I’m very exhausted, which means I have no filter and no self-restraint…. Which is probably my God given protection against pride.

I’m a hopeless sinner.

Completely and utterly hopeless.

I’m snarky, rude, and I am the literal least charitable person on the face of the planet. When I’m exhausted and crabby I get silly and I get sinner-y.

So just in case you thought I was perfect(which I’ve given you no reason to think that, but you know. Sometimes people think weird things) I will tell you with complete and utter hopeless abandon that I’m a dirty rotten sinner. I don’t deserve any of the wonderful things that have happened, are happening, and will happen. I just really don’t.

Hallelujah I serve a God who doesn’t judge me based on the things I do. A God who is willing to overlook all my sin, to forgive me, to give me a perfect record, to declare me as clean. A God who longs to pardon me. Who aches to give me hope– to be my hope.

That is all.

A lot of people believe that eating disorders are a cry for attention. That might be true for some people, but there comes a point when everyone suffering from an eating disorder hides it. I hide it. I have hidden it. When I started at 10 I hid it. Maybe I’m a sucker for punishment or maybe this is the next step in my self-constructed recovery plan, but either way I feel like I need to put my story out there. Like in its entirety, not just the parts I’m more comfortable with sharing. This is on my blog because nobody reads my blog anyway. It can still be a secret, right? I’m not so sure that’s what I really want….

At a girls conference in 2006 when Natalie Grant put a name to the thing I’d been doing I cried. I knew that I wasn’t glorifying God with my choices and at the age of 12 I was already in so deep I had no idea how to get out. I talked to my mom after puking my guts out on a bus. On the trip they didn’t allow us to skip meals. By the end of the long weekend I felt so stuffed and sick and I felt so hopeless about my eating disorder I couldn’t fight it. What followed was severe depression and thoughts of suicide. I hid that as well. I hid in my room, even though that’s where my demons were. I hid from my family. I didn’t have any friends. Not one. I was completely alone. Except I wasn’t.

I read the Psalms through multiple times. God pulled me out. God showed me I was worth more than my self-esteem. He captured my attention. He took my mind off the excruciating pain in my stomach. He took my mind off of myself. He conquered the disorder.(For more about this time see my previous blog posts. I surprisingly have an easier time talking about how I almost killed myself.)

I shared my testimony at church and the result was a woman in her 20s shared her own story with me. For the first time in my life I felt like it wasn’t just me (and only recently my mom) fighting a hidden war.

In the 8th grade I wore a size zero. I have been the same height since before then, yet I was probably 110 pounds and a size zero.

By the time I hit freshman year I’d put on 15 more pounds, but that was mostly in the womanly areas. With the stress of school and the lack of motivation to pack a lunch I slipped into a really sucky pattern of only eating once a day: when getting home from school. I remember Rebekah making comments about how our (my two next oldest brothers and my’s) eating patterns were indicative of eating disorders but I thought in my head “I eat a lot more than I used to, I’m doing fine.”

I wasn’t doing fine and when we did BMI’s in my gym class I scored a 19. Which is technically normal. but barely. And for me, my BMI is always going to be a little higher than it should be. My teacher didn’t even blink. I ached. I burned. I screamed. I wanted someone to take me aside and help me. But I was too afraid, too ashamed to ask for help. Towards the end of the year life started normalizing(what does that even mean? Life hasn’t been normal since I started down this road….) and I gained 10 more pounds.

One day my sophomore year I had a panic attack and ended up spending half of the day in the counselors office. My period was late and I was terrified that I was losing it. Again. The only reason I went to the counselor was because my former detasseling bus driver(who also teaches biology) saw me crying in the hall during lunch break and practically dragged me there. I lucked out in the counselors office.

The woman who I ended up talking to was subbing for another counselor. After talking for a little while she did a huge public school no-no, one that probably saved me life. She said “I’m guessing your faith is very important to you. Well, Grace…” And she proceeded to speak the word of God into my life. It turns out she was home fundraising to return to the mission field and had picked up the sub job as a favor to a former coworker. We talked. My mom showed up. We talked some more. I went home early. My mom called and set me up an appointment with the doctor. We went. We talked. We were referred to the psychiatrists office across the hall. We scheduled an appointment. We canceled a week later. We decided to do our own recovery.

Now I’m wondering if we should’ve kept the appointment.

Seven years and 40 pounds later and I haven’t changed at all. I feel like my mind is broken.

I hate the feeling of constant starvation. I hate the feeling of being stuffed beyond anything because of a piece of toast. I hate the fluctuation between pigging out one day and spending the next curled up in the fetal position. I hate getting dizzy when I stand up. I hate the stretch marks that line my hips and thighs. I hate that little pooch that sticks out over my jeans. I hate the lanugo. I hate seeing little droplets of water getting caught in it when I shower. I hate that glaring 145 whenever I step on the scale. I hate thinspiration. I hate the eating disorder section in every nutrition and psychology class I’ve ever been in. I hate that I have big hands. I hate fat jokes. I hate thin jokes. I hate our societies fixation on weight. I hate that it isn’t another philosophical discussion that I can get impersonally angry about. I hate that my ribs, sternum and collar bone stick out. I hate that I’ve never thought of myself as thin. I hate that I’m terrified of being bigger than I am now. I hate that I can’t trust what I see in the mirror. I hate that I gain weight when I exercise. I hate that at any given moment I could vomit. I hate that I’ve hurt everyone that’s important to me. I hate that I isolate myself. I hate that I like the isolation. I hate when people ask “how are you” and all I can think is “I can’t tell you.” I hate how vulnerable I am. I hate that I can’t do this on my own. I hate that this ever happened in the first place. I hate that my coworkers make sharp comments about the disease. I hate that they don’t know. I hate that one of my residents guessed it and called me out on it. I hate that I can’t go a single day without being reminded. I hate that I cry at church every week because I’m reminded that I am completely wretched and God is completely forgiving. I hate that I’ve lost sight of the victory I have in Christ.

I hate that I feel like I did this to myself. I hate that I feel like God isn’t bigger than my problem.

I need Jesus. Desperately.

And for whoever is reading this(ugh I’m so pathetic) I need you to be vocal. I need you to text me, call me, message me, do whatever you have to do to tell me that I’m not alone and that I can do it. Even when I’m crabby and get angry I need you to do it. Don’t ask me what I ate. Don’t tell me to eat. Tell me I can survive. Remind me that God is bigger.

Now as a few-months-shy-of-twenty teen you’re all probably reading the title of my post and thinking “What the heck does she know about contentment?”

Well. It’s not very easy being a college student who actually wants the career she’s studying for. It’s not easy being the youngest of seven kids when all your best friends are marrying your brothers, leading to the coupling and giggling and disgusting girl things that make me want to vomit. Like cuddling. Who came up with cuddling anyway? I digress. It’s not easy being a severe introvert and still living with the parentals at 20(especially when I was dead set on moving out right when I turned 18). It’s not easy having a heart for the nations but no means of getting there.

Did you know that no matter how “rich” a person is, they never see themselves as rich. I went to school with a bunch of rich kids and they all said “we’re not rich, those kids down south are rich.” and the kids down south say “We’re not rich, those kids over east are rich.” I say “Oh we’re not rich, those people at east and south are rich.” But people who grew up downtown are saying “Wow, Grace is so rich.” This isn’t isolated to my experience, there are studies that show that it doesn’t matter where on the social class totem pole an individual is, they’re always looking at the next person up and saying “Oh no, I’m not rich, that person is.”

I’m not rich. I work 20 hours a week in order to pay tuition to work another 20 hours a week in order to graduate from nursing school with a degree that says I can work 50 hours a week. I live with my parents, I drive a junky car, I work three jobs, I barely sleep, I barely eat, I am definitely not rich.

And yet I am. I am one of the richest people on the face of the planet.

The secret to contentment is thanks given to the one who deserves it.

I go to college. I know what I want to be when I leave college. I have guaranteed admission to my dream nursing school provided I keep my GPA up. I have the tenacity to keep my GPA up. My parents put up with me. I don’t have to pay rent. I haven’t been kicked out of my parents house because of my snotty, stressed out, childish, dead-week behavior. I’m already working in the field I want to be in. I love my job. I really love my job. My two jobs are the direct provision of my heavenly father who gives me exactly what I need. I have a heavenly father who keeps me away from things that I want, but would harm me in the long run.  I am the bride of one who is capable of fulfilling every desire. I am the bride of one who desires to fulfill my every desire. I belong to the Healer. I belong to the Forgiver. I belong to the Lover. I belong to the One who gives rest. I can hold the hand that holds the world…

Yeah, I’m single. I don’t care. Yeah, I’m still living at home. So what? Yeah I don’t ever sleep. I can sleep when I’m dead. Yeah I might fail those finals I have. Yeah I might die in a plane crash. Yeah I might never hold my own kids or walk down the aisle. But who cares? I am so rich. Why would I begrudge a few coins when I’m Smaug in his dragon cave?

A final thought: Why are you even discontented? Is it because you desire something good, or is it because there’s a sin in your life that you aren’t giving over to God? Perhaps the desire for a spouse is actually lust. Perhaps the hatred for your job is actually pride. Perhaps the reason why you aren’t happy living with your parents is because you refuse to forgive. Think about it.

I always second guess myself when I say that I ended my eating disorder on that day when I still struggle with anorexia to this day. For some strange reason my first instinct in reaction to stress is to starve myself. I would say it’s a survival instinct, but no. Starving yourself isn’t Darwinian by any stretch of the imagination. Regardless, I still claim that day as a day of victory for one fact and one alone: That was the day that Jesus conquered my sin and became Lord of that area of my life. Do I covet his lordship and try to take it back? Absolutely. Does my sin and disobedience make him any less Lord? Never.

The months that followed that fateful night were hard, to say the least. I think I’ve recounted this numerous times on this here bloggasaurus, but I never really get tired of sharing God’s work in my life, so I’m going to reiterate. November 20th, 2006 was the day that Satan started attacking me. By God’s grace I was given discernment between the voice of God and the voice of Satan. Without this maybe I would have taken the pills. For what felt like months the devil whispered in my ear “This isn’t worth it. You’re worthless. The only way to make the pain go away is to end your life.”

For all of you recovering anorexics out there maybe you can relate to the pain I’m talking about. Aside from the obvious emotional pain that was happening in my life, there was the “I haven’t eaten this much in years, but I’m so hungry” pain. It’s like the discomfort of eating too much at a buffet amplified by a thousand. It’s the pain that makes you want to throw up in the slight hope that it might alleviate the pressure.

So night after night I would lie in the fetal position on my bed, the devil whispering in one ear and my savior whispering in the other. Satan telling me “You’re worthless.” and my heavenly father telling me “You are so valuable, I have so much planned for you.”

In my anguish I turned to reading through the Psalms over and over again. Psalms 40 became my daily reading.

1 I waited patiently for the Lord;
he turned to me and heard my cry.
2 He lifted me out of the slimy pit,
out of the mud and mire;
he set my feet on a rock
and gave me a firm place to stand.
3 He put a new song in my mouth,
a hymn of praise to our God.
Many will see and fear the Lord
and put their trust in him.

I cried out to God and this passage gave me confidence that not only did He hear me, but that he was going to pull me out of it.

As I grew in my faith and relationship with God the spiritual warfare didn’t lessen. If anything it grew worse, but my attitude was completely different.

The harder Satan tried to get me to end my life, the more I realized how important I am to God.

“I must be so important to God that the devil hates me this much. God must really have big things in store for me since Satan is trying so hard to kill me.”

On a day not long afterward God met me during a worship service. I rushed to a closet to meet with my God, and there He wooed me. He said “Grace I have a plan. You are so important. Will you do it.”

and like a fool I asked “God how big is this? How much of me do you want?”

God’s response “Dream your biggest dream, my plan for you is bigger. Give me everything. Totally surrender to me.”

And that’s how I got the name for my original blog.

I’ve been experiencing this really strange phenomenon lately. I’m not sure if this is an external attack of my mind or a consequence of my crazy schedule….

But I’m experiencing a certain level of social anxiety.

I’ve always been an anxious person to begin with, but I’ve never particularly cared about what people think…

That was until I started working at my current job.

Being a full subscriber to the scientific method I’ll tell you all the different factors that might contribute to my social anxiety.

1. I am entirely around people I don’t know very well. I NEVER hang out with my old friends. And by never I mean very rarely.

2. The gossip-mill is very active. My coworkers criticize everyone else, why not me?

3. I’m working around 50 hours a week. Including three 12 hour shifts. I’m tired.

4. My church going is erratic. I don’t go to the same service each week. I don’t see the same people each week. I don’t really have an opportunity to actually develop relationships with people.

I’m going to say that there are probably more things to it, and all of them contribute to my anxiety, but the end result is that whenever I’m in public I feel like I have to prove to everyone that I’m worth their time. Unfortunately due to my exhaustion I can’t form coherent thoughts and I lose my filter. I say things without thinking about them and in the end I feel like I’ve either wasted people’s time by saying stuff that makes no sense, or that I’ve somehow inadvertently insulted these people and they now hold me in contempt.

I don’t want to leave my house now.

This is a problem.

I don’t even know why I’m writing this. You’ll probably all think I’m some crazy emotionally unstable person who needs affirmation from everyone. Well you’re probably right if you think that.

I need help.

help.

I read this verse over my early morning breakfast(Not to be confused with second breakfast. Second breakfast happens during a 15 minute break at work.) and I was spiritually backhanded to the face… For two reasons.

1. “And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists...”

In order to please God you must do these two things… first believe that he exists. Say whaaaaa? I never reflect on the fact that it pleases God that I simply acknowledge his existence.

2. “And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.”

Yesterday I was praying on the way to work(after breakfast but before second breakfast) and I was praying for my friends and making a monumental step in my relationship with God. As I was praying I found myself asking God for two things. One unselfish and the other quite selfish. This selfish request has been an idol in my heart for the majority of my life. In praying I quoted the above verse(not knowing where it was found) and almost jabbed my finger in God’s chest “You promised!…..”

And in that moment my heart softened and I found myself praying “But God, if I had to give up this selfish desire that you might be glorified in the unselfish…. I would be totally cool with that.”

And in that moment one more idol was torn down in the heart of Grace Menter.

So this morning when I read that verse my mind went automatically back to my hasty, desperate, pleading prayer that was trying to cheat God out of a blessing…. And a profound question was raised in my mind.

Do I believe that God rewards those who earnestly seek him?

Not only this but it says that without faith that God does such it’s impossible to please him! I was pleading in the car and at that point God was probably like “Why are you begging? I’m insulted that you feel like you have to ask twice. I am not amused. You should know that I want to give you these things. Why don’t you know this?”

So often I come to God and I’m like “God you can do this so you should! Because you should!” when, if I’m interpreting correctly, I should be coming with a different kind of confidence: the confidence of right relationship. Like a kid would ask a favor from their dad. “God, I know that we are locked in a relationship centered around mutual earnest pursuit and because of this I know that you want to give me something nice. Like maybe some diamonds or something. Well can I hint about what I want?”

And the great part is that God rewards himself and rewards me at the same time because when you are locked in earnest pursuit your desires become the same as those of the one you are pursuing.

Holy double win, batman!

Trivial: not momentous. e.g. What you had for lunch(hopefully), who won the superbowl, how much wood a woodchuck could chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood,…

My decision to cut my hair….

Granted I haven’t cut my hair in four years and it WAS down to my natural waist, but let’s be real…. Who cares if my hair is long or short. Well aside from me and my future sister-in-law….

I’ve been thinking about cutting my hair ever since the beginning of March when my sister got married. She said “Nope, you aren’t chopping your hair off before my wedding!” So I didn’t do it then…. Well lately I’ve been on an Elizabeth McGovern kick and she has the exact hair I wanted…. so my desires to cut my hair were once again aroused.

Tim proposed to Joanna, who was in fact the person I entrusted with the task of smacking me in the face if I ever seriously thought about cutting my hair. Well considering she will be marrying my brother I asked her if I could cut my hair before her wedding. She gave her blessing instead of smacking me like I’d asked her to do. I agonized for about two weeks and finally this morning… well…

This happened.

Do I like it? I don’t know. Do I regret it? I really don’t know. Do I miss my long hair? Yes. Does it make me almost want to start sobbing when I see those ponytails that some child will eventually wear? YES! A thousand times yes! And I’m selfish. I want to attach those back to my own hair. But I can’t. It’s done…. Oh well….. it’ll grow back.

I’m getting a fresh start without damage. I should be happy. Well I am. Kind of.

I’ve had a lot of dreams. When I was a little girl I wanted to be an entomologist. Then I had a dream I was an entomologist and I woke up in a cold sweat. I stopped dreaming of being an entomologist. Then I dreamed of being a concert pianist. That one lasted for a long while. It was killed by laziness and a lack of aptitude. After pianist was ethnomusicologist. A fancy word for ethnic music geek. That lasted until the summer after my junior year when I took a CNA class. The result was a long bit of praying and eventually a change in dream.

If I’ve ever dreamed of never being something it was a nurse. I refused to be in the medical field. Blood, needles, wounds, sick people….. no. not me. never.

And yet my dream changed. I don’t know how that happened.

I’ve always had a certain dream though. One that hasn’t changed, and I think that’s because it’s in the heart of every human being. I dream of being pursued. Of having an amazing individual decide that I’m worth the time and effort.

Of all of my dreams this is the only one that has and possible will ever come true. And honestly that has to be okay with me. I’m not guaranteed any of my dreams, but I am guaranteed this.

I have a God in heaven who pursues me. A God who makes me want to be the best version of myself without making me feel like I need to be the best version of myself.

Just to preface this post, my sister got married last Saturday. For her wedding she did all the flowers and stuff. One of my duties as bridesmaid was to help make all the boutonnieres and crap. I poked my index finger with the florists wire and it ended up being infected. My finger hurts like hell, so this is going to be a pretty short post. Hope I don’t get mrsa in my wounded finger tomorrow at work… just a thought.

I’m going to be real and tell y’all that I’m in a valley right now. If I were going to slap an excuse on it I would say I’m too exhausted to pursue my relationships right now(especially my relationship with God) but the truth is that I’m just lazy. The fact of the matter is that it’s easier to give in to sin than to take the high road. I’m tired. I don’t make an effort to pursue my godly relationships or my relationship with God so basically I’m not taking steps I should be taking. It’s been a few weeks since I cracked open my bible and actually studied it. So yeah.

Getting real on lazy Mondays. What else can I say? Congrats to my dear sister Bek for finally tricking someone into marrying her(lol jk). God is doing great things in your life, dearie, and I am so happy for you and Daniel.

I have to go do laundry and remake my bed… So I’m going to end with a final thought that I’ve been thinking about since yesterday at church.

The woman in Luke 7, who is said to be a prostitute, came to Jesus and washed his feet with her hair. Apparently back then hair was super sensual and to let down your hair in front of a man who wasn’t your husband was a divorce-able offense. yet this woman came to JESUS and washed his feet with her hair.

What does this say about how I, Grace Joy, should be approaching my savior?

yeah. Teenagers are pretty messed up.

Part of what God really showed me last semester was that I’m a new creation(I’ve blogged about this, I KNOW. So you can go back in the archives and find the full story on that) and I am being renewed every second of every day.

Cardigan wearers always seemed so fake to me. They weren’t an emotional mess like I was, they had perfect little masks they put on like they didn’t have any problems. I hated that. I felt like I would never be able to connect with any of them because they put their masks on and weren’t real with each other. If there’s anything I’ve always been pretty strict about it’s being real with people. I hate a fake. I hate the facade. (Ironically enough, my facade is almost an antique I’ve had it for so long.)

coming back to the present day, a few weeks ago I bought a cardigan because I have a lot of really cute short sleeved shirts and no long sleeved shirts. I figured instead of buying a bunch of long sleeved shirts I could just buy one cardigan and wear my summer shirts all year round.

It’s true the cardigan is the most adorable thing ever, but as I was walking up to navs this evening I felt like I was being the most deceptive person in the world. I hate Cardigan Wearers! I’m totally not a Cardigan Wearer! Yet here I am wearing a cardigan. Life can be so strange. Sometimes we look like the cardigan wearing type when we obviously aren’t!

Yet the more I thought about cardigan wearers and I thought about the new me that has been redeemed and renewed by Christ the more I felt at home in my new cardigan. Except I’m not lying by presenting the face of innocence and perfection. Yeah okay, I’ve been a few places and done a few things in my short 18.99 years that are less than perfect and definitely don’t fit in with the cardigan, but that stuff doesn’t define who I am. That stuff was washed away the second I gave it to Christ.

Now I just pray I still have compassion for those who are still riddled with guilt and can’t let themselves be washed clean like old, high school me. I never want to give off the “I don’t care” vibe.  Not caring is for…. people who don’t care…? I don’t know…

Moral of this story…. You wear that cardigan!