My Hungry Soul
"Taste and see that the Lord is good." Psalm 34:8
Two years ago I was reading a book of spiritual wisdom aloud to my husband. I came to the phrase "controlling the passions," and pictured the package of Oreos sitting in our cupboard. When I confessed this to Sam, he surprised me with laughter.
"Men and women are so different." He shook his head. "When I hear the phrase physical temptation, I think of lust. You hear it and think of cookies."
Sugar lust I first began to think of this as one of my greatest vices back in high school, when I subsisted on pop and Little Debbie cakes. At one point my mom sat me down and shared how concerned she and my dad were over the state of my diet. A sense of self-disgust filled me and spilled out as tears during that conversation, but not much changed afterwards. At my bridal shower, one of the shower games involved blindfolding me and giving me thirty seconds to identify fifteen types of candy by touch. I finished with twenty seconds to spare.
My sugar lust waned after I fell in love and for my first year or two of marriage I was too happy to care much about sweets. But by the time our second child was born, it returned with a vengeance. Faced with the demands of a toddler and a newborn, my only comfort was the influx of sugary gifts from family and friends.
"Tell people to stop," I begged my mom. "Flowers and baby clothes are great. Just no more treats."
But it wasn t really just treats I struggled with. Food in general was a problem. I tried to keep things under control at home, but I pigged out when I went out to eat or over to friends . My self-distrust increased with the pounds; I frequently berated myself for my lack of self-control. I felt like Gollum from Lord of the Rings, careening from self-love to self-loathing and back again. I was trapped.
The Taste of Hope
Around that time, I met a woman who has grown to be one of my closest friends. I loved being with her she was everything I wanted to become: radiantly beautiful, a relaxed but present mom, gentle and wise. When she told me she had been 20 pounds overweight for most of her life, I didn t believe her. I wanted to know how she had become so happily trim she didn t strike me as the regimented-diet-and-exercise type.
"I read this book," she said. "By Geneen Roth. My best friend told me about it; she read it five years ago and lost 30 pounds."
A few weeks later, I went to the library and found the book.* When I saw that the subtitle contained the words "compulsive eating," my face flushed. That s not me. Sure, I like food, but I ve never had an eating disorder.
But as I read on, I could see that Roth was writing to me. In the midst of some new age musings, she gets to the point: food brings us so much pleasure, she says, that when we re discontent we seek to drown our feelings in it. When I m stressed, tired, anxious or depressed (among other things), sugar beckons to me from every cranny of cupboard and fridge, and I eat beyond the point of fullness when I sit down to a meal.
What s the solution? Roth s answer could be summed up in the words "know thyself," or "know thy hunger." Once we really understand why we eat what we do, overeating gradually becomes not just unappealing, but unnecessary. Listen to your stomach. When it says "Enough!" but you still feel like eating, search your soul, assess what you re feeling, determine where the feelings are coming from and try to allow yourself to feel them.
This new approach to eating is tougher than it sounds, because it forces you to enter rooms of your soul that may have been locked for a long time. Often we need to lock them just to survive. Some rooms are areas of deep wounds sexual or verbal abuse, death of a loved one, neglect or rejection by a parent.
It s easier to dive into a box of Krispy Kremes than to acknowledge and allow yourself to feel the intensity of the pain, which is why most of us opt for donuts when given the choice. But if you never let yourself experience pain, you ll never find healing.
Defeating Despair
When you tune in to your body s needs, you begin to eat healthier not out of guilt, but because it makes you feel good. After I noticed that caffeine makes me feel jittery instead of energized, it wasn t hard to switch to decaf drinks. And I learned that eating lots of carbs only makes me crave more, while proteins provide longer-burning energy.
But for me, the biggest thing that had to go wasn t caffeine or carbs, but my self-loathing. When you brood in negativity, you create a self-defeating cycle. The more you condemn, the more you despair which leads to more eating, because despair can t grow hope. I despised my lack of control, even as I reached for my 6th cookie to dull the feelings my self-hatred was creating.
Self-disgust, or despair, is actually one of ancient Christian writer John Cassian s "seven deadly sins." That s because the self is so good that God died to restore it to its original glory. The reason most diets and exercise regimes fail is because the human soul can t respond positively to negativity. Our souls were designed to feed on goodness, beauty and freedom. Only when I realized that I could trust God working through His image in me could I begin to understand why I ate compulsively.
Self-loathing is wrong because it blocks us from God s love. As I began to heal, I found that I ate less and tasted more. I learned to feast on God s love in other ways than food. For example, I let myself revel in the beauty of color, and started repainting my house with colors that bring me joy. I rediscovered makeup and beautiful clothes (things I thought were frivolities of my junior-high years). I learned to give myself breaks, take naps and seek relaxation while my husband watched the kids. Before long, I noticed that my marriage was flourishing and I was experiencing the beauty of my children more tangibly.
A couple years ago, I might have called some of these things self-indulgent. Christians can easily fall into false piety and begin to think that it s not "holy" to enjoy God s beautiful gifts. We entertain self-pitying thoughts like "I don t deserve a break" or "Beauty is frivolous." As a parent, I can image what God must feel like: what if I tried to give a gift to my son, and he refused it, saying, "I don t deserve it"?
Feast of Love
What I m describing is a process that takes time even years. Back when I used to make nutritional to-do lists and imagine "I ll do everything perfectly tomorrow," I only burned out and sunk deeper into despair. After I stepped off of the diet/despair treadmill and started listening to my stomach, I gradually reached a healthy weight without straining myself.
Along the way, I have made and will continue to make mistakes; just like my toddlers couldn t learn to walk without a number of falls. But I no longer think of Oreos in terms of temptation. They re just another of God s many gifts why should I eat five and make myself sick?
I look forward to the years ahead, to increasing health of both body and soul. I know God s feast of love will continue to unfold before me, satisfying me until the day I finally take a seat at a banquet in heaven and taste the radiance of His presence.
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