God Became Flesh

Three years ago I was in a residential treatment center for women with eating disorders. I had been there 16 days and was just starting to believe that I truly had a mental illness and admitting that my thinking and perception were skewed when it came to matters of weight and body image.


I guess part of me thought once I “owned it” then I would be cured and that episode would be finished, and I would move on to other things.

Not.

Over the last three years, I’ve come to understand that I didn’t “get” anorexia and it won’t ever be “finished.” Thankfully, these days the illness does not interfere with the fullness of my life and actually with all of the “work” my life is possibly saner than your average person. Or would that be less crazy? (In re-reading this paragraph, all of the quotation marks around words are enough to probably have me committed.)

Is there a word for someone who is beyond sane? Or do you just simply circle back around and become crazy again. Or maybe that’s what being radical is. . . beyond sane. I suppose that actually is one of those unanswerable questions like the whole tree falling in the forest and who made God. . . if you actually know you’re crazy, are you?

But I digress.

Even now, though, on rare occasion, the eating disorder whispers to me, in a voice that so annoyingly sounds like my ex. It tries to convince me that I’m taking up too much space, that my presence is more than it should be, that my sanity is really just an excuse for thinking a little too highly of myself.

Luckily, I now know that the voice is disordered and even though I hear it I can choose to ignore it. Most of the time, my diligence in walking, sleeping, eating, talking and taking Prozac make that it an easy and obvious choice. Most of the time. . .

Unfortunately, the last two Sundays I’ve found myself choosing to listen to it. Last week, I couldn’t bring myself to attend my church’s small group Christmas Party. I convinced myself that the food would be too much, that I would cause the house to be too crowded. This Sunday I missed the actual class but sanity won out in time to get to worship.

I’m so glad it did.

I came through the front doors so I wouldn’t encounter the crowds that congregate in the hallways between Sunday School and Church. As I entered, a friend greeted me silently with a warm hug. Then a friend I met this summer in a Wednesday evening program, called my name. She had read a couple of my blog entries and thanked me for sharing them with the church. She said she was moved to tears.

As other folks started taking their places, a woman from my Sunday School class touched my arm, told me that she had missed me that morning, wished me a Merry Christmas.

A man from my class passed by after that, it was actually his and his partner’s Christmas party that I had skipped the week before. He quipped with a grin, “Where the hell were you?” When I doubted the importance of my being there, again, he said, “No. Seriously. Everybody was saying ‘Where the hell is she?’”

As the Prelude began, the music minister walked by, placed her hand on my back and whispered in my ear. “Thank you for sharing your blog post. You are a gifted writer.” Turns out her whisper spoke louder than Eds.

Even as I left the church, the pastor reached past my outstretched hand in order to hug me and say “What a writer!”

I’m thankful that God became flesh for me this morning in the form of Walter and Ginger and Jerry and Kathy B. and Kathy C. and Joe. When the rest of my sanity tools don’t seem to be doing the trick, love is always enough to put me back on the road.

Of course, it has to be the real stuff, love that is real enough to say “Hey, where the hell were you? “