Today I am celebrating and praising God for 15 years in recovery from an eating disorder.  On July 17, 1997, I went to my first in-patient treatment center for anorexia.  It was a long and difficult start on the road to recovery- and I have to say "first" treament center because I did relapse and have to go in-patient again a year of so later.  But that hot, summer day in Arizona was the beginning of an incredible healing story that God chose to work out in my life.  I cannot believe that it was 15 years ago today that it happened.  So much of it is a blur, and yet the feelings are so real.  Today I watched a recovery video that I made 5 years ago when it was the 10th anniversary of my start to recovery.  I looked at the faces of my friends, and was so deeply saddened because some of them were never able to loosen the grasps of their eating disorders, and they have passed away because of the disesases.  Some friends are still struggling greatly, and a few are living awesomely whole and healthy lives.  I do not take one single day of healthy living for granted, as I am sorely aware that many people who struggle with eating disorders will do so their whole lives.  But as I've said before, our God is healer!  He is power and mighty to redeem that which is His and He longs for healing in our broken hearts!  God has healed me and freed me from the snares of anorexia, and for that I am eternally grateful.  May I live my life fully in such a way that God's healing and redemptive power is evident to and possible for all.

I think about the amazing things that have changed in the past 15 years.  One does a lot of growing up between the years of 16 and 31.  A lot!  Being in recovery has made all the difference in the world, too.  Recovery has brought a restoration of family relationships.  It has brought rejoicing in the every day simplicities of food and fun.  And it has shown the redeeming power of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ, that all who call on Him will be saved!  As we always said in the AA meetings I attended throughout my high school years, Today I am grateful to be in recovery.  I don't write about this very often on my blog, but I've dug up some past posts about my journey if you're interested.  The one entitled "She's Not Sick Anymore" has the recovery video from 5 years ago.  I know I've said it before, but I will say it again: there is hope, and there is healing in Jesus Christ!

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We had all kinds of therapy there... equine therapy, group therapy, body image therapy, family therapy, art therapy, recreational therapy... ANYTHING you could imagine! One week in art therapy, we were told to find a rock and bring it with us to the art room. We were to paint on this rock everything that weighed us down with our eating disorder... shame, guilt, pain, etc... So being the good trying-for-recovery-(ok, really at that time it was more like just-trying-to-go-home) patient that I was, I made my rock. When I was finished I set it up on a shelf, like we did with all our other products of art therapy, and didn't think much about it again.

Fast forward a bit to family week. What a breakthrough that week was! At the end of a very difficult but productive week of therapy with my family, my therapist took me and a fellow patient, Rose, to this place on the ranch we hadn't been before.... It was kind of in the middle of some cacti, up a small hill, in dirt of course (this was the desert!)... and there was a cross. Jim (my therapist) handed Rose and I our rocks that we had made weeks before in art therapy. The rocks represented everything about us with our eating disorders. We talked, and cried, and prayed... and layed the rocks at the foot of the cross. As we turned to leave, exhausted, part of me wanted to pick up my rock and take it with me... it was pretty, afterall... I'd worked so hard on it. Much like the person I was in my ED... I'd worked so hard to be the best at being sick. I knew what life was like with me and ED. It was safe. I didn't want to leave it behind. I didn't want to let go. It was scary to think of a life where I no longer had my old ways to fall back on. But that's what recovery is. In a lot of ways, recovery is like repentance. Repentance means we turn from our old sinful ways and follow Him and only Him. Recovery, for me, has the very same definition... turning from my old habits and coping mechanisms and following HIM... living my life FOR Him and by Him.

The cross is what enables us to lay down our 'rocks'... all of the sins that weigh us down. His resurrection is what gives us strength to not pick the rocks, our old sinful habits, back up. I'll never forget my experience at the foot of the cross, on a dusty hill in the middle of the Arizona desert. It was the symbolic start of a new life.