Sunday, April 23, 2017

Avoidance

According to Google on my phone, the definition of avoidance is "the action of keeping away from or not doing something". I have been practicing avoidance lately. I have been avoiding talking to God about my struggles with my eating behaviors. I know that for me, from past experience, when I pray about a situation that weighs heavily on my mind (no pun intended), it helps me to deal with the circumstances I find myself facing. So why have I been hesitant to go to God with this particular problem? Because there is a lot of shame attached to my eating behaviors and I find myself believing that I should have better control over myself. Certainly God has bigger things to worry about than what I am shoveling into my mouth! Or does He?

I believe that God loves me deeply and unconditionally. I believe that God wants what is best for me and wants to see me happy and healthy and enjoying life. Therefore, it stands to reason that He would take an interest in how I am treating my body. When I'm eating compulsively and to excess, I am miserable. I am frustrated with myself. No, I am furious with myself. And that leads me to say some pretty mean and hateful things to myself, things that I would never even dream of saying to another human being. I start making these ridiculous bargains with myself over what I will or will not eat, when I will or will not eat, "borrowing" calories and carbs from one meal's allotment to be used at another's. I become so totally obsessed with the food that I am not only consuming it, it is consuming me.  And so I sit there, chocolate chip cookies in hand, shoving them into my mouth as fast as I can, almost choking myself on them as I try to chew fast enough to keep up with myself. Where is God in this picture?

This was the scene for me earlier this week. As I sat in the car scarfing down the chocolate chip cookies from McDonald's, I was overcome with an intense sadness, for I could hear God weeping. Not because He was disappointed in me, but because it hurt Him to see me hurting so deeply. I have been trying to avoid acknowledging the depth of my pain, falsely believing that that would make it go away. I have been avoiding sharing it with God, falsely believing that if I didn't speak of it in prayer, He would not know. But God sees what is on my heart and in my mind. He knows. And He stands willing to love me and guide me if I will let Him. He does care about what I put into my mouth because He cares about me in my totality. No amount of food is going to make me "whole". The hole inside me has to be filled with something else. Its time for me to stop avoiding God and allow Him to lovingly fill that void inside my heart.