Editor’s Note: Today’s post is written by Crystal Sprague. She is the director of MyRefugeHouse.com. Has your posture or health been negatively affected by this fear? Leave a comment and let us know. I have bad posture/lower back problems for the same reason, and I’m really curious to know how many others there are out there. – Lauren

I’ve had pretty severe back problems for years.

A few months ago, I tried out another Chiropractor.

X-rays confirmed that the abnormal grade of my spine was somewhere around 7% off with the unnatural curves in my upper and lower back extending in opposite directions. I don’t look terribly abnormal when I stand up, because the two sides balance each other out, but underneath the skin, my back is a bit of a mess.

A couple of weeks ago, I decided to try Physical Therapy. The first thing the doctor said to me was: “Stand up straight. Stick out your chest. Pull your shoulders back. Stick out your butt. Your back is supposed to have an arch. Why aren’t you sticking out your butt? Like THIS.”

And then he proceeded to pull my posterior into a position that was not only uncomfortable from a decade of disuse, it also made my inner soul scream out in mild panic.

You see, as much as I loved my church in high school, and my pastors, they were pretty passionate about not hindering men/boys with unnecessary thoughts of lust.

When I say “pretty passionate,” what I mean is, it was usually a source of conversation weekly. And wearing something “inappropriate” would get you a private counseling session as well.

Because this is the thing: I was the girl whom God saved, wholly and passionately. He was filling my hurting little heart with grace and strength to push forward in a life that doesn’t always (or ever) make sense. And I wanted so desperately to please that God, AND the church who wrapped their arms around me so lovingly, that I went the extra measure. Or an extra 100 measures, if I thought I could.

With my whole self I wanted to please God. And if that meant not causing my brother to stumble, than I would go to every. single. measure. Even if it meant hiding my female body. And if I wasn’t accomplishing it, I must be at fault.

Cue baggy clothes, weight gain and over a decade of unhealthy self-worth. Cue standing in ways that hid my chest, my butt. Cue hunched shoulders and the inability to stop guilt and mild panic when men look at me. Cue eating disorder. Cue extreme back pain.

It wasn’t really my pastor’s fault. He saw an eager kid with a willing heart in a sea full of teens who often just didn’t want to listen. And I learned things during that stage of my life that have shaped me and changed me, in every way, for the better.

We live in a world of extremes. All in or all out. Yes or No. With us or against us.

But if I could go back, I would beg someone to show me a bit of balance. Plead with someone to show me that it’s ok to not be perfect in this crazy world, even if God is in your heart. Appeal to someone to show me that extremes are easy, and balance is more challenging… but much more sustainable.

And if I could go back, I would beg someone to tell me that my body is beautiful and a gift from God. To tell me that yes, I can and should stand up straight.

Editor’s Note: Today’s story is by Lauren Bersaglio. She has created the Libero Network to bring awareness to and support for those recovering from eating disorders, depression, addiction, anxiety & abuse. She also tweets at @lauren_b_sag! – Lauren

“Thus the end of the commandment is love, and that twofold, the love of God and the love of our neighbor. Now, if you take yourself in your entirety,—that is, soul and body together,—and your neighbor in his entirety…you will find that none of the classes of things that are to be loved is overlooked in these two commandments….When it is said, “Thou shall love thy neighbor as thyself,” it at once becomes evident that our love for ourselves has not been overlooked.”

-St. Augustine

Photo by Branden Harvey / / Design by Lauren Dubinsky

My heart was broken at the age of seventeen when he chose a cheerleader over me.

I assumed his decision was based on one thing: Me.

I wasn’t good enough. I wasn’t pretty enough. And, most importantly, I wasn’t skinny enough. Never did I consider that maybe his choice had less to do with me and more to do with him. No, it was all my fault.

I would lie awake at night, praying, pleading with God: “God, if You love me, please, please just let me wake up skinny.” And usually I’d throw in the classic: “I’ll never ask for anything else again.” But despite my negotiation, my prayers weren’t answered. So I did what many of us do: I took matters into my own hands – I stopped eating.

And the self-destruction began: weighing myself, starving myself, over-exercising, cutting myself, weighing myself again – I was at war with my body and that is a battle one can never win.

A few months and too many lost pounds later, I decided to ‘smarten up’.

I started eating again, but mostly because I felt if I went on much longer my cover would be blown and my ugly secret would get out: I had an eating disorder. That couldn’t happen. So I kept on pretending that I was OK, painting over the wounds with denial.

I became obsessed with eating only ‘healthy foods’ and avoiding anything that years of diet commercials and ill-informed ‘health’ articles had convinced me was ‘bad’. I later found out the term for this obsession: Orthorexia.

As my disordered eating and compulsive exercise continued I would still flirt with old behaviours; when life got hard, I’d stop eating. When I felt fat, I’d stop eating. And when I felt guilt or shame, I’d self-harm; attempting to numb the internal pain by creating an external one.

This process went on for a couple of years; and then something happened: another heartbreak.

This is when Bulimia walked through my door, or maybe I walked through its door – I’m still not sure.

Bulimia became a lifestyle for me, a priority – I was in my second year of University and yet all I could think of was: binge, purge, repeat.

I was out of control.

The fear of purging led me to fear food; I couldn’t look at it, I couldn’t smell it, and I most certainly couldn’t eat it. I went three days without putting a single thing in my mouth. Not even juice. I asked my professor how long I could live like this. “Without food, a human has about thirty days.”

Thirty days? Thirty days was sooner than exams, thirty days was sooner than summer, thirty days was simply too soon.

I didn’t want to die!

It’s important to realize that with eating disorders, like with any form of self-harm, the goal of the individual is [typically] not to end one’s life; instead it is a way of coping with negative feelings and/or punishing one’s self due to low self-concept.

That’s what I learnt when I entered recovery; I learnt that my eating disorder behaviours were not the problem, they were the symptom.

And in order to stop the behaviours, I needed to address the source: I would need to learn to love myself.

As St. Augustine says, loving yourself isn’t just about loving your body, it’s also about loving your soul. It’s about loving who you are – inside and out – and so I began the journey to acquire self-love.

It wasn’t easy; a lot of emotions unravel when separating yourself from your eating disorder: guilt, shame, regret, anger… Everyone kept telling me I had to forgive myself. They kept telling me I had to love myself. I kept asking them why.

“Because Jesus forgave you, because Jesus loves You.”

It’s not that I didn’t know this – I’d heard the song, I even knew the actions to it – but my question remained: “Why?” Not why should I love myself, but why did Jesus love me?

“As the father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love.” (John 15:9)
“Then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life.” (Genesis 2:7)
“He has made everything beautiful in its time.” (Ecclesiastes 3:11)

So there’s the answer; that’s why Jesus loves me. And that’s why I needed to love myself. He created me, ME, an individual, beautiful in my uniqueness. Beautiful in His eyes. And that’s the only beauty that matters.

I had been praying for the wrong thing seven years ago; rather than pray that I’d wake up and find myself skinnier, I should have been praying that in the morning I’d wake up and see myself the way Jesus saw me.

Recovery was a process, and it took a lot of physical, psychological, and spiritual healing. But I can now sit here today and say that it was worth it. It was so worth it. I can also say that, though I believe that self-love is an ongoing process, I do love myself – inside and out.

I want you to know that if you are going through an eating disorder, or disordered eating, or troubles with accepting your body the way it is, you can overcome this! And you can learn to love yourself. Recovery isn’t just for the ‘chosen few’; it’s for anyone who wants it, just like God’s grace. And recovery is possible: it has been 1.5 years since I last purged – and that is nothing less than a miracle. And every time I sit down to eat a meal, I am a witness of God’s grace and the freedom that comes with it. And that freedom, it’s a gift – for me, for you, for all of us.

I will leave you with this quote:

“It is finally so wonderful to have learned to eat, to taste and love what slips down my throat, padding me, filling me up, that I’m not uncomfortable calling it a small miracle. A friend who does not believe in God says, “Maybe not a miracle, but a little improvement,” but to that I say, Listen! You must not have heard me right: I couldn’t feed myself! So thanks for your input, but I know where I was, and I know where I am now, and you just can’t get here from there….So it was either a miracle…or maybe it was more of a gift….But whatever it was, learning to eat was about learning to live – and deciding to live; and it is one of the most radical things I’ve ever done.” –Anne Lamott