In which You Stand

My anorexia tricked me.

Tricked me into thinking it was a safe hiding place from the scariness of adult life. But anorexia lied to me.

One night in my dreams I escaped from a prison cell and ran away. I burrowed feet first into a snow bank, smiling to myself as I peeked out of the hole, thinking no one can find me here. I retreated further into my snug cave, further back and further back until my feet broke through behind me into a black void. My once-safe crawl space had turned into a bottomless hole that was closing over me. My arms were pinned to my sides, and there was nothing under my feet. It feels like being buried alive.

My only way out was to be pulled out.

One month later, almost to the day, was Easter Sunday. That morning I stayed away from the early potluck breakfast at the church; I stayed home and forced myself to eat my customary ½ cup of plain oatmeal made with water. It was hard to finish.

At church they were eating my mom’s peach-sausage Bisquick bake, her molded lamb-shaped sugar cookies I had always loved, homemade sticky buns, every wonderful breakfast food. It would have been so easy to eat it, and I really wished I could. I’d been trying to follow a meal plan given to me by a nutritionist but the more I wanted food, the harder it was to eat anything, no matter how healthy it was. Even touching food was scary. I was always freezing cold in my snow cave, and some days all I could think about was how I can’t believe this is happening. I can’t believe this is happening. I felt hopeless.

But that Easter Sunday, Dad preached on 1 Corinthians 15:1:

“Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand.”

In which you stand. Those four words were God’s answer to my nightmare that had become real life, where my feet dangled in blackness without a foothold to keep me from slipping into the abyss. He reminded me that morning that His resurrection was my foothold, my foundation, my firm place to stand.

My anorexia tricked me. Tricked me into thinking it was a safe hiding place. Anorexia lied to me. But the gospel found me in a place no one else could reach and spoke to my heart the truth that He would keep me from falling until He chose to pull me out.

This week is National Eating Disorders Awareness Week.

Winter

On an afternoon in December 2005, I sat on my bed while snow erased the world outside the window. So far, one month at home had not been the answer I expected it to be, had not magically cured me of my eating disorder. I remember hoping the snowflakes falling outside could become a metaphor for my life suddenly turned so crazy…

…crazy like the panic I felt when my dad poured a glass of juice, set it on the counter, and forced me to drink it. Crazy like bird-skinny arms and hiding butterscotch chips in my drawer and lying to people I love and never feeling warm and purging and trying to purge and jeans falling off and hair falling out and the number on the scale falling and the snow falling outside…falling…falling…

…covering the frozen river where I now stand in my snowshoes. How did I get here? My parents outlawed the treadmill. But Anorexia will not be bossed around. It will have the last word. And that’s how I got here. Anorexia and I waited until Dad left the house, annoyed at how long he seemed to loiter. While he warmed up his car, we took out the oatmeal and a breakfast bowl, even started to boil water on the stove, pretending we meant to eat breakfast. Keeping up appearances. Knowing we weren’t fooling anyone. When dad’s car finally coughed out of the cul-de-sac and onto the road, Anorexia told me we were safe.

I step down onto the river. A silent stretch of white, lined with bare cottonwoods. I will snowshoe, I will burn calories. No one can stop us. I am happy because I am alone with my eating disorder. Because I only ate an orange today, and snowshoeing burns 300 calories an hour. I take a step and sink in the deep powder, untouched until now except by feather-light animal feet. Step. Sink. Lift. Step. Sink. Lift…step…sink…lift…The snow is deeper than I thought. Too deep. Soon I’m breathing too hard and fast. But the Eating Disorder tells me turning around is not an option no matter how starved or scared I am, or how far away the house is, how much I want to go back.

With a tingling numbness in my chest, I lie back in the snow and stare up at stripped cottonwood branches grasping at the sky, wondering if something will happen to me out here, far from help and cold.

But nothing happens. At least nothing drastic, only Meredith’s slow shrinking. Frozen and hard like winter, pale and bloodless. Cold and brittle. Anorexia owns her body, and the two of them don’t care about the people they hurt. When Mom cautiously enters Meredith’s room, almost tip-toeing because she fears this alien girl sitting at the desk; when Mom looks at the girl at the desk and thinks this is not my daughter; when she sits on the bed crying, Meredith thinks Go away. How long are you going to sit there? She says it, too, by not meeting Mom’s eyes or responding to her tears.

Sitting on my bed in Colorado on that December afternoon, I flipped through a coffee table book about snowflakes and read about how they grow: “As it traveled, the crystal was exposed to different conditions. Since a snow crystal’s growth depends strongly on its local environment, each change in the wind caused a change in the way the crystal grew. The exact shape of each of the six arms reflects the history of the crystal’s growth. A complex path yields a complex snowflake.”

I wondered if this struggle, if overcoming this horrible monster with its teeth sunk in my brain, was, in God’s plan for me, a gust of wind designed to shape me into his perfected creation? I went outside with a magnifying glass and squinted at the flakes falling from the skies and landing on my mitten, each one with a story to tell.

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February 20-26 is National Eating Disorders Awareness Week.