This is my Journey of being Created in Secret and how I was secretly creating in me a defeated person. In my journaling I have exposed the lie I believed about me and told the truth instead about myself from God’s Word. I hope to inspire you on your journey to find the truth about yourself so that you can replace the lies that bring you down. Each post will explain what was going on at the time of the journal entry along with the lie and the truth.
After meeting with my pastor, I began to see Lara, the prayer minister at my church. I had also made an appointment with a counselor at the seminary. I was very nervous about seeing them because I knew that it meant facing my problems and getting to the bottom of things that I didn't really want to get to.
I am so thankful for these two people and all that they did to help me. They were so loving and kind and had lots of endurance to deal with me. They are true servants of the Lord.
The first time I met with Lara she asked me to make or draw a picture of what I was feeling. I had never done anything like this before and to be honest I thought it was kinda dumb. I had no idea then how much doing this would help me. After I did this I fell in love with it which resulted in years of journaling of which I am sharing with you now. Before I had only written down things that I thought or felt, never had I used creative ways of doing that.
This is the very first piece that I did.
Too Many Eyes
Too many eyes looking to me.
Too many eyes focused on me.
Too many eyes want me to be.
Too many eyes looking to see.
Into my soul they take their gaze.
Into my heart they sear a place.
Into my head they snoop to find.
Into my life they whimper and whine.
Too many eyes looking to me.
Too many eyes focused on me.
Too many eyes want me to be.
Too many eyes looking to see.
The little girl is me and the eyes on the head have bombarded me and are peering into my soul. There are too many of them watching me and waiting to see what I will do, will I live up to their standards and be accepted by them or not. I felt this way, like I was being watched all the time because of the way everyone in my entire life always knew that I was on a diet and they were always watching me to see if I would cheat. I also felt that too many eyes were watching me to see if I was being who I felt that each person wanted me to be. I never really felt accepted by those around me and I always felt like I had to be a different person around each different person in the world and make them happy so that they would not reject me.
The Lie:
I believed that I could never live up to anyone's standard. I was letting everyone around me teach me how to live thinking that it would please them so that they would love me.
The Truth:
To please everyone or anyone really is an impossible thing to do. God says this, “I will instruct you and teach you in the way which you should go; I will counsel you with My eye upon you." Psalm 32:8 (NIV)
By this time (around the beginning of August 2002) I had been fasting for about a month or so and had long ago removed all food from my house. This became a rule that I lived by for about the next 9 years, no food stored in the house. I was eating very little at this time and I knew that things were getting out of control. The spiritual part of the fast had long stopped by this point and not eating became the main focus of my life. I was working with a friend who I also went to church with and as I talked with her about how I was not eating and how I was feeling about it she became very concerned for me. She encouraged me to go and speak with our pastor and did so for several days. It came to a point that she told me that if I did not go and talk with our pastor that she would call him herself about my behavior. I finally did make an appointment and here are the notes that I took with me when we met. I had already shared with my pastor my feelings about 9/11 and he had suggested that I meet with a lady in our church named Lara who was a prayer minister which as of this time I had not yet met her. Also, another friend that I had been sharing with was Tammy who was also able to see that something was wrong.
Pastor: I know that I am leaning toward being in trouble and I know that being open and honest is the only way to save my life, so I wanted to share these thoughts before they become to private or out of control.
I have lost 40 pounds so far and this is good and not good because I have finally accomplished not eating, something that I have wanted to do for years.
I feel as if everything is out of control right now and the only thing that I can control is my eating. Things such as my feelings about 9/11 and what I experienced through that, and most of all, the discipline and the lack thereof in my life. I feel that as soon as I control that then the other things will fall into place.
I feel embarrassed about telling you this because it is a huge mark of spiritual immaturity.
I am nervous about opening myself up to Lara because I don’t know her. Trust is not as easy for me as it used to be.
I am struggling with thoughts of depression and harmful thoughts due to the control issue of eating.
I have been eating less than 300 calories a day and when I go over that I force myself to throw up.
I feel powerful when I am hungry. I am confused by this and angry but yet not wanting to tell people because this secret makes me feel powerful somehow.
Somewhere I got the idea that if you are fasting that you need to be hungry, but I noticed that Jesus fasted 40 days and then was hungry. I have neglected the living on the Word part and now it is not even about fasting and being hungry, it is about punishment of some sort. Being hungry is punishment to me and I feel the need to punish myself to an extreme and even more so for losing focus from the fast.
I feel defeated in the fast and guilty because the fast has stopped, not only did I not accomplish what I wanted, but I am dealing with the beginnings of some very dangerous things and although I recognize it, I don’t know how to stop it.
I honestly want to crawl into a cave and not come out. I spend lots of time sleeping and thinking about how much I am not eating and who will notice and what I will tell them if they do notice.
My friend keeps telling me that I am thinking backwards.
Being sick has nothing to do with not eating at this point. I told the docs at all the ER visits about the fast and not eating and drinking and they said that if was fine for now and my regular doc told me that for now it is not causing problems, but it will soon which made me feel validated somehow.
My pastor’s reply to me was incredible. I have never felt so much love and understanding come from any one person in my life. He told me that he had been watching me since I had been home from NYC and that he knew that I had been sick and in and out of the hospital several times and he told me that he wanted me to go and see a doctor. He said that if I didn’t have a doctor he would personally take me to his doctor and also that he wanted me to start seeing a counselor at the seminary. He told me how much he loved me and how much he wanted me to be happy and healthy and whole so that I could go out and serve God as He had called me to do. Thank God for this man, he saved my life!
The Lie:
I believed that I needed to punish myself to make things right inside of me. I believed that being hungry equaled not only punishment, but accomplishment and strength that I could live off of, the hunger had become my strength. I thought that everything was out of my control and the only way to feel better was to be in control of something, even if it was just one thing, and that was my eating or not eating. I was putting my hope in my ability to not eat thinking that it would make everything else in my life better and ok.
The Truth:
The Lord is my strength and anything else that I rely on for my strength is an idol to me and God said in His Word that we should have no other God’s before Him. An idol is considered a god. Everything was not out of control, it might have looked like that, but God is always in control and He always knows exactly where I am. My reason for staying alive and not dying by my own hand is only possible because my strength comes from the Lord.
Isaiah 40:9 He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak.
Isaiah 40:31 but those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles: they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.
Psalm 46:1 God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble.
Psalm 118:14 The LORD is my strength and my defense; He has become my salvation.
Psalm 28; 7-8 The Lord is my strength and my shield; my heart trusts in him, and He helps me. My heart leaps for joy, and with my song I praise Him. You can Find me at:
This journal entry was sincere and I wanted to seek God more than anything, or so I thought. What I was really doing was falling into more and more delusional thinking that I was truly doing this fast for Spiritual reasons. I was so desperate to change my life, meaning my weight, that I went overboard in my conquest of finding ways and justifying ways for me not to eat. Years later after living in Nigeria I learned the truth about finding my Joy in Christ and His salvation for me instead of seeking out joy through serving Christ.
7-22-02
As I am fasting I am doing so for many reasons and each day very cool things are happening. I not only feel called to this fast for health reasons, but also for spiritual. If I made a list of the physical it would be easy to spout off, but a list of the spiritual would be more running like that of molasses. I know that I will find many things along the way that I am asleep about, many things to put on my list, some I am sure that will come as a surprise. I want to share some of the thoughts that I have gathered from Chapter 2 of John Piper’s Desiring God. I don’t mean to belittle my faith, I do intend to challenge myself to more. Here are a few of my thoughts.
Piper says that conversion can be summed up this way. “Saving faith is the confidence that if you sell all you have, and forsake all sinful pleasures, the hidden treasure of holy joy will satisfy your deepest desires. Saving faith is the heart felt conviction not only that Christ is reliable, but also that He is desirable. It is the confidence that He will come through with His promises and that what He promises is more to be desired that all the world.” (pg. 69)
“And so the joy of faith grows. When Christ calls us to a new act of obedience that will cost us some temporal pleasure, we call to mind the surpassing value of following Him, and by faith in His proven worth we forsake the worldly pleasure. The result? More Joy! More Faith! Deeper than before. And so we go on from joy to joy, and faith to faith.” (pg. 69)
If this is conversion than I say that it’s not that I have never had this, but I have only ever sought-after God, and the things of God, because that is what a Christian is supposed to do. I can’t say that this has ever, not once been an act of joy, not that it has been the opposite either, but joy in Christ, passion in or for Christ, longing, and pure or true faith? I don’t think so, or at least not enough or for long enough to make a difference. I have only been acting out of what has been described to me to do, or demonstrated before me. It is in worship that I notice this the most. Yes, I love worship but it turns out to be only an act of worship with hollowness. The music is good, the people dancing make me smile and sometimes they are funny to watch, but the deep parts of worship that comes with joy due to faith or faith due to joy, that is very few and far between if it has ever really really happened.
Then it must be asked, where does this leave me? Not unsaved, nor unlike countless other believers, but one who is walking with what seems to be that and only that first measure of faith allotted to believe in the first place.
I know that my entire Christian walk has not been in vain, but I am realizing that huge deformed chunks of my life as a “New Creation” are dull, dead, and on it’s last leg. Coming to this point in my thought leaves me empty, not hopeless, but a little lost in the dark feeling. Wondering if I reach for the light switch, will I find it and will the electricity be connected?
The Lie:
I believed that I was not able to have a mature or a more mature spiritual life than what I had as a child. I thought that showing that I loved God, or had joy in God, would be proven by what people saw me doing for God in my service to Him.
The Truth:
Christ is the Joy of our Salvation. Our Joy comes from being one with Christ, and because I find my Joy in Him then I want to serve Him to share that Joy with others. I pray this prayer from
This was the first day of my fast. I truly had good intentions when I began the fast but as you will find out, those intentions were thrown to the wayside after just a short time on the fast. This is my first journal entry about the fast and it explains how I felt about myself as a Christian which gives some insight to why I thought that I was a bad person. There are several reasons that I believed that I was a bad person. At this point in my journey the self-hate had not yet gotten so strong, it was there but I was still happy with myself up to a point. At the end of the journal there is some advice from a man called Bishop. This is the man that invited me to NYC and who later sent me to Nigeria as a missionary. I had not found out yet about having the genetic disorder that contributed to my weight. While it is true that I didn’t eat healthily it is also true that my body just gains weight easy. It was not my fault that I didn’t know that, but I was and still am responsible to treat my body in a healthy way. I’m still a work in progress and the eating disorder is very difficult to work around to do that. Another issue that I had was my health and how much pain I was in all the time. The pain that I suffered and still suffer is caused by the genetic disorders that I have but of course I thought that I felt that way because I of my weight. I think how different my attitude about life and myself would be if I had only known what was wrong with me and that being fat had nothing to do with being lazy which made me feel like a bad person. The heart pain I had is also from the EDS. I have two, not one, but two holes in my heart. Have you ever met anyone with two holes in their heart? Honestly this sounds like a cop out to me, but the truth is that the holes in my heart are due to the EDS and not my weight. I know that being overweight puts a strain on my body in all ways, but the holes were there when I was born, and it was not something that was checked in babies back when I was born. If I had only known the truth…..
July 15, 2002
On fasting. This is the first day of a fast that I believe that should last several months, maybe 4 or 5. I believe that I am hearing that I should fast having only water, and then later fruit in limited amounts. I am also fasting media only allowing myself praise and worship and teaching tapes, both audio and video. My motivation for the fast is to know God more deeply and to fall in love with Christ more deeply and to be more in tune with the Holy Spirit on a new and fresh level and to go to higher places in the spirit.
I am reading, once again, A Hunger for God by John Piper. This is a very practical book about fasting and why and how and anything else that one needs to know about fasting. One of the things that he addresses in this book is the fact that when we fast we will find things in our lives that we need to deal with. He calls it “the Hungry Handmaid of Faith” and gives her credit for reminding us that just as we begin to face ourselves and see dinner as a comfort to come so that we can distract our thoughts with food, she gently, as Piper puts it says, not tonight. He points out from another source Phillips Brooks who says, “The more we watch the lives of men, the more we see that one of the reasons why men are not occupied with great thoughts and interest is the way in which their lives are overfilled with little things.” {Phillips Brooks, “Fasting (a sermon for Lent) in: The Candle of the Lord and Other Sermons (New York: E.P. Dutton and Company, 1881), p. 207} Piper says that “Anger, bitterness, jealousy, strife, fear-if they are within us they will surface during fasting. At first, we will rationalize that our anger is due to our hunger. And then, we know that we are angry because the spirit of anger is within us.
It is this point where I believe that fasting will do me the most good. I see that maybe God has allowed me to become what I am in order to test me to see if I love Him or me or the whatever it is that is keeping me this way. I am speaking of my weight and the abundance thereof. Maybe, just maybe this is why I am this size. I know that it is due to bad eating habits and lots of years of dieting as a child that I didn’t always have a choice in, and also due to the fact that I have become comfortable enough with who I am to not change that. This sounds sick, but I love who I am but, yet I hate every part of me except the part that loves God, which is very inadequate and so immature that I can hardly believe that I am even a functioning Christian.
Fasting, I am not sure about this whole fasting thing. It seems to me that fasting is such a hard job that I can’t seem to get started. I know the benefits of fasting, or at least of the benefits I have seen in others. I also know that if I don’t eat that I will lose weight, that is a natural law. I think that if it is a natural law, then why fight it, fast and lose, but then I think that if I am fasting to lose weight that I am not fasting to gain more of Christ. How can this be? Can I do both? And is it the losing of me that needs to happen because it is me that I am so comfortable with that is partly keeping me from having more of Christ.
I think about having a new body and I see the benefits there, a husband, nice clothes, respect from others, beauty, a place in the world. Is this really all my soul desires, or is this really what all I am afraid of? I don’t see that I can’t have any of these things as I am now, it is just that in order to do that I would have to be so outstandingly special that I am not sure that I would like me anymore and what is the point of being if you don’t like yourself?
Honestly, thinking about all of this is not only making me hungry, but sleepy. I have been through nutrition classes and I have learned all about eating the way that God has created us, and I know the signs of detoxing and I can already see this happening, and I know more than anything that my body is starving for nutrition. You see, I didn’t get this big by just overeating for the sake of overeating out of an addiction to food. I got this way by never giving my body the nutrition that it needs. I only filled my stomach but never the nutritional needs of my body so as a result I gained weight and held onto everything that my body took in. This was a very eye opening discover to me but what have I done about it? Let’s see, I found this out three years ago, ate fairly okay, really well according to the nutritional needs of my body for two years and a year has past now without doing that. Not a good record.
In starting this fast I already feel condemned. I know that there is no condemnation in Christ, but I still feel it. I am guessing that this would be the first of many things to deal with. I can’t seem to separate fasting with dieting, or starving. I just can’t seem to think of fasting without obsessing about losing weight. I often think of dieting without thinking of fasting. I think that if I have gotten all of the un-attention in my life that I haven’t had, then not eating and being thin as a result will get me the attention that I have always wanted. Now, as a matter of reduction, no pun intended, I rack this attention thing up to a spirit of rejection. Yes, I have dealt with it, but…… well, that is all I have to say because I still deal with it. I don’t see myself as valued in the way that seems right. I see myself valued up to the point that if anyone looks at me and then that flies out of the window because being heavy is associated with being undisciplined and lazy. Well, who wants to listen to a minister who is undisciplined, that would be clear that that minister’s walk with the Lord is not up to par. So, I go back to weight loss. Is it okay to fast and hope for weight loss? (Notice that prayer and Bible reading which should be a big part of fasting have not been mentioned yet, I can’t get to those thoughts because thoughts of weight loss gets in the way.)
I am actually mad at the fact that I need to fast. I am not mad that I need to fast to grow my relationship with Christ, I am mad that I have to fast in order to get to a point where the fast is just about that and not about me. I am getting confused and this is what happens each time I try to fast. The thoughts about losing weight are so strong that I forget about the reason that I am fasting, and why this is a problem is because I am too happy with myself to fight too lose weight although I have the strongest of desires to be thin. I think that I am happy with me now so why struggle with such a thing as dieting to make me happy when I am already happy? On a deeper level I see this in my spiritual life. I am happy knowing who I am in Christ so why struggle with such a thing as fasting when I am doing just fine where I am. Here is the key, how stupid of me to be satisfied with my infinitely small stinky pitiful spiritual life that I live and not want more of God. WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME? I do desire more of God, but I have no discipline and therefore I can neither diet, fast, or do anything that would benefit me.
A bit of encouragement for me is taken again from John Piper. He says that “True mortification of our carnal nature is not a simple matter of denial and discipline. It is an internal, spiritual matter of finding more contentment is Christ than in food. It can be said then that I don’t have to worry about weight loss and more prayer, but that these both will be a result of fasting.
Aside from the spiritual aspects of fasting and the weight loss I so badly desire, there is the health issue. I am very unhealthy. My body is starving for nutrition and I know that I must get this under control or else I will die. My heart is an issue, my chest hurts all the time, whether it is muscles or really my heart, it hurts. I don’t have periods in any regular manner. My feet hurt and my back and my neck and my head and oh, I hurt all over. Then there is the hepatitis A thing that has taken a toll on me and I know that I need to give my body time to heal from that. I see all of this and I think of course I should do a Barley Green fast, but then I think that it is my pride that gets in the way. I am too proud or maybe it is not pride, maybe it is shame, that I don’t want people to know that I am on a diet because then they will watch me and lord it over me and only prove me to be a failure, so I must fast for spiritual reasons although that is a good cop out, it is true that I need that too.
Bishop says that I can fast for all three or one or two or whatever it is that I want to fast for and God will still honor it. He also told me to not do it out of religion. I am being too religious about it, he said to just go for it.
I am very frustrated, and I see that weight is a stronghold for me and I must tear down that stronghold but once I do then there is the weight that still needs to go. I know that once I tear down that stronghold then I will feel better about the weight that needs to go and I believe that it will go quickly and I can move on with the more spiritual aspects of the fast.
How to deal with the stronghold: Come to terms that this is who I am. There are parts of me that I have not dealt with. Forget that the past has ever happened, go on with the future. Inner works- preach to self to over come will power. Realize that personality is not the same as the Spirit man. Say, I have this weight but it is not me.
The Lie:
I believed that God made me fat and kept me that way to see if I would love Him even though I was fat. It felt hopeless to me being overweight and like I could never have any happiness, or a normal life because I was overweight, and how much of it I had had become my whole focus, so much so that I couldn’t even think about the spiritual part of my fast which was only one area in my life where I felt condemned. I felt condemned in this area because I felt to be overweight and not fix it was a sin. I believed that the weight that I carried was who I was. I believed that my weight controlled what type of person that I was. I was told by someone, and I believed it, that no one would listen to what I have to say about God and His gospel because I was too fat to be a good example to others.
The Truth:
My spirit is not the same as my body. My weight does not determine the type of person that I am. God can use anyone that He wants to spread His Gospel, and even more so someone who is willing to be used by Him. I was willing to share the Gospel because I am not ashamed of what God has done for me like the Bible says in
Romans 1:16 EVS
“For I am not ashamed of the Gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.”
Since I was and am willing to share the Gospel I am confident that when God said in Acts and Mark that we should share the Gospel that because He didn’t say that we must be skinny, or not as fat, or have any certain physical look to share the Gospel that I can go and share the Gospel. If you notice in these two verses the Bible doesn’t reference any appearance at all for the ability to share the Gospel.
Acts 1:8 ESV
“But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria,
and to the end of the earth.”
Mark 16:15 ESV
“ And he said to them, “Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation.”
Because I am a Christian, a believer in Christ and His death and resurrection from the grave, I am free of condemnation. That means that my sin cannot condemn me to hell. My weight was caused from a medical issue and because
God is a loving and merciful God He does not judge me for something that I cannot help.
Romans 8:1-2 ESV
“There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus
