First, I was bound by my unforgiveness of my father. I didn�t have a great relationship with him growing up. I was often disobedient to the extreme, and to control me, he would sometimes resort to violence.
Second, I was bound by my extreme self hate. For over a year and a half, from May of 2002 through December of 2003, I can�t remember one day that went by when I didn�t think �I hate myself,� �I am evil,� �I am worthless� or some variation thereof. Most of the time, I really did believe myself to be those things. Often, the most frustrating times would be when I was trying to pray or worship God, and thoughts of how horrible and worthless I was would invade my time alone with God. This served to only deepen my depression, as I couldn�t even find refuge in my Heavenly Father. The 2003 fall semester, I almost completely stopped spending time with God. Satan�s attacks were worst during those times, and, for four months, he was successful in keeping me from the arms of my God.
My self hate led me to hurt myself on purpose. It started as a way to punish myself for being mean to my family. Then as a way of dealing with any anger so it didn�t explode. Finally, by Christmas break of 2003, I was hurting myself almost daily, for things as little as finals stress, saying something slightly wrong, embarrassment, etc. Though I fought it, I felt myself being consumed by self hate and the only way, I felt, to alleviate even a little of that hate was to physically punish myself for real or imagined faults.
Over Christmas break of 2002, I decided that I needed to do something other than hurt myself because I didn�t want people to notice physical scars. I discovered that if I didn�t eat, it served the same function�giving me pain as a way to punish myself for being bad. Little did I know that this would soon control my mind as much as the self hate did. I�d never had to worry about my weight, and for the most part, I ate what I wanted. But, when I stopped eating over Christmas, my thoughts were soon consumed by how much I weighed. I started memorizing calorie amounts in different foods, and weighing myself multiple times a day. However, as you can see, my weight did not drop very low. That is because I would get really hungry, and when I did, I would give in and eat a little bit of food that I�d classified as �forbidden.� After I�d eaten a little, I couldn�t stop, and I would eat a lot until I physically couldn�t eat any more. After one of those secret binges, I would be extremely angry with myself and would hurt myself.
I didn�t know how to get out of this cycle. I had people praying for me, talking with me, etc. A lot of you knew that I was struggling, though you didn�t really know how�thank you for your prayers. I would pray and ask God to take this from me, but at the same time would be thinking about how I could keep myself from binging and how I could convince everyone that I was ok, when I was falling apart.
This is how I entered the Urbana missions� conference. I was a wreck, though I tried hard to put up a fa�ade. I felt so far from God, wondering why He hadn�t taken these struggles from me�wondering if I even wanted Him to. I wondered what I was doing at Urbana�.if I could even serve Him as messed up as I was. I didn�t even know if I truly wanted to serve Him or if I was just saying that to look good.
Then, the second night of the conference, the speaker started talking about idolatry. I tried not to listen, and my thoughts were everywhere but one what she was saying. Then, she said, �God, we want to serve you, but we are so frustrated because we keep on sinning.� That grabbed my attention, because I had written the same thing in my journal two hours prior to when she said that. I had also said the same thing to one of my friends the night before, and the same thing to another friend the weekend before finals started.
At that moment, I decided that I really did want to give this up to God, but, as I was trying, I found that I couldn�t. The temptation was still there. The self loathing was still there. Finally, shaking in fear and with tears rolling down my cheeks, I screamed out in my mind, �God, I want to give this to you�I think! But I can�t. Oh, God, I can�t! So, if you want it�take it!� It was like God had been waiting for me to ask, because I have never had a faster answer to prayer. The minute I had prayed that prayer, and it was gone. Everything I�d been struggling with, from my unforgiveness to my self hate. Both the cutting and the eating�everything was completely gone.
I used to end this story with "for the most part, it's stayed gone." but it hasn't. I've returned a little bit to the ed and will return to therapy in a few weeks when I return to school. I didn't realize that it would continue to be a struggle. But, God has been faithful to sustain me and to forgive me when I give in to temptations to restrict or to skip meals. I have confidence that one day I will be completely recovered and able to help others who are where I have been.