I love food.

I’ve had a handful of people tell me that my personal joy for food has helped or inspired them to enjoy the little things in life more. And let me tell you, I seriously love food. It doesn’t always matter what it is, so long as it tastes good and has meat in it. If I’m in a bad mood, sometimes all I have to do is grab a little tasty snack or a Dr. Pepper, and the rest of my day turns around.

Which is why I was so caught off guard when, suddenly and without any warning, last month, I really started struggling to eat.

Food Struggles

I thought I was fat as a teenager. Bullying will tend to make you believe a handful of lies about yourself. I wouldn’t say it was an eating disorder—it never got out of hand, you know? It was just something that I thought about a lot, in a “Oh well, I guess I’m just fat and can never be beautiful” kind of way.

Then came the food allergies. I got really sick, and suddenly doctors were telling me all sorts of things, like “You can never eat gluten or dairy or really anything yummy ever again,” and “If you aren’t careful you’re going to develop type two diabetes” and “we don’t really know why you’re sick but if you just take all these pills and stick to eating this awful cardboard—I mean, gluten free bread, you might get better.”

Newsflash: Cutting all that food did NOT heal me. Shocker. My relationship with food became what you could call strained. Fear and rebellion, and spending most of my time starving because I couldn’t eat practically anything.

When I moved to Ohio, God healed me. Bit by bit, he healed my allergies, and now I only eat dairy-free instead of joy-free. Now? Eating is something I look forward to. I had thought my relationship with food was great. That the enemy would never try to attack me in this area again…

Then Came The Troubles

It started off really, really small, and very quickly got a little out of control. Food became something that was a hassle again, and it was a battle to get myself to eat. I, self-proclaimed Food Lover and the girl who can’t help but do a happy dance when eating really good food. Ironically, reading the Bible also got really difficult again, too. What would take me five minutes to read was now taking me twenty.

Headaches from not eating enough, and that voice in my head that told me I’m not enough just got louder and louder and louder. It was suddenly all I could hear when I looked in the mirror. The longer it went on, the more the problem spiraled. And reading the Bible? Ha! It was suddenly taking me two hours to read what normally took me thirty minutes. Life started to just suck. I didn’t even realize there was a problem at first, until via prayer with my mentor and a handful of others, God really convicted me.

God’s Grace Comes in Clutch

God loves me. That’s the truth.

Separately, a few people started telling me that God wanted to tell me he loves my body. That he created it, special, to hold me inside it. I confessed and repented—because I was big time outside of God’s will with this. Repentance is beautiful. We have a God who is so gracious and kind.

It was during breakfast on Sunday morning that God spoke something that really changed my perspective. I wasn’t hungry. I’d rather not eat. But I made some eggs and pancakes anyway.

“I’m not hungry,” I complained to God as I cooked up the eggs. “I’d really rather skip this meal cause I’m tired.”

I took a bite of the egg, and it hit me all at once that I was actually starving. I’d had no idea how empty my stomach was until I ate—and devoured the eggs and pancakes. As I swallowed that first bite, I felt God press something on my heart.

Sometimes, you need to take that first bite to get into something again. Sometimes, we don’t like reading our bible. Sometimes, it feels like a drag. But the Word is our food. It’s our sustenance. I took a bite of that egg, and it hit me that I was starving. Starving for food and the Word.

If I’d listened to my feelings in that matter, I would have skipped breakfast. If I listened whenever I didn’t feel like reading my word, I would skip reading it entirely. As we need food, so we need the word.

I’m happy to report that it’s a little easier to read the bible now. Parts of it are still hard to digest sometimes, but this is a thing that takes practice.

Our Feelings Will Lie To Us

Sometimes we skip reading the word because it’s boring. Because we aren’t connecting with it. But other times? We skip because we don’t feel worthy to come to God. We believe the lie that we’re dumb and can’t understand it anyway, so what’s the point? We’re going to get distracted, and it’s going to take forever, so it’s better to pray and worship instead of reading the Word…right?

Fam, those are lies. Straight up.

If someone has an eating disorder, it’s not the food or the fact that we need to eat that’s the problem. If it’s hard to read the Bible, I’d take that as a sign that there’s something else going on.

Having a hard time reading the Bible isn’t the core issue; it’s a symptom of something deeper.

Do you struggle to read your word? Start with prayer. Start by confessing that. Invite a friend to seek why it’s hard with you. Ask God to show you the joy of his word.

Then? Take that first bite. Just start reading and practicing that. 🙂 You can do this.

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