BUT-- after seeing the changes in my health, energy levels, sleeping, and mood over the past three months, I felt compelled to share!

Lately it seems you fail at life if you eat gluten or your workouts fall short of the infamous Crossfit methodology. For us all or nothing personalities, there is no dabbling. It's all in or all failure. Up until this point I have actually been quite careful to focus on health and lifestyle rather then bearing up under a title that holds so much weight. Literally.

But this journey has been teaching me that God really does desire to be apart of every aspect of our lives. Including our physical health and well-being.

¹⁹ Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, ²⁰ for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body." [1 Corinthians 6]

I had the verse about us being His temple washed down my throat and wrung dry over the years I spent battling an eating disorder. It never meant a thing to me. In fact, even reading it now causes something ugly to flare up in me, because I think back to those dark, hard days where my whole world revolved around this broken temple.  I remember wondering how God could possibly think I could glorify Him with this lousey shack He'd given me. I begged for a mansion, adorned in tanner skin and smoother curves and less flop.

But instead He gave me the holy spirit on the inside. And somewhere in the process of that the glory of Him dwelling inside the temple became more significant then the temple itself. And that's still happening, that process, probably straight up until heaven, for me anyways.

As He became more and I became less, I also began to surrender parts of myself to His authority. (as if He didn't authorize all in the first place anyway, right?!) One of those huge areas I feel I am and will continue to have to choose to consistently surrender to Him is food. After spending over a decade enslaved to it, those cracks run deep along the foundation of this temple. The binding up is a process. And I've learned to be okay with that.

But this past winter I found myself wrestling with this temple yet again. I was tired and sick all the time. I was so busy that eating fit in where there was time--with whatever was convenient or sounded tasty at the time.  Not to mention, nannying three little guys is whole new taste of hard when it comes to the heaps of sweet and salty laying around. Christmas goodness lingered well through the chocolate of Valentines and the next thing I knew I was hating the temple. Dread filled at the thought of social events. The lies were consuming me yet again. Something had to change. But it was so much more then a number on the scale or a few new panes on the roof. It was very much spirit led from the start. And I think it must be that way to not taper off.

It has always been about control. Me or Jesus? His glory or mine?

So I decided it only made sense that giving up the control of food in my life meant I had to give it right over to Him. But in this case, not just hypothetically speaking. More so, quite literally.

Most of us have heard about eating as the bible depicts. There are actual plans, perhaps most notably The Maker's Diet or this raw revolution. While there is much wisdom to be grasped from these, I never felt led to follow a set out plan, but still applying many of the concepts. This time has been more focused on trusting the Lord in my food choices and allowing Him to help me discern. But also really seeking wisdom and doing lots of research about what I've actually been feeding my body all these years! For me, I don't think I knew how sick I really was until I glimpsed how healthy I could really be. Now, I really can't imagine going back.

So, how does this flesh out? Let's get practical.

While I have maintained a bit of a modified paleo eating routine, I beleive there is wisdom is simplicity and going back to the basics. God created certain foods to feed our bodies. We wanted to make them taste better, so we add and add and add until an apple holds no satisfaction in light of a bag of cheez-its in the afternoon.

For me, this has all been about getting back to the roots. If it is grown out of the ground it is good. If nothing is added to it, it's better.

At the beginning of March veggies and fruits quickly became my best friends. My consumption for the first few months was mostly built on these two food groups. I also ate chicken, ground turkey and salmon once a day/every other day. I chose to avoid most pork, beef and fish that feast on the bottom of the water, but that is mostly because I don't really like any of the above. And some things I'm learning in scripture continue to affirm this decision in my heart. But, most Paleo followers feast on meat!

I've learned a lot about grains and how much our way of processing them depletes them of the nutrients God created them with. So, I chose to eliminate all of them for a season, and might revaluate at some point, but for now I feel so much better making my own gluten-less recipes!

After a couple months I added in nuts, nut flours, seeds, dark chocolate, limited rice and corn based products, eggs, beans, gf oats, coconut oil, coconut flour, honey, maple syrup, and sweet potatoes.

Eliminating gluten and dairy has probably brought forth the majority of the transformation in my health, but I have also been challenged beyond that to specifically focus on simple ingredients and as raw and fresh as possible. Pinterest has really been the greatest gift to me through this--there are paleo-friendly recipes for EVERYTHING!! Really. I have rarely felt deprived of anything. They even have ice cream!

I try to only introduce one new food or brand of GF product or recipe at a time and spaced several days apart so that I can really tell how my body responds. Through this process there has been one occasion where I had to eat a meal with some gluten and dairy in a social setting among international friends--I never could have imagined the consequences of that! Just several bites in, my head started feeling fuzzy and I couldn't think as clearly. It was insane how quickly I felt the effects. After an hour my stomach was super upset. I felt the effects for three days, actually. Who knew? I've been much more careful since and so far God has really provided ways out of those tricky food situations where you don't want to offend the cook but also don't want to suffer the consequences!

So here I am, bearing this "paleo" title for the first time, though there is much grace needed! There are certain things I'm more relaxed about and others not as much---it's all about how my body reacts to various food choices.

I've also been running 2-5 miles at least five days a week. Soon I intend to get some toning exercises added in there too.

This has been a crazy journey, challenging me to trust Jesus more. And my life has been drastically different since that physical, emotional, spiritual surrender of my will, my fear, my pride and my temple to Him. God can bring such transformation many different ways--for me it was quite practically through changes in food habits and I am so grateful for His patience with me!

The heart refinement and surrender has by far starved me more then my stomach ever groaned physically. But there has certainly been a physical transformation as well, which has also been covered in much prayer and grace as the enemy lingers near, just trying to trip me up some days. BUT Jesus is greater and His spirit in me has enabled even me, a girl who was so bound by food and appearance for over a decade to freely follow Him, even when it comes to a lifestyle change that could trigger old habits and mindsets. May this never be about the number on the scale, so as to rob Him of the glory found in His redemption story. He is faithful to redeem, that I know.

                                                           Eight Weeks Difference

Mostly, I just desire to know Him and make Him known, and to glorify Him in my response to how He directs me. I am seeing those passions of my former ignorance being tossed off and becoming less binding. His Spirit is so very alive! So as He who called me is holy, may I also be holy!! [by grace abounding!]

That can look different for us all, of course. There is nothing more holy about this Paleo lifestyle then an alternative, but for me this is all about His glory and His reign over my ever-wandering heart. May He be praised for what He is doing in and through this messed up temple--may it continue that He may be known even more greatly--to me and to you! 

He was foreknown before the foundation of the world but was made manifest in the last times for the sake of you who through him are believers in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God.

(1 Peter 1:20-21 ESV)

When the Wait is Hard, Ya'll

The wait is hard, y'all.

We know the right way despite the draw of our flesh towards sin. It got me thinking about the way I look at my own sin.

I can deposit my paycheck laying in bed Friday night. Immediately, some of the money is at my disposal. Instant gratification defines our culture. That's why we watch sex on the internet instead of waiting. It's how we justify the removal of a baby and call it unwanted tissue. It's why every single year, women are bought and sold at the super bowl. It's why I drive through Chickfila after a long day instead of heading home to cook dinner. Our culture wants everything now. Instant gratification. 

I believe it seeps into our waiting, it sinks in deep and carves out crevasses. It hardens us to the promptings of the spirit and weighs us down. Cracks form and pieces shatter and we are so blinded by the here and now, that the future seems bleak at best. Hope drifts. Joy fades. And suddenly the sure foundation wobbles around a bit. And so also, do I.

It always drives us to despair. To shame. To fig leaves. When we let it.

But like many things, sin is a choice right? What we believe to be true is too.

I've been frustrated and saddened by the way my sin creeps back in, even after all these years of knowing what sets me free. I've followed the twelve steps, logged thousands of hours in counseling sessions, worked my rehab programs, and committed endless scripture to memory on the topic. And yet it hasn't disappeared. The thoughts and desires creep in like the thief in the night. Often.

Sometimes they lure and entice me into action. Convince me of a different worth then that which is found in Christ. We war, continually. And it can be confusing and consuming.

I think we all desire to be free. We want to feel it, to live it, to know it. We don't desire to be entangled to those former ways of ignorance. My former ignorance-- an eating disorder, among a colorful palate of other sin for sure. But you fill in the blank. It's all the same.

So why are we so often finding ourselves back there?

"I'm realizing that having a normal relationship with food is not the end goal here--holiness is. And my holiness is ultimately not contingent on the reversal of my dysfunctional thought processes about food or myself." 

God decides which thorns stay and which thorns go, for His glory. This might be a battle I fight the rest of my life on earth. There will be change, of course, as I dethrone food and replace it with God's holiness. I know I'm not so enslaved as I once was. I don't find much gratification in hanging my head over the toilet like before. I am attentive to the separation brought by my sin. And yet there are moments when the lies still latch on and try to persuade me otherwise. This is the slow process of sanctification, and really it must become an inevitable change of knowing Christ. Though it might or might not include complete release from my eating disorder in this life on earth. And I forget, even this is for His glory to be more greatly manifest in my weaknesses.

And yet I am neither driven to despair nor found behind a fig leaf ONLY because of the fact that life on earth isn't in fact the end. There's more. And that is where my hope is found. This body is always going to let me down. To lie to me. To lust after everything but Christ.

Thus, I have to choose where I will SET my hope during this waiting.  

Set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Christ, Peter urges us. Don't be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, but be holy like Jesus. (1 Pet. 1) It's hard for me to imagine that the fullness of grace won't be totally revealed until Heaven. I am so dependent on it now. And He gives more and more. And yet, it's like we ain't seen nothin' yet!

We have to long for THAT day. By thinking rightly about reality.

I think I'm learning that means glory over gratification. And even grace over grief. 

And it's hard. But I don't see hope anywhere in this world apart from Christ. I've looked. Everywhere. And had never been nearer to death then in that searching.

The search ended and life began when Jesus revealed Himself to me, in His death for me.

His glory is not magnified in my sin or shame. His glory is manifest in His redemption of my life. And as such a recipient, my radiance is reflective of Him not me. And praise Jesus for that!

So now I let Him pluck the thorns as He may (or may not), because the end goal is no longer about me. It's just about His glory, His holiness, His power which will be most greatly magnified in what is to come. Eternal, forever, never-going-back, free, joyous redemption.

May we wait with hope as our eyes are fixed on such things.

In Which I Ask You to Pray

[I know my words in response to returning from India have been few, and that will change soon, I hope.]

But today I want to tell you a story and ask you to pray, too.

I was about a month out from graduating from this residential program where I had fallen in love with Jesus and He had begun the process of redemption in my life after an eight year battle with bulimia, among many other things. One of the steps towards graduation consists of "real-wolrd" plans. Meaning, what is next for you when you leave this bubble? For me, that meant my freshman year of college, meeting with my accountability partner, serving in my church family, and finding a job. I started applying for jobs while in treatment, any online applications I could get my hands on. I was quite familiar with a nanny website called care.com, as I had previously worked for a family I found through that website. I decided to get on there and apply for a few nanny positions near my home.

There was one in particular that stood out and I just remember it sounding too good to be true. Their house was literally walking distance from mine, the hours were perfect and the pay quite generous. That's why it was a shock to me when the mother of these two boys replied to my application the next morning and asked for me to come over for an interview. And an even bigger surprise when I was allowed to leave the program I was in for a night to go have the interview, something that was never really done. But God had a plan it seems; I just didn't realize how overwhelmingly perfect it was until this week.

I remember driving to the interview and talking on the phone with my best friend. As reality began to creep in, I said to her, "Let's just hope they don't ask me why there's been a gap in my employment the past year or two. It's not like I could put 'resident in troubled girls home' on my application and hope they let me watch their kids, huh?" We laughed. The interview went perfectly and God really did give me a great love for their family, even through that short hour long meeting. Somehow I knew this was the job God had chosen for me, even before they offered it.

A few weeks later, of course, the offer did come and I graciously accepted. I started nannying for them late that August, picking up the boys from the bus stop, helping with homework, a few snacks, and some play time. The younger of the two beat me in basketball everyday and his victory shouts over me [yet again] never seemed to get old to him. The boys were both a little older, one pre-teen and the other just shy of it, so we got to talk a lot. About real things, you know? That was cool, since most nanny positions it's not like that.

The boys' parents, well they worked hard and loved their boys more then anything in life. In the winter I got to invite the boys' mom to a women's Christmas tea at my church. That night I finally decided it was time to share with her a little bit of my story, in hopes I wouldn't lose my job after she realized how messy my life was not too long ago, for that matter, that she would still trust me with her kids. I told her about the tough stuff growing up and the way I sought after control of just about anything in my life as a result. I told her how I just want to be good enough, pretty enough, smart enough--and how I just didn't feel loved in those early years. So, I decided to try to earn it. If I could be skinner and prettier, well, then maybe mom and dad would love me. I told about years in treatment programs and hospitals and the night I overdosed in an attempt to be free from the weight of it all. And then I told her how God saved my body from death quite miraculously that night. And how He brought me to Mercy and redeemed my life from the pit of hell. He gave me hope and that set me free after eight years of trying to find it elsewhere.

She listened to my words and cried. That night things shifted in our relationship as we continued to grow closer and to this day I am so thankful for the way their family has stood by me these past four years.

That next summer I had the boys full time as God continued to build tighter relationship between me and this family. We spent long days at the pool, the zoo, eating ice cream and riding roller coasters at Six Flags. That sort of became our weekly routine. I was pretty involved with a youth ministry called ZOE Ministries at the time, so we spent quite a few of those hot summer days up at the ZOE house that summer too. The boys met some friends and started asking more questions about this whole Jesus thing, especially the younger of the two.

We talked about how God spoke the animals, plants and us humans into existence and he soaked it up. I gave him a bible for his birthday that year and he read it a few times. We listened to worship songs in my car and they fought me on it, boy did they ever. In fact, my the volume control on my radio is still broken from a disagreement I had with one of the boys over who controls the music in my car. But then one day in the middle of that summer I looked in the rearview to see them both just singing along to one of those silly worship songs. Tears streamed quietly down my cheeks as we drove to Target.

I moved away to college in Arkansas that fall, and saying goodbye to the boys and thier parents brought as many tears for all of us as saying goodbye to my own family. I wrote the boys a lot and visited every time I came home. That Christmas when it was time for them to meet the boy I was dating, the younger of the two literally followed him around the entire evening with the whole "if you hurt her, I'll kill you" glare in his eye. When we left, I remember the guy I was dating saying that the little man scared him. Hah. That is just him, though. And I am so thankful.

The next summer I came home to nanny the boys again and they had really grown up that year. We had such sweet times and so many crazy adventures that summer. We played monopoly every single day--and I often got beat. More lazy pool days and I think we ate frozen yogurt daily that year. Through a big event at the end of the summer put on by ZOE called Hot Summer Nights, the younger of the two raised his hand to accept Christ as Lord. After two years of praying for this family and just doing life with them, getting to witness this moment was pretty incredible. I went back to college about a week later and continued to stay in touch best I could. I don't know much of what the past two years have looked like for these precious boys, apart from a few visits and photos.

Last week I found out that the younger of the two boys, the same one who beat me in basketball, often championed our monopoly marathons, and scared off the only boy I ever dated--I found out he has actually been struggling with an eating disorder. Most people might be shocked to find out that a boy could be so enslaved to a battle with food and image, but since an eating disorder is most often a whole lot of deeper issues expressed through a distorted view of ourselves and thus relationship with food, it's a shock to me more boys don't struggle with it. And they might, but be too ashamed to seek help.

• Up to 24 million people of all ages and genders suffer from an eating disorder in the U.S.
• An estimated 10-15% of people with anorexia or bulimia are male.
• Men are less likely to seek treatment for eating disorders because of the perception that they are “woman’s diseases.”
• Significantly higher rates of eating disorders found in elite athletes (20%), than in a female control group (9%).

Looking back four years ago, I didn't know why God chose to allow me to work for this family just out of treatment. And even through those two years with the boys, there were days I wondered how the Lord brought me here, into this home with these crazy boys, days I wanted to quit! But God always seemed to draw me back to just loving them in spite of myself. He kept there and sustained us all.

I knew when I moved away two years ago I would stay in touch and was so thankful for how God used this family to provide stability and love for me as I wobbled through my first two years learning to walk in freedom from my eating disorder. But I had no idea God would allow me to testify to His faithfulness in my own life as one of these boys battles the same issue four years later. I am humbled today, to just reflect on how perfect and glorious His bigger picture plans really are, you know?

Jesus redeemed my life from the pit of hell. He can do it for this precious little brother too. Let's pray to that end, as James says "If any of you lacks wisdom He should ask God who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given to him. But let him ask in faith with no doubting..."

Four years later, I just know I am so unworthy, and yet He loves me still. I mess up a lot and sometimes I forget His promises, but He continues to work in my heart and teach more of my identity in Him. I am no longer a slave to an eating disorder or anything else for that matter, because His word says while my sin deserved death, He gave His son Jesus to die on a cross that I might be set free. And that, well, that's my story. It's all of our stories when we truly believe in our hearts Jesus is the way, the Truth and the life.

I am praying with great expectation for the way God is using this trial to draw this beloved family to Himself, just as He did for me. Pray for his mom, especially as she is desperate to help her son. Please join me in praying for this precious family and for their son who is currently in another state at an inpatient treatment program which specifically targets boys battling eating disorders. 

*If you know this precious boy who is struggling and would like to send him some words of encouragement, that would be an incredible blessing to him, and to me. Let me know and I will send you his address. 

In Which I Tell the Part Untold {And Hope You See Redemption Too}

*Let me first advice this is a tough one—it's been months in the writing and revisions have been plentiful. Some content is for mature readers only. I hope you will have grace with me in these words, as they are part of my story that's yet to be told. I know I am one in every four and I hope these words offer hope for us all. 

I was not quite to puberty and I stayed with him on the weekends. He hid the VO under the kitchen sink as if it was a secret yet to be revealed. I guess passing out on the couch by seven or eight didn't give it away though. Neither did the slurry attempt at English or the flipping over the kitchen table after he tried to sit on it once, twice. Anger and sorrow filled the room most nights, though, heavy and thick hanging in the air. Combined with the smoke, I remember suffocating.

His stenchy breath carried across the mattress and I knew his attention was all mine now.

I still remember the big fish tank he bought me and the food. He let me eat junk--and lots of it. All the carbs you can get, right here, he could have had a sign. Ice cream and chocolate chip cookies always plentiful to wash down my heapfuls of pasta and meat and garlic bread. The stuff mom never let me touch. I think I binged even back then and I just didn't get it yet, I didn't know about the hole deep down I was trying to fill and I didn't know how to fill it. I didn't know how big it would grow or how much it would hurt. There was a lot I didn't know. I was a little girl.

But I did know that food made me feel safe when the gunshots rattled the windows and when my dad sexually abused me in the bed late at night.

It lasted a few years, on and off and I lost my voice somewhere in the process. Maybe because I was too busy stuffing it with food or running for miles on end. Maybe because the suffocation nearly drowned me. Maybe because the hole was growing quicker then I could fill it and my attempts seemed futile. And maybe I just wanted him to love me—even if I had to give my body to get it? One day mom stopped making me spend my weekends with him so it stopped and I stopped thinking.

In fact, I didn't think about it at all for the next five or six years because I had no memory of it. They call it "repression" and I call it God's unfathomable grace. Either way, nearly half a decade later all the memories plummeted into recall as I listened to two dads talk about protecting their young daughters from the neighbors boys' on a car ride to Chicago.

There were three who abused like that and one was a neighbor boy.

I thought I was crazy, truly. How could I just 'not remember' all those years and then suddenly...

Until a close friend points out, if it had come up even days before it did, I would have ended my life—successfully I think. Grace.

I might have been spared the memories for a season, but there always was this underlying darkness that enveloped me and I never could explain it {or break out of it}. I had spent much of those years in and out of hospitals and treatment programs for bulimia, depression, sexual sin, self-harm, and suicide attempts. I had a whole lot of daddy issues too. Just six months prior to remembering the abuse I had graduated from a biblically based treatment program for young women with life-controlling issues called Mercy Ministries. I fell in love with Jesus there and my life was impacted greatly.

When the abuse surfaced, my world did a 180 and I had no control over any of it. At least that's how it felt. I felt so dirty and no matter how hot the water, I could never get clean. I hated him so much. And yet I longed for his approval and his love, even still?! The darkness of the night gave way for me to relive this nightmare night after night after night. I remember staying awake for days at a time because I just couldn't see his face again that night. I couldn't watch it all happen. I couldn't save that little girl. For years, I would wake up in the middle of the night and find myself huddled under a desk or in a corner. I couldn't stop the pain. I saw no way out.

For awhile, it was my fault. I tried to pay for the way he hurt me by hurting myself. My bouts of depression and bulimia raged once again and I flailed aimlessly beneath the weight of it all and some days I begged for the waves to just draw me under already.

What I would give to have my innocence back. I think I still grieve the little girl lost, even today.

But not everyday--there are glimpses as of late, moments where I see her redeemed living fully.

I don't really remember when, but one day I saw a glimmer of light. It started to grow slowly and a path began to form before me. Eventually I began to follow, through the thickets and mud, pressing on towards the light. I am still not there but my world isn't so dark anymore. Everyday, I choose life and relationship with Christ provides a steadfastness in the ups and downs of this path {life}.

Sometimes, our pain just cannot be broken down into 12-step programs or quieted with a drug, though there were days I wished for both. The flip of the calendar has truly been my saving grace, though.

For the past several years I haven't had much a voice but those who knew have held me up and I have spent months swimming in pools of grace. It seems my swims are more regular these days, as the ashes continue to float away from me.

My dad is in a half-way house now, about seven months sober, a first in these past fifty years or so. I haven't seen him in a year but maybe one day I will. He will never be the dad I long for and it is making me all the more dependent on my heavenly one. Oh grace.

And God has used this last year mightily. He's restoring my trust of man through an adopted dad and mom who moved me into their family for a season and it has been a journey worth the pain and I see healing. He is redeeming so much that was stolen through this family. But more then that He's restoring my ability to trust Him as the Perfect Father, something my dad never was and never can be.

My fear does drive me to shame and fig leaves when I let it.

But one day I will choose to joyfully submit to my husband because it is what He intended in the beginning and abuse does not negate me from His plans. In fact, it draws me all the more tightly to the hope and the future He promises because life apart from Him seems all the more messed up.

I remember suffocating in the bed after it was all over, under all the smoke and secrets and shame. I remember closing my eyes and teleporting to a beach with an ocean and I remember breathing easier listening to the waves and sucking up that warm ocean breeze. That was my way out, my light in the darkness as I curled up tight.

One day years later God would provide relationship with my grown siblings {my dad's kids}. One way or another they would actually take me to the beach on vacation with them. Sitting on the sand gazing out over those waves and soaking up the warmth and their love--none of which I deserved--I would first realize my need for and confess my belief in God. Over the next year those siblings would play a pivotal role in my salvation. They simply loved the heck outa' me like no one ever had.

Ya'll, do you see the redemption?! Oh such mercy makes me weep buckets remembering. I deserve none of it, yet He made a way in the wilderness, streams in the wasteland. It makes me trust no matter how messed up this world. He is bigger and none of your pain is in vain--ultimately He will glorify Himself through it and the way that He uses us--that is simply grace.

And I know it's nothing shy of divine that brought me to that place in my own little world, as I lay sprawled across that mattress. Those moments brought a foretaste of what was to come, of what is coming still.

It took a long time and I don't feel so dirty anymore.

Redemption is evident with each of flip of the calendar and today, today remembering is overcoming because of the blood of the Lamb and word of my testimony. I am redeemed.

Do you see it? The chain of redemption shaping your story, the way telling is overcoming?

Let's hear it. Let's hear your story.

And for the other one in fours who have hidden away, there is hope. I only know one thing for sure--in Christ there is life everlasting and hope abundant. It's there for you too.

*Child sexual abuse is not rare. Retrospective research indicates that as many as 1 out of 4 girls and 1 out of 6 boys will experience some form of sexual abuse before the age of 18.1 However, because child sexual abuse is by its very nature secretive, many of these cases are never reported.

Focus on Your Pain, Your Past, & Your Parents

So, this world is pretty messed up. 

Everyone I know has some kind of hurt in their life which still opens fire every once in a while. Or every day. There are those deep waves beneath which we toss and turn, those wires that feel mismatched sometimes. I think we all feel it—this underlying brokenness that was never supposed to be. 

We all fight to attain the image in which we were originally fashioned, though often times we cannot articulate it just so. And sometimes, the battle in the waiting isn't so pretty. 

How do you fight when you don't know just what you're fighting for? And how do you know that you're not the only one when we all keep quiet in our searching and tell ourselves it's just us longing and no one will relate?

My growing up years were plagued in pain and hurts that still send me flailing about into adulthood. My past is ugly and shameful and dark. I screwed up and lot. My parents both love me but it has taken years to believe it because they didn't show it. I blame a lot of the pain on them and some of that is fair. 

I have friends that had amazing parents. Some who grew up rooted in purpose and established in love. Others who had an unnatural peace with their purpose in this world and they lived it intentionally. Not everyone has flopped around so much, but each of us has more pain. Even the most loving parents screw up. And I have never met one person to claim life-long perfection. So here we are, all of us focusing our attention on something. 

I remember the midnight searches that defined my youth, in the basement sitting behind that lit up screen, desperately scrolling through page after page trying to find any indication that I wan't the only one. Anything to tell me who I was because I heard who I wasn't all day long. That someone else was messed up too. I remember spending Friday nights at Border's, hours consumed in the self-help shelves, just searching. 

Was there was another girl anywhere in the world that didn't feel loved and hated herself for it? Desperate to know someone else tried to fill the void with food. Someone that thought to cut themselves to numb the pain before I did?Anyone who doesn't have it all figured out? Anyone? Knowing someone else was hurting too gave me hope, this odd confirmation that it wasn't over for me, this sense of belonging. We all want to. 

Soon enough, I belonged. An unknowing victim led astray via the self-help of the world. 

Our solution:  pile the shelves floor to ceiling with self-help books, just give her a pill (we can figure out what's wrong later), and maybe you should go to a counselor—for the next twenty years-ish. 

I still have a shelf or two of those books, I've been on pills for the pills over the years, and I sometimes I think I was raised talking to strangers on those couches that always seem to smell like grandma's. 

And truthfully, I dream of writing books that help girls and studied several years away in pursuit my very own smelly couch. I have a best friend that is about to go for her Master's in counseling and I encourage it because it's not all bad. 

And so we hunger for answers, fixes, and wholeness. In our desperation, we blame because it makes more sense that someone caused it then it does that it's just this abstract feeling that we can't get a grasp of, that something is broken but what? We are an instant gratification society and we want answers. We want quick fixes. And we want to be on top of the next best. We want to save the world and ourselves too. Today or tomorrow. If this is gunna make me feel even less, I'll take it. If reliving those years of his abuse will make it hurt less, I'll do it. If telling her I forgive will erase the memory, I forgive!

In counseling all those years it was most often breath spent focusing on these three. It's a funny triad, a three tiered web of intertwined madness. Especially when I focus on it, I go crazy. 

It's been four years this month—four years since I walked through the doors of Mercy, the place that really challenged me to think about what I think about. Does that make sense? 

I had spent nearly two decades focused on my pain, my past and my parents. Generally (with a few exceptions of course) every website, every book, every counselor and doctor—their approaches differed yet their solutions coincided—look deeper within yourself because that's the only way you'll overcome the pain, relive your past until it explains why you do the things you do now, oh and most of it is your parents fault, but you should forgive them just never forget. 

In other treatment programs and hospital stays, I had always been encouraged to share the depths of my darkness from the past and present. I can remember being reprimanded in one inpatient stay for saying that I didn't think my bulimia was all my mom's fault. We bonded over our issues in treatment, and competed. I never would have known how to abuse laxatives if it weren't for another girl in treatment teaching me. I called them friends but we all just used each other to prove who could be better at dying. I don't think I ever would have come that close if they hadn't paved the way, encouraged me deeper into myself, my very messed up self.

But now this place was telling me I couldn't bond with the others over my past sin. In fact, we were encouraged not to tell one another why we were there until graduation, a day of celebrating God's redemption of the pain. Living in a home for young women with life controlling issues would make it so easy to find hope in others' brokenness, the way I had much of my life, to go down together, so to speak. I think this is one huge reason for Mercy's 93% success rate. They simply change the focus. There is a time and a place for wrestling through the pain, the past, and parents. But that time comes once a week in the wisdom of a counselor with a different focus. 

This idea that we must look deeper into ourselves to find strength needed to overcome is actually quite contradictory if you think about it. If I am born with a sinful nature (no one ever has to teach me how to lie), then would it really make sense that the strength to overcome could come from somewhere deeper down? Personally, I don't think so. I don't know about you, but the deeper down I get into myself, the more I realize just how messed up I am! Strength to overcome myself has to come from something greater, someone bigger then me. Someone not so messed up like me. Reliving the pain over and over again just makes me hurt more. And focusing on the past only keeps me from experiencing God's grace which is sufficient only for today. And truthfully, dwelling back there makes me forget to live now—it makes me forget who I am now and the way that God is redeeming. The past can blind us.

I came home from St. Louis last week really obsessed with food again. I tried a few days down that road too—well, it still didn't work. This was all after my mom paraded my slimmer body around and told me how jealous she was. After she told my step-dad to look at me and marvel. All I heard was how ugly I must have been before I lost some weight. It was a man admiring my beauty that made me want to eat it away. It set something off in me, something engrained in my deepest pain, my past, and both of my parents. 

These days, freedom for me is coming in "forgetting" my pain, my past, and my parents and "focusing" on the only one bigger then myself, the only perfect one—the one who formed my inners in the darkness and has been light ever since. 

It's not that I never think about this triad or will forget it all together. I talk about it when I need to, but not like I used to. Thinking too much is always destructive, I'm learning. Sometimes we just have to stop thinking and proclaim what is true. The Truth is active now, no matter what used to be so we have to fix our eyes on something more because the past isn't changing—it might never hurt less and your parents might always have something to do with it and yet there is a way out. 

When the Israelites were headed to the promise land, they got mad and cursed God. Why have you brought us out of Egypt to die in the desert where there is no food? They cried out. So God sent venomous snakes among them and many died. Moses prayed for the people and God told him to make a snake and put it on a pole. Then anyone who got bitten can look at it and live.

When this journey out of the past seems hopeless and when your parents spew venom that stings, fix your eyes upon the man nailed to the pole. When you look at Him, you will live. 

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

On Overcoming Halloween & An Eating Disorder

The years start off innocent with princesses and homemade bliss. Then adolescence hits and the material shrinks away as gobs of makeup are an undeniable must. We start to cover up the imperfections and flaunt the rest because we want to be loved, especially on this dark day.

I remember trick or treating in my youth—I remember being dorothy in fifth grade and I remember  dumping it all out and just looking at it for hours. We would gather tight in a circle and trade. I was (and still am) a chocolate kinda girl. Reeses are certainly the way to my heart. I don't quite recall the year but I was young. I remember it because I lost one of my red slippers in my mad dash for candy.

 I remember hiding some of my candy in the basement after the fall festival at school so my mom wouldn't be able to take it all away from me after my night of sugar bliss. She was strict about food—especially candy. After my allotted 3 pieces a night, I would sneak down there to eat it some nights, when I had a bad day. You won't tell me what I can and can't eat. I remember thinking, before I gorged myself to the point of sickness on that chocolate candy I stashed.

Long after I was {supposed to be} in bed she tip-toed over to my bag and pulled out her favorites. Lots of them. One time I caught her. She got so mad. This is one of those vivid times when I recognize her food issues unconfessed that probably fed into mine.

I remember adolcence and the way it became less about the jokes and more a perfect excuse to stay out late with freinds. I didn't really party nor did I bear more skin then the average person, not even on this day. I remember covering up my body actually. I hit puberty and the pounds seemed to mount themselves to my hips and thighs with each bit I took back then. I don't even remember what I was wearing that year but I probably didn't need a costume since I wondered through the neighborhood with my friends clothed in a mask of shame daily. I had daddy issues and he disappeared.

My costumes never had blood or gore or a scary mask. I always wanted to clothe myself in beauty and just pretend for one night that I really was.

By high school, mom was alone and she always turned off the lights and hid in the basement because she didn't want to spend money on candy—or eat it. That first year as the dreaded freshies we disguised our age and ran from door to door. Free candy, yes please. No one questioned us either. By this point I was throwing up a lot and Halloween was free fuel to my fire.

By the next year I was all lost and consumed in my own darkness that the pursuit of free fuel was far too much work. I locked myself in my room and watched my friends pass by down below, laughing and free. I didn't understand how they could laugh in the dark—how they could eat candy and be free. I grew jealous and bitter and lonely. I told them I was sick. I was—though I wasn't going to admit it just yet. I remember the hoards of candy and orange treats I bought on clearance in the days to follow. Stocked them up in my closet and slid deeper into my dark world of bulimia.

The years to follow I remember Halloween in a treatment program for girls like me where we sat for hours staring darkness in the face before any of us dared to even smell that piece of chocolate out of fear our hips might grow at the scent.

What happened to me, I remember thinking?

I wish I could go back to Dorothy just for an hour and tell her the stash in the basement isn't worth the instant gratification because no matter how much you eat or how skinny you get, it's never going to fill that hole. Food is never going to satisfy. And if you continue on, in just a few years you will be here, staring death in the face and really believing this piece of chocolate is deadly.

I wish I could tell her to just eat those three pieces and go be a kid because innocence is a gift and a little chocolate isn't a death sentence. 

By next year, Dorothy, you won't care about your red slippers or little dog because you will be in the hospital and you will be reaching for death because the scale controls you now and you are tired.

Dorothy, you're never going to be pretty (or skinny) enough for your dad to come back because he is a drunk and someday that might change but you have a purpose and it is bigger then the size of your butt, so stop counting. Your mom might always be a slave of these things, but you are not her.

You sure have a had a messed up start to life little girl, and more bad things might happen to you like the tornado and the witch but just follow the yellow brick road because narrow is the road to life and the Emerald city is closer then you think. It won't always be this hard, I promise.

It hasn't been easy and most days I still battle with food, but I am no longer a slave to it, by God's grace alone. I was bought with a price and Jesus' death on the cross ransomed all my sin and now there is nothing I can do to escape His love. In fact, His love has conquered the hole deep down, the one that food and daddy issues and beauty never did quite satisfy. Daily I must choose life or death and today I choose to walk in the light that I may live.

One day your butt will be bigger and you won't wear a mask and you will spend Halloween eating a few Reeses because you love them and you will wear your red slippers and oh yes—you will be free. 

...for Christ sets captives free. -Isa.61:1-2

From What Well Are You Drinking Today?

I've picked up running again and it is so good. Those cool mornings watching the sky unfold as he paints it to life for another day never cease to hand me mercies anew. The air is crisp and the trees are part of his gallery too. I worship and reflect as the dog pants at my feet. We are an orchestra down below bringing sound to His show.

In the praises and the pleas, I have been panting too, I think. And no, not just while running, though my sounds probably far out-sing the dog when I trudge up those country hills. The panting—maybe not so loud but inside the weariness and brokenness of life has gained and I identify with the woman at the well, the one who came from the dirt like me. 

Don't we all pant after water which satisfies straight into eternity? Enough of this processed stuff. Give me the real deal. I'll take the whole spring, in fact.

I spent so many years drinking from the well of midnight fast food runs and ice cream by the half gallons. Bags of peanut-butter M&Ms and trays of doughnuts which have absorbed into my body in some attempt to satisfy this unceasing thirst unmet. Hours and days and weeks of glaring down into the well of my stomach upturned beneath me. Those moments of stilled breath waiting for the number to reveal how good or bad my day—I took shots from that glass too. I've tried to fill up with cup after cup of starvation and thirsted for the miles beneath my feet, as they grow in number and frequency and drive me to more and more to satisfy just a moment. 

But they aren't the spring washing me anew and flooding me back to life; rather the sewage in which I find myself stuck. 

The satisfactions never came for long. So within days and hours, even minutes sometimes, I would  have to search for it again. Maybe some Reeses this time, with a milkshake to help em go down. I remember feeling trapped in a pit and some days I could eat thousands and thousands of calories only to throw them up, but just find myself sinking deeper into the muck and mire—and I smelled really bad. 

Part of me grew content in the sewage too—I deserved this because I was a dirty girl and dirty girls deserve to live in dirty places. Some dirty girls are too nasty to ever clean up, I remember thinking, and you are just one of those girls. 

The woman at the well is still in sin—with another man to whom she is not yet even married. Christ is bold in his revealing of her sin and we see His sovereignty through it. He was like that with me too. One day He offered to forklift me out from my sewage and He made me clean. Like, for real clean and new too.

Like the woman drinking from the well of her sixth husband, I also attempt to find satisfaction and fulness in the things that drive me toward emptiness, again and again and again.

By the sixth time you'd think she would notice a pattern or something, huh?

After eight years of being consumed in bulimia, you'd think I might have noticed it wasn't working either?

So why is it so easy for us to forget, even after He clothes us in white and calls us by a new name? I think life is hard and messy and busy. We lack eternal perspective and we are so easily ensnared by this glimpse of the world that fails to tell us it is ending. Though, sometimes we just wish it would—we want to be free that bad. Good thing Jesus sets captive free—and He offers it to us freely.

Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

So I ask, from what well are you drinking today? Is it satisfying into eternity?

Dear 16 Year Old Self

Dear Six-Teen Year Old Me, yes the one with the cake thrown on your face,

Wow. I really don't know how you made it to here, here where I forget just how green it really is, just how crisp the air smells on this cool day. Here with this family in these mountains with this job and this hope and this future.

I wish I could just hug you, one of those big ole' make you feel at home in my bosom Southern hugs. You just really wanted to find home. You really wanted to be loved. And looking back, you were skin and bone near death starving for it.

Oh Courtney, just chill out and be a kid. Let life be simpler. Eat your cake and don't cry when a boy slams it in your face. Makeup not being perfect on your sweet night isn't really a tragedy. You will see tragedy, though.

You are driving and you think you are hot stuff. You still watch 7th Heaven every Monday night and you sing—at the top of your lungs—on those back windy roads in your Solora. You are a dreamer and your world flips if you forget to write in your journal. I have no idea what you wrote, but the breeze across your neck and pen in hand always made sense to you in a world where much didn't.

If only I could spare you the pain that is coming. You think it's bad now—but you will dig your grave and you're even going to lay down in it. I wish you never had to know that darkness, that feeling of suffocation because the dirt heaping over you is just that heavy. But there is a shovel and latter you will get out.

You just broke up with that boy, the first one you ever kissed and outside you smiled and your friends told you that you could do so much better. Fuel to the fire. He made you feel special and loved and when it stopped, you starved. It will take you years to remember how to hunger. But for the sake of righteousness, you will.

Oh and FYI, you will kiss dating goodbye. Crazy I know.

You don't know it yet, but one day soon your phone is going to ring...and it will be your dad. Yes, the one that disappeared for over a year now. The one who missed your birthday and never called at Christmas. The one that your mom told you was probably dead. He isn't. He will want to see you and you will stand strong—for awhile. Then you'll give him a chance and he will cut you deeper. But the hurt will be more then you ever imagined, for a while. You will get some distance and flip the calendar and get stitched up. It is good.

You love your friends more then life itself and you are all black and white. One day, maybe you will learn grey is a color too. You hide your Jewish heritage because you want to be one of them--you want to fit there, maybe. The years will teach you to glory in your decent from the Holy Nation, in your identity as God's chosen, a people belonging to Him. You will disobey and screw up more then your pride can handle.

Oh and please just give up the control, you freak--one day you will live with a dozen and it would be a whole lot easier if you learned now!!

All men aren't scum...I wish you could see it, to just glimpse what it coming.


He has a plan for you. You don't even know who "He" is yet, but oh little one, He knows you. And He is already at work. Oh I wish you could get it a little sooner. I wish I could help you see past your studies and your girl drama and your pride. I wish you could see the hope and future instead of the past. 

This year you are going to meet you siblings. They are going to define love and you are never going to be the same. This is your first taste of home and family and stability. Let it soften you, soak here for you are safe. Your sister plays with your hair and you purr and it will be your "thing" well into adulthood.

Your best friends will invade your world and you will raise babies with these three, one day.


Your appetite will change. You will learn to eat grace and drink mercy. But oh young one, you will always hate cheese. 

You want people to like you--I wish you would just like yourself. You're fashioned in His image--see Him in the mirror. You get straight As and you are a tennis champ. But the works don't earn you nothin'--remember it. You live in the hospital your senior year and you yell your mom--a lot. You see things that drain the little girl right out of you and I just wish I could save you from it. You are gunna be a great mom, though.

You wasted so many lonely nights locked behind your door--I wish I could plow it down, just like the walls you built up. Even six years later, you still hide behind the door and the walls, but if you stand tip-toed you can see over them now. Yes, you always have been a bit of a learn it the hard way kinda girl.

I wish I could give you a new lens to see you mom. Love her Courtney, love the mess out of her. One day you will miss her. You are beautiful, even if you go to the prom solo. I know you couldn't believe it though--not then and maybe not now.


Eventually you will stand up again and pick it all back up because its all you knew for these six-teen years. It will be a pattern, a puzzle solved before it's started. You and food will have at it—tug of war over your life. You will learn to be still and let Him fight. You will learn to submit to the process and not worry about the product. It is a process. Hate sin.

In a couple years, you will quit on life. But in His mercy, God will spare your life and you will stop pursing death. You will taste redemption this night--and you will want more. The sun will shine across your skin and you will taste His goodness, that He chose in His grace to redeem you from the pit of darkness. He will teach you to walk in the light.

And every time you feel the sun like that, the tingles scamper up your arms and you just know that He is God.  He stirs deep down as the darkness fades into a horror scene that was another life, another girl. And even this morning, you must remind yourself you are not her.

Your feet will walk the dirt of India and the mountains of Australia. You will hear the nations declare He is Lord and your life will be messy. You will want a husband and babies and you will cleave into Jesus so much more. You will have hope.

And one day the darkness won't loom so close and you will depend on the light for air. You won't ever be that perfection you measure yourself against in the back of your mind, so just give it up already. You are always a little more hungry for grace, a lot more in need of it too.

Sixteen doesn't last forever--One day, the seas will part and you will sing a new song, so hold fast!

Thankful for Emily over at Chatting the Sky and her new book!

On Going Home & Memorizing the Book of James

I walk through the door and everything is clean and white and perfect. It is all breakable and they sit on the couch with the screen blaring and she snores. I turn on the light and dogs lick me and she says make it stop. The light, the noise, the giggles. Make it stop because that's not here, that's not how we live, that's not it.

So I calm and quiet and dim the lights and tell her hello. She laughs at the dogs loving on me, as though they could smell the months I have been away. Neither of them hug me though.

I go upstairs and my bed is double the size and the walls are barren. I set my stuff down and she calls it messy. I tell her it's okay, I'll close the door. She says goodnight and I shut it behind her. I turn to face this life that used to be mine and I pray. I pray because I don't know what to do when the old mixes with the new. I talk to myself aloud, I say it's not true. That there is no need to revisit that place, that pain. To remain faithful to what I know so true, the love like a hurricane.

It is here in these moments I learn to let the waters flood over me and be still.

Count it all joy, my brothers, when you face trials of various kinds for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness.

So I don't go downstairs, even though I am so thirsty for that cold water that never has tasted quite so good any other place. But I don't go because I don't want to know what's in the fridge. I don't want to know how many snacks reside in the pantry, how much I could eat to numb the chaos in my brain, to escape. How good it would feel to do it and know that no one will ever know, that my toilet would remember the years we spent so close and our friendship rekindle.

But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire, when it has conceived, gives birth to sin, and sin when fully grown brings forth death.

So I go brush my teeth becuase that always gives me an out and the lights are brighter, more brilliant. I look at myself and I see the blemishes illuminated like never before. That's when I thank Him for the dust, for the little boy smudges on the mirror back with my dozen and I think about smudging up this mirror myself, just because this is too much, too perfect for me now. 

For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like.

The cleanliness and the expectations and the silence and this other lens through which I glimpse...it's all just too much. I try to forget what I look like, to forget my redemption would be easier. To look and forget and walk away. Sometimes I just want to walk away because counting it all joy is so hard.

I wash away the makeup caked on from the long day of work and driving and I wonder how I survived high school. I wonder how I lasted here, here in this house for so many years. I decide it only could have been the Lord, that even before I knew Him He knew me and He met me here, right here in this place where I don't feel Him the same, where the Spirit grows weary inside of me as I step within these walls.

But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing.

I drive past the church and I remember driving, sitting there in front of that cross and rolling down the window. I remember the tears and the blade and the throwing up. I remember craving it. I remember feeling in control. I remember it not ever being enough, me never being enough, so night after night I found myself there, a slave to my flesh. And today, as I return for a visit I collide with the same roads, the same buildings, the tress a little taller and the flowers a little more and the cross still in the center of it all. 

This time, this time I see the cross and I cling for dear life because the lies and the oppression and the desire to return to my old ways—it's all so magnified here in this place.

Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers. Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the father of lights in whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. 

I remember the stash of zip-locks in my trunk and the food. I pass by the McDonalds and the Wendys and tears fall. I cry for that girl and her pain and the way out she couldn't see until it was so late. I thank Jesus He taught my eyes to see, that He is still doing that even now, as my eyes gaze at these places in disgust and empathy.

And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you might be perfect and complete lacking in nothing.

Friends and family welcome me home with over-whleming love, and I soak in it because being with them is so sweet. Yet I don't feel home and I remember AGAIN, this is all just a glimpse. Home is waiting and I am longing for it more then ever.

Blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial, for when he has passed the test, he will inherit the crown of life which God promises to those who love him.

So as I pack up the car bright and early, so desperate for an out I just run because quite honestly, lingering here another hour is too much and I know it so good. I drive past that road with that cross and that parking lot where I used to hide in the shadows. It is now packed with cars and little girl dresses walking inside and I know that He is working, that I am being clothed in newness and it is beautiful.

By God's grace, I am learning to pass the test and count it all joy.

Back to my smudge-covered mirrors and bathroom that wreaks of boys and the noise from the nine littles, an anthem to my ears. Back to more tests and trials and joy. Back to the cross to which I cling as I let the waters flood. Back to waiting for the crown of life, for my inheritance and home.

Maybe your battle looks different then mine. But we all wear this coat of flesh and we all feel stuck, consumed by it sometimes. Whether here nor there, freedom is found in letting these words pierce the depths because they give us a glimpse of life outside of the coat. We all need perspective and we all want to look in the mirror and see because forgetting keeps us bound--and let's face it, who wants to live bound?

These words of James are changing my life, teaching me to battle with memorization of Truth—teaching me that I underestimate it. One chapter down I will press on, because I feel less in the world when I think with scripture instead of my flesh. 

Let's be faithful onto death, looking in the mirror and seeing the blemishes only through the law of liberty as we persevere, remaining unstained from the world. 

Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, andto keep oneself unstained from the world.  

{James 1}

A few photos from the weekend with family & friends...