Monthly Archives: November 2020

The Light Shines

Posted by justthegoodstuff in Journey to Peace

“In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.”
‭‭Matthew‬ ‭5:16

It was a gorgeous, sunny day in March 2019. I had a friend over working with me at my business. When I left to take her home, I realized that I need to stop and help someone that I have known all of my adult life and has actually been a horrifically negative force on my struggles. To classify this relationship as dysfunctional is weak. 

This day, as most days in the past, several comments and stressors happened. When we got in the car to leave, a sigh left the deepest part of me. It had just become more exhausting and overwhelming as the years had gone on. 

I began to vent about it all and at some point I say – very much in passing and not really meaning it – “I want to stick my face into a box of cupcakes.”  

Rant over, nothing said about the cupcakes and I drop her off at her house.

I head directly to the cupcake shop that is around the corner from her home and make the purchase.

As I’m driving home I feel the familiar jittery, uncontrollable feeling start. Part of me wants to stop on the side of the road and eat them. The other part of me is battling a raging and deep self hatred, coupled with a sadness I can’t explain. Its what I’ve called “emotional eating” for years and I can imagine it’s what a drug addict feels like. 

My cell phone rings and it’s her.

“Hey, what’s going on” I say in a little-bit-too-chipper, nonchalant voice. 

•I can still visualize the section of road I’m on when this call happens•

“Listen, I heard you when you said you wanted to stick your face in a box of cupcakes while you were talking earlier” she says. “Please don’t do that to yourself. I know you are upset and that was all a lot to take but you will only feel worse if you eat a bunch of cupcakes.  I know, I’ve done things like that. It’s not the answer”

I can’t recall if she verbally said “I care about you” but she was SAYING I care about you.  Her voice was kind and and I could feel the genuineness and lack of judgement.

“Oh I was just saying that,” I begin. I woul . . . I’m not going to. . .” I try to say.

I am in no way a liar. I just can’t do it, not then, not ever. If I were to ever need a polygraph, they wouldn’t even need the electrodes. They could just look at me and listen to my voice.

“I have the cupcakes sitting in the seat beside me. I already have them” I tell her as the tears start. 

We continued to talk and I tell her I had to stop for gas on my way home and I would throw them away. She stayed on the phone with me as I tossed that box of cupcakes in the gas station garbage.

Oddly, there was no relief in the cupcake trashing. What I thought would have been resolution left me emotionally worn down.  Later, I would discover why but at the time, I needed to toss them and go on as usual, feeling I had accomplished something or even just dodged a bullet. Instead, I was left unsettled and had trouble shaking it. 

Some days later I was talking to my son, now living a beautiful life and past his younger ordeal. I still felt emotionally wrecked and I was telling him what happened. I expressed all of my frustrations and sadness over all of the wasted years that this “emotional eating” had plagued me. 

My son is incredibly wise and eloquent with his words.

“Mom have you talked to ‘M’ about this?”

“Well” I say, telling him about the Nutritionist ‘M’ spoke about and my checking into it. 

“Well? Do it” he says.

I try to say a few things but land on the real reason I haven’t.  “It’s a fairly expensive  process and I just can’t swing it right now, but I may look into it again later.” The file cabinet inside my head pulls out the list of past diet failures and is also thinking “what a waste of your time.” I don’t say that to him.

He begins telling me how he knew I had struggled over the years and he would love to see me overcome this battle, that I deserve that. I deserve freedom from what he eloquently related to drug addiction.  ••Don’t overthink this. Some people seem to be deeply passionate about this topic. I’m not relating the severity of the two, it’s just an analogy. Additionally, I have had so many discussions about this and so many opinions and my final conclusion came a few weeks ago from my trainer and I’m sticking with his wisdom and won’t think about it again.••

My son continues, telling me that I have always cared for him and others and that I needed to do something for myself.

Tears start. So. Many. Tears. In. This. Journey.

He goes on. “Mom” – I can’t even write this without bawling, again – “you were the one that was steadfastly there for me during my entire ordeal. You have cared for me my entire life, never giving up on me.  You were the only one that never left.” There was more said about who didn’t stay steadfast, who did what, etc. but that I was the ever present one that helped him live. ••For the record, I’m not playing God. I have an entire blog on the journey that led him to recovery and redemption and God alone saved my son.••

Passion is rising in his voice paralleled with the amount of tears that are falling from my eyes. He is acknowledging something that I never knew I needed acknowledged. In what is about to become the frontlines of my war with what I think is emotional eating, a battle is won.

As a Christian and a mom, I need no affirmation for what I’ve sacrificed for him. I love him with the deepest kind of love – I mean God even gave birds the instinct to try to kick ass over THEIR babies. Of course I did every single thing in my power to help keep him alive.  I need no accolades over the God-given instinct to protect my child.

With one-hundred percent honesty, however, I needed to hear the words he said that day, that hadn’t been said before. It was deeply healing. 

“Mom, I will pay for this for you. I would love to do that.”

I am one stubbornly independent person, and allowing my son to do this was tough, but in the end I agreed to it.

I did the next hard thing and with trembly hands, I made the call.

Deep Darkness

Posted by justthegoodstuff in Journey to Peace and tagged with ,

“He uncovers the deeps out of darkness and brings deep darkness to light.

Job‬ ‭12:22‬ ‭ 

Approximately 523 years ago I began counseling. 

Okay, maybe more like 10 ish years ago but the novel that was – and still is –  being written has many chapters and FEELS like it should have been 523 years.

I was referred to a God-given gift of a counselor during the most painful season of my life. My father was in the end stages of cancer during which time, my only son was going off the proverbial deep end of his young life.

Not handling any of this in any sense of a healthy manner, a friend told me about a Christian counselor that became my lifeline.

In the years during and since that time of crisis, where she has walked with me through what seems to be endless “you can’t make this ish up” seasons of life,  I have posed a painful and baffling question to her. 

“‘M’, I am a person that can achieve anything I set my mind to. I have had a baby as a terrified single 20 year old with little emotional support, gone to college – twice, bought and built homes, raised a child, college for a third time in my 40’s to achieve my goal of having a bachelors degree – maintaining a 4.0 GPA ‘simply’ because I wanted to (I will come to realize there was absolutely no ‘simply’ about it later), gotten jobs, started a business, etc. etc.”

“Why can’t I achieve and maintain a healthy weight? What is wrong with me?”

You didn’t see that coming, did you?

If you just said to yourself, “Melissa why don’t you JUST (fill in the blank with workout, eat right, get on x plan, I sell xx that changed my life, do so and so diet”) or any other ‘JUST’ that you perceive would solve my problem, I graciously ask you NOT to share that with me but to open your mind WIDE to something that you may not and probably won’t understand. Someone will understand this, however, and need to hear this. God has been working on my heart to document this journey because I KNOW I’m not alone in this struggle. 

Back to ‘M’s office where, when I have asked this question over the years, we would have a brief discussion before anxiety would creep in. I’m a specialist at diversions when I’m uncomfortable. 

BUT. One time, basically in passing, she mentioned that she knew of a Nutritionist that “worked with people” but she didn’t have much feedback on the program.

Feeling desperate and thinking it might be worth checking on, I researched and discovered this was a fairly expensive process. Computer closed. Info stored in the back recesses of my mind. Continue on with. All THE things. 

What are all THE things? 

All the things began when I was in Middle school, earlier if I were being honest. I’ll get to most of those later, but one of them was COUNTLESS diets over the years. 

COUNT. LESS. 

One of the first, and what I believe to be the most destructive on my body AND my psyche, was starvation. The amount of calories I was consuming was so low that I was living in a fog, passing out occasionally, and blaming it on a variety of things when others were present. I got labeled with an “allergy” to a common antibiotic that stuck with me for years  because I used that as an excuse for one of my episodes.

Mentally, the damage was deepening. I was the lowest weight i had ever been, others noticed and commented, but what •I• saw in the mirror was still just “fat.”

There will be an entire post on the F word and it’s role in this journey that will come later. 

For now, fast forward to 2019 and there are hundreds of gaps to be filled in, but what was in the dark came out into the (dim) light.  

What I will say to create some understanding of what was going on those years is that I was compiling lists in my mind. There were lists of ALL those diets and their subsequent failures, lists that kept track of “good” and “bad” foods, lists of the hurtful words of others, lists of every weight I had been and what year and how I felt at the time, a list of ways to ‘emotionally eat’ or, conversely, not eat, to cope with anxiety, lists that included how I felt about myself – unworthy, unlovable, not valuable, self hatred, and on and on. It was an enormous nuclear bomb of things that were one good crisis away from an explosion.

As it turns out, the crisis came in the form of a cupcake.