The Beauty of Redemption

“Go on and try to tear me down, I will be rising from the ground like a skyscraper.” –Demi Lovato, Skyscraper

You know what’s scary? Monsters. When we were kids, we were afraid of them jumping out at us from our closets or under our beds. There was even a movie made about it! As we got older, we discovered that there were no such things as monsters that would come after us and eat us in our sleep. Instead, we discovered monsters that live inside our heads. There’s the Busy Monster, the one who keeps you up at night, going through lists of things you have to get done. There’s the Loneliness Monster, the one who convinces you that you’re alone in life and can’t depend on anyone. There’s the Not Good Enough Monster, the one who tells you that no matter how much you do, no matter how hard you work, no matter how good your heart is, you will never be good enough. He’s my least favorite monster. He has a name, too. It’s ED.

Now, ED and I now each other pretty well. I heard about him when I was in middle school and how good of friends he was with some of the girls in my classes. I wasn’t really introduced to him until I was in high school. We met during my sophomore year when my life was getting crazy. I was doing really well on the debate team, going through the process of getting Confirmed, and working my tail off on the Crew team. I remember one day I had debate practice after school, crew practice for 2 hours right after, and Confirmation class right after that. I remember we were talking about the 10 Commandments and their meanings. We got to the 4^th Commandment to keep the Sabbath Day (Sunday) holy. That meant going to church, no stress, and no work. I remember getting a tight feeling in my chest. I was working hard every single day and Sunday was the day that I used to do all of my homework, doing things with my family, and pretty much tackling all of the stress from the week in one day. It seemed that no matter how much I did or how good I was doing, it wasn’t good enough. ED was on my shoulder that year, telling me over and over that I wasn’t good enough. After losing my best friend that year, I didn’t have anyone to talk to other than ED. And that scared me.

We didn’t really talk that much until the summer after my Senior year. I had just graduated from high school, I had a job teaching the cutest kids how to swim, and I spent a lot of time with my friends at the pool after swim practice and meets. ED started telling me that even though I graduated high school, I didn’t have any honors and was going to a community college instead of a university, I was stupid. He was telling me that the kids wouldn’t learn from me because I was an inadequate teacher. He was telling me that I didn’t deserve friends because I wasn’t… well, I wasn’t good enough. I wasn’t pretty enough, I wasn’t skinny enough, I wasn’t popular enough. What I was just wasn’t enough.

That’s when ED and I got really, really close. Oh, I guess I should start calling ED by his real name. It’s Eating Disorder.

For weeks, he never left my side. He convinced me that if I just didn’t eat, I’d get skinnier and my life would be better. The way I saw it, hard-working + good person + skinny body= being enough, and for weeks I ate hardly anything, if anything at all. And you know what? I didn’t like it. I thought I’d be happier, but I was just miserable. I was tired, I didn’t have energy, I didn’t want to be around anyone. It took me weeks to tell anyone about it. I just started crying and told my two best friends.

Since then, I’ve had the support of my friends and have even written a college paper on it. It was one of the darkest times of my life, and if I didn’t tell my friends about it, who knows how long that would’ve gone! I’ve had a couple of times when I want to purge whatever I’d eaten that day, but I didn’t. And the only reason is because of God.

It took me a long time to realize that God gave me this body for a reason. I’ve got height to help my mom put dishes away, I’ve got big hips so that I can have children one day, I have toned arms and legs that let me pick up and carry the kids I love so much. I don’t want my baby cousins or the girls I babysit to go through I what I went through. My body is a temple, and I need to treat it as such.

I hate the words fat and BMI (did you know that I’m classified as obese according to that stupid chart?). I hate the way media wants girls to look. I hate scales. I hate that girls, and boys, don’t think they’re good enough and resort to these destructive things.

But I love that I have a God who loves me no matter how I look. I love that He is okay with me doing the best I can. I love that He has the patience to work with me when I think I’m not enough. I love that He has made me redeemed.