Before and After

 Post written by: Melissa

 Sitting in church a few months ago, I listened to my pastor give a sermon in which he spoke on some of the outward signs that should mark you as a Christian.  The way you began to live your life after you met Christ should differ from the way you were living before you knew Him, my pastor taught.  Your Before and After stories should be different, with your current lifestyle having changed for the better.  After my pastor finished giving his message, I promptly dissolved into silent tears. This message was something I wrestled with often, and am still wrestling with even now.  You see, my Before and After stories seem to be backward; I met Jesus… and then I developed an eating disorder. 

      Maybe it’s not entirely accurate to write it like that.  I’ve struggled with disordered thoughts and eating habits since I was twelve or so, but never recognized them as being such.  As a senior in high school, I started skipping meals with such frequency that my friends began to make anorexic jokes.  I began making myself sick at the end of that year, and it was only then that I realized how much trouble I might be in… about a year after first meeting Jesus at a small Baptist church I’d started attending. 

      Since that first summer, over three years ago, I’ve struggled with intense feelings of guilt.  How can I call myself a follower of Christ, I ask myself, and still engage in all these awful behaviors?  I’ve not made much progress against my eating disorder, you see, in spite of all the therapy I’ve immersed myself in, in spite of the out-patient treatment at hospitals and the partial-hospitalization clinics I’ve gone to.  I may have taken a step backwards, actually, by writing ‘self-harm’ in below ‘throwing up’ and ‘starving myself’ on the list of things I do to cope with whatever it is I’m running from. 

      There must be something wrong with me, I keep thinking, because I can’t beat this.  If I had a stronger faith, maybe I’d be able to break out of this feeling of ambivalence I seem to be currently stuck with.  My relationship with Christ seems somewhat laughable to me.  I almost feel like I never got past that initial phase of introduction with Him; “Jesus, meet Melissa.  Melissa, this is Jesus…”  How can I come before Him, though, and expect Him to be as loving and merciful as everyone has told me that He is, when I am such an ugly and disobedient child?  How can He want to spend time with me?  To walk with me? 

      But He is walking with me. Regardless of whether I feel worthy of his company or not, Jesus is beside me in all of my struggles, exactly as He promised He would be.  Since listening to my pastor’s sermon on Before and After stories, I’ve put a great deal of thought into my own story and I think I’m starting to accept that it might be ok for me to be backwards.  When I look back over the past three years, I am struck by one thing; no matter how bad my eating disorder was, no matter how loud the demons in my head were or how out of control I felt, I always had at least a tiny glimmer of hope.  I always knew that I was not alone, and knowing this kept me from giving into despair.  If my story was a typical Before and After story and I’d had my ED before I knew Christ, I think there’s a good possibility I might be dead now and would never have known Christ at all… I know I certainly thought about ending my life plenty of times, because there were times when I was just that miserable.  I am unworthy to be in His presence, and I know this.  But I also know that He wants me in His presence regardless of my unworthiness this, and so I am going to keep coming to Him.  And I know that if I allow Him to love me that I will get through this eventually…