“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.