Tuesday, November 6, 2012

The Gospel According to Rachel

What is my Good News? My Good News is summed up in two words: 


irrational grace.

God saved my life despite my running from His salvation. Though I denied His beautiful truths, the nature of His gifts to me, His unending and immeasurable love, He overwhelmed me with it and brought me from the depths of an ocean that I saw no possible way of being saving from.
For months I chose to listen to the eating disorder, clutching my heart like a menacing bed of black thorns, taking over my soul like a demon growing ever so sneakily, nearly undetectable at first. I chose to worship diets and exercise rather than the worth of time with God. I chose to listen to Satan’s lies rather than God’s beautiful truths; truths that were made possible by His unimaginable suffering and gruesome death—and still I denied them to accept much uglier words and thoughts. And as the thoughts rose steadily like a tsunami terrorizing the shores of my mind, the voices that once whispered now screamed at me, “You’re ugly!” “You don’t deserve to eat that, you’re too fat!” “No one will love you!” 

I abused my body, the vessel of the God who gave His everything and then some just so I could breathe. I took what He carefully crafted and put on this earth out of pure love, and made it a miserable existence; I took the muscle and substance He blessed me with and let it deteriorate so that I resembled a skeleton. I took the good-natured soul He placed ever-so-carefully in my body and let it become bitter due to exhaustion and starvation. I denied His never-ending blessings of food and love and stomped on them, as if these gifts like gold were garbage and filth. I chose a relationship with hate and falsehood, with self-destruction and terror, over a relationship that was born from love and grace, salvation and every fulfillment my soul craved. I was the ungrateful child that ran from God as He offered His mighty arms out for a hug; I took His sacrifice so that I might have grace and joy and belittled it to a nice fairytale in some old book. I welcomed my impending death due to a lifestyle of sin and misery over an existence of joy and love. 

And yet He saved my life. 


Even after I starved my own body to the point of nearly having a heart attack, God made it so the doctors took notice and admitted into a hospital me to receive help. Even after I denounced His love, He made sure I was overwhelmed with it. Even after I was angered at His putting a stop to my self-abuse, my zombie-like body shaking with sobs in a hospital bed, He made His presence more apparent than ever with angels in the form of nurses, friends, and family. And after I consciously chose to ignore His flawless and shining truths, He let His Word shine so brightly that my eyes were blinded by His grace and love. And after I rejected Him, he chose me to live, and recover, and have a shot at a life far better than the life I tried to create for myself. 

God saves. God forgives. God loves without restraint. God has an incredible plan, God will not let you fall. And I, a recovering survivor of anorexia, am just one drop in an ocean of proof. And He reminds me of it all the time.

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