Oh boy.  I knew when I started a blog that this post would have to be written.  It wasn’t a matter of if, but when.  I’ve prayed and prayed since I started just when I should spill it, and this New Year’s Day is the appointed time.  It seems appropriate since this marks ten years since I’ve been in recovery.  Not from what you’re thinking- I wasn’t an alcoholic or a drug addict, although I’ve always said that would be easier to admit than this.  It’s far more socially acceptable to say “I was an alcoholic”.  So everyone…Hi, my name is Ashleigh, and I had an eating disorder.  Everyone all together now, “Hi, Ashleigh!”

Statistically, I should not be where I am today.  Statistically, I should be dead, or at the very least, still in intensive therapy.  I’m not going to go into too many details of numbers, methods, etc, in this post, because of potential triggers.  I know them well.  I know how a seemingly innocent mention of things can cause a relapse, and I refuse for anything I write to cause another to stumble.  I guarantee someone reading this is struggling.  I guarantee someone you know has an eating disorder, whether you realize it or not.  I live in backwoods South Carolina, in as rural a place as one can get,  and I know plenty just in my area.  It is a very secretive disease.  Unless you have walked through it, you cannot understand it.  And be OH SO THANKFUL if you don’t have that understanding.  The best description I can use to give someone a glimpse inside, is pure darkness.  The kind that suffocates you.

I was classified as bulimic with anorexic tendencies.  Statistically, the odds of full recovery are next to nothing.  The longer you’re in it, the less chance you have of full recovery.  I struggled since I was 8 years old.  Yes, 8.  The age of my oldest daughter.  Don’t think that hasn’t hit me like a baseball bat.  As long as I can remember, I have struggled with insecurities.  Many environmental circumstances of my childhood played into that, some of which could not be helped.  I’ve said before I’ve always been a perfectionist, and felt the need to make up for what my handicapped sister could not be.  Many things were beyond my control, we never knew when the next hospitalization or surgery would be, etc. etc., and food eventually became the one thing in my life I felt was within my grasp of control.  This mixed in with hearing some around me constantly criticize their weight or the weight of others.  I joked that someone could have the cure for cancer and there would still be the voice of ‘but if only she could get that extra weight off’.  It became unintentionally ingrained in me that thinness was the equivalent of happiness.  I vividly remember being told when I was eight, that if I didn’t watch how much I was eating, I was going to be fat when I grew up and look like another girl who was big.  I’m sure the person who made that comment was in some twisted way trying to help me, and in no way meant to plant seeds of a lifetime struggle.  Just be very careful what children hear you say.  About them and about yourself.  They’re listening, and you never know how much they will take to heart.  I was the poster child of insecurities.  Someone close to me remarked how my teeth looked when I smiled, so every single school picture of me through middle school is this weird little close-mouthed smile.  It’s probably one of those pictures you’ll see when you look up the definition of ‘insecurity’.

In junior high, I discovered my Mom’s stash of diet pills.  I popped those suckers like candy.  Have I mentioned I also have an addictive personality?  If one is good for you, then 5 is great.  I quickly learned how to make it look like I was eating when I wasn’t, and how to get rid of food.  Bless my Mom, I cannot count how many Lifetime movies I watched about some poor girl with an eating disorder.  All it did was feed me ideas.  That’s what I mean when I say triggering.  Why I won’t get into how much I weighed, or what all I did to myself.  Trust me, it can just feed ideas.  I mostly went under the radar with my eating struggles as a teen, I think because to look at me, I didn’t look ‘sick’.  I wasn’t bone skinny.  That’s what is so deceptive about eating disorders, someone can come across healthy and be deathly sick on the inside.

I was never very good at relationships.  I convinced myself in college that I needed to be in one in order to be happy, so I pretty much spent all four of those years in one relationship or another.  Not just random, casual relationships, the kind where you commit to marry the other.  Why oh why I thought that was a good idea is still beyond me.  Out of respect for others involved, I will simply say that if you ever need advice on how to tell someone hey- you don’t want to marry them after all, call off a wedding, give a ring back, return gifts, I’m your girl.  And that’s all I’ll say about that.  Going from having your life planned out to having it all go up in giant, royal flames is a bit jarring.  That would be the point at which I flipped the switch from under the radar eating disorder to ‘that girl needs some help’.

I vividly remember the darkness.  Not even having the will to live.  Not feeling worthy enough to live.  It wasn’t that the wedding plans didn’t pan out- there was no regret in that area- it was just the feeling of failure.  Failing yet again.  My grand plans not working out.  No one ever wakes up one day and says, “I’m going to have a full-blown eating disorder.”  It’s something that just kind of creeps up- you think you have it completely under control- but before you realize it, it controls you.  Oh satan.  He was very close to me then.  I would verbally vow through tears to the Lord that I would do better.  That I would have a ‘good day’.  And more often than not, I would break that promise by mid-day.  Ironically, the one thing in life I thought I could control, was now controlling me full throttle.  Satan had me.  I discovered new methods.  I discovered new pills.  I will never forget blacking out one night, hitting my head as I fell, scaring my parents to death.  Waking up begging them to not call the ambulance.  Promising to do better, to turn a new leaf.  What I failed to realize was I couldn’t do it on my own.

I had a precious therapist named Peggy.  I adored her.  She brought out things in me I had no clue existed.  I remember the first time she wanted me to attend group therapy at the treatment center.  I could not protest loud enough.  There was no way I was going to sit in there with a bunch of skinny little teenagers.  Well dear Peggy didn’t give me much choice, so next thing I knew, I was marching into the building where they lock the doors behind you.  I remember checking to see if the walls were padded.  I have a sick sense of humor.  I received the shock of my life when I realized I was the youngest in that room!  Instead of a bunch of scrawny teenagers, I was sitting with older, professional women who were struggling just like me.  The one thing that stayed with me to this day is when a girl who in no way, shape or form was religious, looked at me across that room and said, “You know what sticks out to me about you Ashleigh?  You have God’s grace written all over you.”  I was speechless.

I wish I could say that after intensive therapy, I got my act together and was on the road to full recovery.  I did have better days, and instead of a daily relapse, it became more like an every 3 days kind of relapse.  During this time, the Lord saw fit to open the door for me to teach overseas.  Seoul, South Korea, to be exact.  A city I didn’t even know how to pronounce, much less ever thought about visiting.  My therapist was not on board.  I ignored her advice, because I did truly feel the Lord leading.  This is already a ridiculously long blog post, so I won’t go into all the details, but my time in that beautiful country was cut short because I had the mother of all relapses.  Due to the massive ways I was screwing up my body, I brought severe migraines on.  My heart was also starting to do crazy things.  Peggy and the Lord were both right.  The stress of another culture did nothing to help my fragile state, but the Lord did tremendously use that time in my life.

So once again, I felt like a failure.  My plans had again burst into flames.  I had to move back in with my parents.  More failed relationships. I felt like I was at rock bottom.  It was at this point I literally said out loud to the Lord, “I am done!  I stink at making plans, so WHATEVER You want Lord!”  I saw more therapists, really attempting to get it together.  I learned the huge difference between Christian and secular counseling.  The secular ones never failed to remind me that I would forever struggle, that I would never be ‘cured’.  Even one of the Christian therapists gave me the “Well, you know what the statistics say” spill.  I knew the grace of God was more powerful.  One reason that the statistics are so against eating disorders is because unlike alcoholism or drug addiction, you cannot live without food.  I’m by no means downplaying those addictions, as they are serious struggles.  It’s just that instead of having the option of staying away from their demon, the person with the eating disorder is forced to find a way to live with it and have a good relationship with it.

I wish I could say marrying the man of my childhood dreams was my cure.  I was better.  I convinced myself I was cured.  I even spelled out my past to him on one of our first dates, just so he would know what kind of crazy he was getting. He didn’t flinch.  We were engaged within 3 weeks and married 3 months later.  I felt like God’s grace was shining down bright and clear.  But marriage is hard.  Finding out 3 months into that marriage you need surgery in order to stand a chance at having children and you’ll be put into medically-induced menopause for 6 months is harder.  To put it mildly, I relapsed.  God bless my husband.  We were two kids trying to adjust to being married, and he’s having to deal with a crazy menopausal wife who is also in the throes of an eating disorder.  It is only by God’s grace we stayed married that first year.

I came to a crossroads in June of 2006.  My fertility was at stake, my life expectancy was at stake.  I wasn’t just living for me anymore, I had a husband who loved me more than anything, and we desperately wanted children.  I knew enough about eating disorders to know that even when it’s not active, damage has been done, and your heart can still give out- along with a myriad of other things.  I knew it was do or die at that point. I cried out on my face before the Lord and begged for grace and mercy.  What was different about that particular moment, I do not know.  But it was.  It is ONLY by God’s grace I have not relapsed since then.  Hallelujah, those chains were cut loose!  Three pregnancies of gaining huge amounts of weight and it not coming off fast enough, and all the stress of the ups and downs of life, and NO relapse.  Now I’m not saying I haven’t struggled with the mirror at all since then.  I have to consciously walk with the Lord every single day and ask for His help in that specific area.  I know the devil is right there waiting to pounce at any moment of weakness.  I’m so utterly blessed to have no real damage from those years of self-destruction.  My only reminder is lack of tooth enamel.  That stuff just doesn’t repair itself.  Considering what I know I could have to deal with, I’ll take it and count my blessings.

Not long ago I was at the doctor’s office, and the nurse actually asked me to just call my weight out to her over the lab area.  (note to any nurses reading this: don’t do that)  To say a million things ran through my mind in that moment would be an understatement.  I debated pitching a fit, flat out telling her no-she could come see for herself, that I didn’t do numbers.  Truthfully I don’t do numbers.  I rarely get on the scale even now, because I know how easy it is for me to start obsessing and for that number to dictate my mood.  A number isn’t worth that.  But I instead silently prayed for the Lord to give me strength, and I opened my eyes to see the number.  It’s just a number.  I called it out to her.  That was it.  No one blinked.  No one gasped.  No big deal.  Except it was huge for me.  Those ladies in the lab that day have no idea how close I was to running laps around the room singing, “Victory in Jesus”.

I’m trusting the Lord every single day to be a good example to my daughters.  Statistically, their chances of an eating disorder are 70% higher (!) just because of dear ol’ Mommy.  Not to mention the crazy media definition of what is beautiful being thrown at them.  Part of me wants to rock in the corner, biting my nails, worrying myself sick.  But thankfully, I know Who holds the future, and I can put my whole trust in Him to take care of things.  When I feel like criticizing myself, I pray instead, because I know how sensitive those little ears are.  I emphasize health, not size.  I daily pray for wisdom to guide those precious children the Lord entrusted to me.

Why in the world would I share this ridiculously long post about something so personal?  Because I know someone out there needs hope.  Someone is being fed the lie that statistics are stacked against you, that there’s no way out of the darkness.  I’m living proof that God’s grace is stronger than anything else the world throws your way.  I’ve done just about everything I could to mess my life up, and yet God saved me.  He gently redirected me over and over and over.  Never giving up on me.  I’m perfectly imperfect, a crazy mess, and yet He loves me just as I am!  There is Hope.

There is Light in the darkness.