apologies.

i've mentioned this before, but i think it's funny and also fascinating that as humans, we possess certain qualities in such extremes that they end up being the very best and the very worst things about us at the same time.

today, i'm thinking about the best/worst idea in terms of selflessness and servitude and sacrifice. more specifically, i'm thinking about the best/worst idea in terms of treating others with utmost concern and telling them we're sorry when we don't.

it's really funny to me that there are some people who spend ungodly amounts of time agonizing over the way they treat others in the smallest of situations and end up apologizing for however they act anyway, while others take hefty stomps through relationships and interactions, pursuing their own agendas and never thinking twice about the way they're treating others unless they're confronted.

i've known a lot of fellow strugglers in addition to myself and i'd say that at least 99% of us fall into the "apologizer" category.

when i think back on some of the reasons i apologized just yesterday i'm slightly amazed at all the things for which i felt guilty and said i was sorry.

those who are closest to me get the bulk of the apologies and they also tell me to stop (i originally had "sorry to all of you" in these parentheses. i realized it when i was reading back over what i'd written and i laughed out loud). last night, after i'd apologized a few times over the course of an hour or so, a dear someone gently let me know that no more apologies were necessary.

so then i got mad at myself for apologizing so much. and i nearly had to bite my lips to keep from apologizing for apologizing.

but this morning i started thinking about it, and i started thinking about owning my actions and my words and what it would've been like if i hadn't gotten really upset with myself for putting too much lemon juice on the broccoli i was roasting or for realizing how much i miss my mom and calling her for 5 minutes to say goodnight while my boyfriend was over or for calling my best friend and talking about myself for a second. i thought about the fact that i wouldn't even have noticed if i'd been on the receiving end of those things, unless of course the person who'd done them had apologized. i suppose i would have noticed the intensely lemoned broccoli as well, but i would've made a sour face and laughed and moved on. and i would've been really sad if i'd known that the person who'd gone a little overboard with the lemon was beating him/herself up inside.

matthew 7:12 tells us to do unto others as we would have others do to ourselves.

of course, this means treating others with the respect and love with which we hope to be treated. but i also think that we can infer from this verse that that we should be as vulnerable and as receiving of love and care from others as we hope they'll be with us.

in other words, if i want people to feel comfortable to be themselves with me, to let their guard down and not worry about inconveniencing me or making a mistake or dumping their problems on me, then i should be my imperfect, disorganized (but working on it), occasionally emotional self with others, knowing that my authenticity in the context of our relationship is as much of a gift to them as theirs is a gift to me.

i am not saying that we should mistreat others and expect them to mistreat us back and call it all even. what i am saying is that "apologizers" need to be better discerners of what is mistreatment and what is just being human. there's nothing more healthy than admitting our wrongs and expressing our regret for them. but there's nothing more unhealthy than thinking everything we do is wrong and magnifying the effects of our smallest decisions and thinking we're horrible when the people around us never got past sensory perception of those decisions in the first place.

i am not saying that we shouldn't try to meet others' needs. what i am saying is that "apologizers" need to strive for a more realistic perspective on what others' needs actually are. outside of extenuating circumstances, i can't think of anyone who genuinely needs the person with whom they're spending time to never make a 5 minute phone call or run back to the car to grab a jacket or make one more trip to the produce section to grab something they forgot or act really silly when they're feeling silly or just simply say that they're sad. if anything, the people who love us need for us to be comfortable and confident enough in their love that we'll do any and more of the above without thinking.

when i write blog posts, i'm usually talking through things that, by the grace of God, i've already processed. i can only think of a few times i've ever written "on the fly" to process through something and hope i can make some sense of it as i type. but, just so everyone knows, i had no idea what this post was going to say until i said it. God came through. He spoke into my emptiness and i typed.

a few minutes ago i took a break from writing to change my laundry. as i was walking down the hall to the laundry room, my heart and mind felt lighter. i felt allowed to stop treading on eggshells and trying to be perfect. i felt allowed to be the my truest self in the context of striving for Christ's likeness in relationships. i felt like i could stop thinking a million miles a minute and just do unto others as i'd have them do unto me. it feels good.

love,

ea

i never thought i'd say this...

...but i'm done with working out. at least in my disorder's sense of the idea.

i think the fundamental error of my previous perception of exercise was that it wasn't my perception at all. it was my eating disorder's insistence that anything short of an all-out sprint fest was nothing more active or healthy than an afternoon spent on the couch. 

i don't want to get into specifics, because i'd hate to trigger anyone or worse, give someone's eating disorder ideas. but i will say that the majority of days i've lived over the course of the past 8 or so months have revolved around workouts. i woke up thinking about working out and i thought about it until it was done. i enjoyed my workouts immensely. not because i was enjoying my chosen forms of activity, but because i was enjoying the feeling of working too hard too often; i was enjoying the feeling of pushing my body to do something to an extreme for which it was not created. it was like an hour-long dose of my eating disorder each day and it felt good.

my counselor and nutritionist regularly encouraged me to reevaluate my approach to exercise, but it made me feel good to be living out a remnant of my disorder, and i was eating enough to support the calories i was burning, so it was a "best of both worlds" scenario. 

it's hard to believe, but today marks exactly three weeks since i moved to colorado. i'd had every intention of carrying my obsessive workout habits into my life here, but it was during my first run around the neighborhood that i realized it was time to make a change. 

it was a godsend of a combination, i think. because the air here is so thin that it's really hard to breathe at first. even for people in decent shape, running here is a whole new story. as i struggled to maintain my usual pace, my head began to ache i felt a little dizzy. i slowed to a walk, frustrated with myself for not being able to "beat the altitude".

 as i got my breathe back, i looked around. the sky looked so big. it made me feel close to the old neighborhood trees and the rooftops because the blueness was so far off and beautiful and vast that they could never touch it. i felt myself wanting to stop exercising inside my head, to quit taking in the sinister thoughts and pride in my ability to self-destruct with the same reverence with which i was taking in the trees and the sky.

i realized that if i was ever going to make a change, it would have to be from that moment forward. i realized that i could drag my old habits into this newness, or i could take advantage of the obliteration of all things familiar and of the lack air that's easily breathed and i could try exercise again, the way that it's meant to be.

so i loosened my grip on the notion that nothing counts as exercise unless at its utmost intensity and i left it behind. i remembered how much i love walking and stopped supplementing my walks with extra workouts to make them "count". I stopped running to prove my superiority and started running to enjoy running. i stopped timing myself. 

i realize that cardio intervals are quite the rage in the workout world, but i don't care. i'm in an old testament class this semester and right now, we're studying genesis. when i think about the earth in its rawest form, before we had machines to do everything for us, i think about the fact that there wasn't much sedentary living going on. i doubt anyone jumped up and down or ran sprints or tried to see how much they could lift, because cardio and strength related activity were a built-in aspect of daily life. no one thought, "phew! that was a workout!" because living life was a workout. 

i think it'd be healthy if we could somehow get back the idea of physical activity being a part of our daily function. instead of having a workout mode and an everyday life mode, integrating the two so they're one in the same. i realize it would take a little more intentionality than it did for people who lived thousands of years ago, because we can't change the reality of cars and computers and all the other stuff we have. but walking somewhere close by to run an errand or two, or while talking on the phone or talking to God is a great place to start. {note: this does not mean walking everywhere, or for hours at a time. if you are in recovery, this would be something to discuss with your dietician and counselor}.

of course, there are times that a good run or gym session just sounds right. but the point, i think, is balance. 

there were times i wondered how i was ever going to keep up with my workout schedule once i became responsible for more than just myself. thankfully, i've now got a workout schedule that is much more reasonably maintained. a few months ago, i would have thought myself better than anyone with the approach to exercise i'm now taking. i would've thought it weak and self-indulgent to enjoy exercise in any form other than its most intense. 

i'm thankful for the thin colorado air and the change it instigated in me. i'm thankful for walking and for slow, enjoyable runs. i'm thankful for yoga and for the fact that i don't have dumbbells in my room anymore. i'm thankful that my body image is better now that i ever remember it being. 

most of all, i'm thankful for truth.

"then you will know the truth and the truth will set you free." john 8:32

love,

EA

life happens.

happy saturday, friends. i've been in denver a little over a week. i'm moved in, mostly settled and already trying my best to keep up with a hefty reading schedule for class. 

there's a woman in one of my classes who wants to work with eating disorders as well. she struggled for 27 years, but is now recovered. we were talking the other day and connected on the idea that it can be really tough to move out of recovery and into "real life".  we talked about the numbers of people we've watched make numerous returns to treatment and the condemnation we received from our eating disorders for not being right there with them. 

but something i'm continuing to understand is this:

recovery isn't force-feeding ourselves; it's experiencing the awakening of mental vitality that comes as a result of the force-feeding and being so thankful for the return of our thought lives that feeding no longer has to be forced. it's putting the beauty and uniqueness of our thoughts to the use for which they were created. 

recovery isn't creating a world for ourselves in which we feel safe; it's walking a balance between safety and challenge. it is giving ourselves what we need to move forward, being good stewards of the safeties that recovery entails, using them as the pathway by which we discover our real lives, the ones we never could have expected or hoped for, rather than settling into the safeties and living halfway. 

(just pretend this is a good picture of the rocky mountains...

my iphone does them no justice)

recovery isn't learning to feel without effect. it is not slipping on a cloak of pride so thick that nothing can touch us; it is learning to feel the bad and the good, loving ourselves and loving others in spite of our imperfections. it is acknowledging that we need other people. it is embracing vulnerability, even when we're scared, and learning that love is worth all of it. 

when i began this blog, i found purpose and meaning in my fight for recovery. it was where i needed to be, but it was not where i needed to stay. recovery is not life, recovery is a journey back to life. recovery is a necessary night of mourning from which we wake to morning restoration.

love,

ea

phantom pain.

there's this phenomenon among amputees that's known as phantom pain.  in the days and weeks that follow amputation, patients often feel pain (or itching or burning or simply a presence) in their no longer existing limbs. because the limbs do not exist, neither does the pain. hence the name "phantom".

according to the mayo clinic, codeine and morphine are options for some sufferers of phantom pain. but what i don't like about narcotics, as opposed to the myriad of other available treatments, is that they alter the patient's awareness and clarity and presence (and can just threaten overall health) all to escape them from pain that doesn't  even exist. although these medications bring temporary relief, if the victim of phantom pain is ever going to experience true freedom, he or she is going to have to face the discomfort and difficulty and longevity of one of the alternative treatment options that will treat the pain at its source, that will get rid of it for good.

as i wandered through a dismal week of bad body image last week, i found the core of my being crying out for some relief. i wanted nothing more than to dive into the depths of my disorder, to shut out the screaming voices that have tortured me to no end.




as i was plotting my return to the arms of my disorder, i remembered what has happened before and what would happen again. i remembered standing in front of the mirror at the lowest weight i would ever reach, tears streaming down my face because what i saw still wasn't thin. i remembered how good it felt to devote myself to the single cause of starvation, how quiet the voices would get when they had me where they wanted me, i thirsted for the quietness, but i realized that the quietness was a sense of relief from an excruciating pain with no basis for existence. i also realized that the quietness would only remain as long as i was actively starving. if at any moment i sought some semblance of satisfaction with myself and the mirror, some strand of truth, the voices would chime in and spur me on to further destruction.


i realized that treating my body as if it were as big as the false reflection before me would be the same thing as a victim of phantom pain treating their non-existent, aching limb as if it were actually there.


in other words, starving a body in order to calm a mind is as absurd as

pumping morphine to numb an arm or a leg that doesn't exist.

the only real solution is for the sufferer to stop catering to the false version of his or her body. at first, It may be impossible to bridge the gap between delusion and reality with thoughts or words, so the sufferer must bridge the gap with actions. the amputee has got to get off the morphine and move forward. the anorexic has got to trust that her perspective is skewed and she's got to keep eating and living and waiting for the day that some ray of truth comes shining in her window.

when i look in the mirror, the girl i see is fat. as maddening as it is to see her staring back at me, taunting me and telling me i'm worth nothing, i know somewhere, deep down, that the fat i'm feeling and seeing and hating isn't there. it's a phantom- an illusion cast before me by my disorder. as sweet a relief as acting in my disorder would bring, i refuse to live my life according to a perception that isn't real. 

thankfully, my phantom pain is not constantly at its worst. this morning, i was thankful to wake up to a version of myself in the mirror that was a little easier to swallow. so i'm going to keep living and eating and i'm going to wait until the phantom in the mirror goes away for good. until then, life is sweet enough to manage, and it's certainly better than the alternative :)

love,


ea

1. (see definition 1 above): for most women, a size zero does not only denote the absence of magnitude and quantity of a woman's physique, but of the functionality her reproductive, integumentary and cardiovascular systems; her mental focus and clarity; her relationships; her sense of humor; her outside interests, hobbies and talents; who she is. 

2. (see definitions 2 & 3 above): the number zero is the first of many numbers which were created by man to achieve some cohesive sense of order and quantity. leave it to our culture to seek redemption and self-worth in our own number system, rather than the multitude of beauty (or lack thereof for which we might serve as vessels of restoration if we weren't so distracted) our Creator meant for us to enjoy. 

3. (see definition 4 above): why do we think that we will tap into an unending wealth of self-significance by fitting into a size that is called and recognized by a name denoting insignificance?

4. (see definition 5 above): for most women, fitting into a zero means hollowing out the place our hearts and minds once dwelled, creating a starvation-induced absence in which we think that we'll find ourselves. we forget what opinions, thoughts, and needs and wants feel like. when we seek neutrality in our pant size, we must accept neutrality in exchange for individuality as well. 

5. (see definition 6 above): perhaps, the size we so desperately desire to claim as our own is as its definition denotes: an arbitrarily, conveniently assigned label; a puff of air we abandon all else to grasp- only to find our hands empty.

yesterday, i dug the last of the zeroes from my closet and consigned them.  my laptop is currently sitting on a pair of thighs that will never touch the inside of a garment sized zero again. i'm thankful.

love,

EA

clay birds.

when i was in honduras, a couple other women and i joined a mi esperanza founder on a short road trip to a pottery co-op on the el salvador border to restock the pottery we sell in our store.

the pottery is made from natural clay derived from the banks of a nearby river and fired in clay stoves behind its makers houses. the co-op with which mi esperanza partners is comprised solely of women. i spent the day getting to know them. they are golden.

although i had not previously seen its place of origin, i've been viewing/purchasing the pottery ever since i began work with mi esperanza, so i knew which pieces we needed.

as i sifted through a floor full of pottery, searching for the bowls and cups and vases we typically carry, i saw a different piece i'd never seen. it was a small bird with a rounded head and a sloping neck that widened and shallowed into a triangular body. it sat a cool smooth weight in my palm and stared peacefully from two dotted eyes on either side of its rounded head that preceded a barely protruding beak. it was striped with off-white lines that swirled down its neck and around its body and across its back.

a honduran woman had artfully drawn each of the swirls with her hands. the bird was one of a kind. there never had been, nor would there ever be, another like it.
I looked at the bird and smiled. I would absolutely be taking one home.

When we'd gathered all we were planning to buy, the stocky Honduran woman in charge of the business smiled warmly, lifting her forearm to wipe the shine from her brow before beginning to count our number of pieces.

While we waited, the girls and I made our way behind the house, startling black speckled hens with our steps. The ground below was dusty and rough with rocks and twisted roots; but the dust, as if pouring itself forth into regeneration, led into lushness upon lushness. First was green grass, followed by dew-dripping crop rows from which black tree trunks rose, the fullness of their green leaves like an open curtain. The leaves gave way to rising grey mountains which stood in untouchable friendship, as if they protected the lenca potters and their houses and the woman and child across the street scrubbing clothes on a washboard.

I breathed a moment and looked, then stepped to shed on the left. The floor was smooth concrete. The roof overhead was held up by four posts, the walls open. Aside from a small path that'd been cleared, piles and tubs full of yet-to-be finished pottery lined the shed floors. There were thousands of pieces, all of them light, wet looking grey.

I came to a yellow tub and leaned forward to see inside. The bottom was filled with birds like the one I'd held moments before, none of them with vibrant designs, but identically empty-eyed, each of them the same, murky grey as the pieces surrounding.

The birds stared blankly from their sides. To look at them was to lose sight of what they were, to understand them as a pointed pile of grey inside a plastic yellow circle. If not for remembering their future as polished cordovan individuals with designs of hand-drawn ivory, to look at them would be a minor heartbreak.

I considered the vastness of difference between the finished birds. No two were alike, but all were equally beautiful.

I considered the facelessness of the birds at my feet, and I remembered the dull monotony with which I lived each day in my disorder. I wanted to make myself exquisite and unique and beautifully alone; i wanted to be special and unordinary and above; but my very attempt at redemption reduced me to a diagnoses, a single number out of nearly 10 million females in my country alone who were waking up and thinking the very same thoughts. I stripped myself of me. I was empty-eyed and grey, a clay bird in a pile of identicals.

When for a moment, I understood what I'd done, understood what I was missing, and stepped into the fear, it was as if a kind Honduran women in dirty, black Mary janes and once-white apron reached into the tub and pulled me out. She dusted me off and rinsed me in water. She painted me with stripes and swirls and shapes- a design no other bird would ever have. She made me beautiful.

But to set the designs would require a time of firing inside the hot kiln behind her house. Once emerged from the flames, the designs would no longer be painted, they would be an irremovable part of me forever.

In many ways, recovery is like a hot kiln. It is uncomfortable and sweaty and sometimes it burns. But recovery, if maintained, will make each of us the person we are- the person we thought we would find in the grey.

Love,

ea

please accept my deepest apologies...

...as i've taken more than the brief hiatus i promised two posts ago. 

i was not relapsing, as i fear some of you may have suspected. i was recovering from a case of stubborn honduran diarrhea/fever which was followed by vacation bible school which was accompanied by a terrible cold (who gets a cold when its 120 degrees out?).

anyways...i'm back now.

my mom has kind of a terrible back that likes to wedge itself out of place time-to-time. it decided to wedge the other day and in an effort take better care of herself than usual (this stuff runs in families), she's actually staying off her feet, and asked that i help her by running a few of her errands today. for whatever reason, she didn't like when i referred to it as "doing her bidding".

one of the tasks scratched onto the post-it she gave me was to run by her place of employment (which happens to be my former high school) and pick up a few papers.

i always feel a little bit like i might have a nervous breakdown when i visit the old campus. it's just hard to reconcile my present self with my eating disorder's old stomping grounds.

i attempted to mask my discomfort from myself by defiantly swerving my car into a handicapped parking space. i'm an alum, i thought, i can park where i want.


i walked inside to the office and peaked down the hall, searching for the familiar face with access to the papers i was getting for my mom. moments later, her large brown eyes appeared from a small back office and we greeted one another.

"you look great!" she said knowingly.

to my pleasant surprise, i found myself happy that'd she'd said so. to my pleasant surprise, i felt my mouth turn upward into a smile and thank her, as if her words were a nice addition to a day with which i would otherwise have been perfectly content.

as i walked to my car with a manila folder newly tucked under my arm, i realized what people were really trying to say all those times when they said i looked "better" or "healthy" or "beautiful" or "glowing".

no one was trying to tell me i'd gained weight or that i was looking chubby or fat or any of the other irrational things i thought.

i thought about seeing a person after a measure of time and noticing that the person had gained a substantial amount of weight that they did not necessarily need. i thought about how dumb it would be to tell someone that they looked great if they'd gained a whole bunch of unnecessary weight and how most people would just say nothing.

in other words, the countless number of "you look so much better"s i've gotten and resented would never have formed as thoughts in any of their speakers' minds if i had been fat or an unneeded number of pounds larger when they said them.


what i took as flaming arrows that seared my heart and twisted my thoughts were really just people who loved me wanting to say, "hey- you didn't look so good for awhile- but now it doesn't hurt me to look at you- i see that you've experienced some victory and i wanted you to know that i noticed because i'm sure it's been hard."


fellow strugglers- if people are relieved to see us "healthy", so much so that they speak it aloud, then we must have looked worse than we knew before, and we must look far better than we know we look now.

it's good to be back.

love,

ea

some lovely facts.

1. i changed my plane ticket and therefore, am still in honduras

2. mi esperanza's awesome jewelry designer is here this week. we are collaborating on several projects and im learning lots from her.

3. tomorrow, some cool people and i are visiting a beautiful place full of artesian shops known as Valle de Angeles.

4. i have successfully incorporated a number of new words into my working spanish vocabulary.

5. my hondo-mom {lori connell: the woman in charge of mi esperanza} made banana walnut pancakes with nutella for dinner. we ate them outside and enjoyed them immensely.

of one mind.

im currently sitting in "my" bedroom in my missionary friends' house in honduras, listening to early birds chirp outside my open window and taking comfort in the humming breeze of the large white box fan at the right-hand foot of my bed.

beneath me is a patchwork quilt of a hundred different colors and behind me is a stack of feather pillows. i am exceedingly happy.

ive spent the past twelve days working again with mi esperanza, designing a couple of new products, loving the women we work with, and spending lots of time with the founder of mi esperanza, one of the very best people I know.

i can't excuse the past 12 day's lack of blogging with the fact that ive been busy. although I have been on somewhat of a constant go, i would be lying if i said that i haven't had plenty of time for writing at night; this is a third world country and im a young female- there's not a whole lot i can safely be up to after dark.

I hope that no one takes this wrongly, or assumes what i am about to say as anything more than temporary, but the reason that ive chosen to neglect the blog for nearly two weeks is simple: i haven't wanted to think about eating disorders.

my eating disorder was such a measure of who i was for so long, that when I went into recovery, I found myself wondering who I was supposed to be. for a time, i think it was necessary and i think it was healthy to just know myself as someone in recovery from an eating disorder. the absence of my disorder left me with little else to which i could cling. i thought just as much about recovery as id thought of my disorder- both were full time jobs- and both required constant care and maintenance.

ive often wondered about the distant future- when my recovery will be a fact about me, rather than the core of me. I used to fear the time that those days would come true- subconsciously imagining myself suspended in space with nothing to ground me, nothing solid to grab- when I though of them.

but here in honduras, i am wondering if those days are still so far away.

when im soaking in this time with some of the most precious souls I know, ive found that to divide my attention, to anchor a portion of my thoughts to my own recovery, to recovery in general, would not solidify who i am as one might think, but would dilute the kind of focus I want to give.

I am forever shaped by the road that ive walked, but im beginning to see that it is not where ive come from nor where im going that makes me worth being where i am right now.

i have not blogged for two weeks, because although my actions have continued to mirror that of a recovered lifestyle, my thoughts and my heart have been on the work here.

i am no less passionate about recovery from eating disorders. in some ways, i think i've found a new level of passion for recovery in my desire to separate my thoughts from recovery itself.

this is by no means the end of my blog. ill be back next week, but until then, i hope no one minds if i simply don't think about it.

ill still be me {if not, ill be more of me} when i get back.

love from Honduras,

ea...p.s...see a picture of mi esperanza's newest product below:

a short {angry} rant.

i'm fairly sure that the majority of my posts serve as evidence of the fact that i am a selectively religious follower of grammar/punctuation rules.

although i disregard capitalization and find it simply unnecessary to avoid run-on sentences, i try my best to use its and it's in their correct contexts respectively {i've probably erred by sheer carelessness in a number of posts}, and i do not and will not end sentences with prepositions.

a preposition just before a period disgusts me about as much as another branch of grammar atrocities- the kind that fill female facebook walls and sorority girls' text messages- the kind involving unnecessary repetition of letters and exclamation points, obnoxious abbreviations and overuse of the words "sexy" and "girl" {the gym shorts and uggs combination of the english language, if you will}.

as much as these atrocities make my skin crawl by themselves, what brings me to a boiling anger- the kind so frustrating it's uncomfortable- is when these degradations of the english language are used to congratulate a girl on her recent weight loss.

i'm fully aware that there plenty of people whose health depend on them losing weight and that these people deserve to be encouraged when they succeed with healthier lives. but this morning, when i saw a photo of an alarmingly frail version of a friend of mine with comment after comment beneath it, i found myself clenching my jaw and both my fists.

"OMGGGGG my girl you look PERF!!!!!!!," one of the comments said. as horrible a version of english as the quote is, what's worse is the fact that "perfect" {or "perf" as the individual behind the quote has chosen as her means of conveying that her friend looks flawless} is something that young women in today's culture are taught to believe is achievable on any level, particularly through starvation and over exercise.

"sexxxxxy!!!!!!" another comment said. what isn't sexy at all is that the type of thin the girl photoed has reached, the type of thin our culture embraces as attractive is also the type of thin that disables a woman's estrogen production- virtually shutting off her reproductive system- disabling menstruation and poising her for premature osteoporosis by sucking calcium from her bones.

what's worse than any of the heinous abbreviations or abuse of exclamation points is the fact that the commenters continued throughout the facebook album's remainder to marvel over the photoed girl's weight loss, without realizing that their encouragement was much the same as telling an alcoholic to keep drinking- that they'd grown more successful, lovable and worthy since they'd taken to the bottle.

when i started losing weight, i remember the influx of congratulatory remarks that quickly became my daily sustenance. i lived for each one of them. family, friends, friends' families, teachers and people i barely knew all seemed to notice and all seemed to suddenly hold me with higher esteem than before. i thought i must have been doing something right, and as behavioral psychologists always say, behaviors that elicit reinforcement will be repeated. in other words, the comments made me feel really good, so i kept doing {and not doing} the things that got them coming in the first place. i do not blame any people or their attempted encouragement for deepening my dependence on my disorder. i blame our culture, rather, for being one leads its people to seek redemption and worth in physical appearances and obtainments rather than in things that actually matter.

the heart of the problem that's going to cause the photoed girl to read the comments on her album and continue doing {and not doing} whatever it is she's been doing {and not doing} is one with a long and difficult fix. changing a culture was never something that one person could do in one lifetime.

but helping one person with an eating disorder means as much as to me as helping a million, so i hope that this short {angry} rant will open at least one pair of eyes to the importance of cautiousness with weight loss comments.

you never know to whom {or what} you're talking.

love {and a little frustration, perhaps},

ea

one-year anniversary.

two days ago, i watched the sun rise from a plane that was 12 hours delayed. my dad and i made our way into the house, dropping our luggage inside the back door and rubbing our eyes as we stumbled up to our beds.

i woke up a few hours later with no sense of direction or purpose for the day other than to lie on the couch and watch crime shows on tv.

it's rare that i resign myself to the television for an entire day, but i was too tired and dull to really accomplish anything, so i thought it was fitting that i remain worthlessly on the couch and watch other people who hadn't spent the night in an airport terminal solve crimes.

it's also rare that i go a day without looking at my computer, but i was so tired that pulling my computer out of its sleeve in my backpack seemed like some unreachable task, so i let may 25, 2011 slip away without even realizing that it was may 25th.

i'm actually really good at going a fair number of days without ever knowing the actual date of any of them. i've managed to make it through life without ever missing any huge deadlines or events (not to say i haven't come close), but unfortunately, as i lay there watching CSI on wednesday, i let the first birthday of the blog go unacknowledged.

i don't suppose it's the blog's birthday that holds so much significance as it is the fact that it's been one year and two days since i let everyone know i was starting, "the rest of my life." this is the longest period of time since 2005 that i have lived life outside of my disorder, the longest period of time since 2005 that i have maintained my body weight within a recommended healthy range, and the longest period of time since 2005 that i have experienced consistent joy and peace.

{click the links! they are old posts :) )

on may 25, 2010, i wrote the first ever post of this blog. i wrote that i was mourning the loss of my disorder, but that i was persevering with the hope of a new morning- one that would be worth all my tears.

i was mourning the loss of my skinny body, of my size 0 clothes, but i tentatively embraced new sizes and months later, found myself basking in the morning glow of accepting my new self.

i was mourning the loss of what i felt made me worth something, but i awoke to a brilliant morning light, the light of Christ, and i learned i can't make myself worth anything, but He is worth everything and it is only in Him that my life can have meaning at all.

i was mourning the loss of my protector, but i awoke to a morning in which i felt strong enough to feel, to seek Christ's healing through the pain rather than my disorder's numbness outside the pain.

i was mourning the loss of the ease of restriction to combat bad body image, but i found myself thankful for the morning of my last final of college when i was able to succeed because i fought body image, instead of fighting my body itself.

i was mourning the loss of my "eating disorder foods". it's taken awhile, but i now celebrate morning after morning, each of them starting days during which i choose foods because i want them, not because i'm not afraid of them.

i now find myself mourning the sweet life- the morning- that this past year has unfolded. i'm going to miss my friends being next door and down the street, my apartment and my school.

but i look forward to the morning to come:

the morning when my friends and i adjust to living in different cities and fall into a rhythm as easy as what once was- the rhythm in which we stay close through phones and computers and girls' weekends- the rhythm that will result in our kids meeting each other one day.

the morning (the morning i was traveling last weekend to confirm): when i've grown accustomed to life in denver, colorado, where i'm moving in august to obtain a master's in counseling from denver seminary.

and all the mornings to follow. i've got no clue how they'll look, but i know how they won't look, and how they won't look, i've realized, isn't something to mourn.

it's something to celebrate.

thanks to each of you, whether you've been reading for a year or for a week. i can't describe what it means for caring people to walk beside me in this journey.

love,

EA

experiencing instead of ignoring.

It’s 11:20 pm and I’m sitting in the love field airport in dallas, texas. I’m typing this post in a word document, which I find strangely less inspiring than typing it directly into blogger©, but my wireless doesn’t feel like connecting, so I don’t have much more of a choice.

The reasoning behind my travels is for another post. I’m sorry to be shady, but when a new post begins to pour forth it’s a process I prefer to allow in uninterrupted succession, and if I’m going to mention why I’ve been all over the country this week, I’m going to have to devote the remainder of this post to that mention, and I don’t want to abandon my impending idea. A post devoted to the purpose of my travels is coming soon.

i am currently stuck in a texas airport 11:20 pm because of a day’s worth of bad weather. It started this morning, causing me to miss a first connecting flight and then the following flight for which I was rebooked when I missed the first.

We’d boarded our third attempt at a flight when hail began pounding the top of the plane. Moments later, we were de-boarded and then herded down a little known flight of stairs to a dingy hallway inhabited by a number of crew-people in orange vests. i don’t think anyone would have been so concerned, but given recent events, the tornado sirens and weathermen yelling at love field to take cover had gotten some hearts pounding and some faces hardening.

I found myself fearful at first, but moments after everyone had settled in the hallway with their phones and ipads under their noses, hoping for some semblance of service, the orange-vested crew people began to make their way up and down the hall with cups and bottles of water. They were filling the cups and handing them out as fast as they could. Nerves make me thirsty, so I was thankful for the water, but what truly refreshed me was the smiles and the willingness with which the crew served. They were laughing and stepping with spring and looking us all in the eye and acting as if the delay was going to benefit them in some way, rather than extending their work day by an undeterminable amount.

I mentioned this in a recent post, but there’s something about crisis (or in tonight’s case, a minor interruption of the expected schedule, which many of unfortunately consider a crisis) that opens a unique perspective in which we think about ourselves in terms of being aware of how frustrated and let down and disappointed we are, but mainly, we find ourselves projecting that awareness onto our perceptions of others, trying as hard as we can to help because we know how it feels and we just want to make it better somehow.

As I sit here and type, i find my heart bleeding for the individuals who surround me. and I think that their hearts are bleeding for me too. there’s a woman with a peaceful face and a consistently soft smile a couple or so feet away. A moment ago she got up and gently covered my bare toes with an airline blanket. minutes later when I’d squirmed and shifted and re exposed my feet, she covered them again. when I told her my mom would thank her, she told me she’d expect someone to do the same for her little girl. I’ve conversed easily with many people tonight. their smiles and sarcasm and laughter and genuine interest in where I came from and where I’m heading have made these hours ones I no longer feel are wasted.

moments ago, an update on the icelandic volcanoes appeared on tv. a man in a striped shirt to my right began to describe the area of Tennessee in which he lives. the man explained that he lives near some of the richest soil in the south, but that the soil is only the way it is because of a huge earthquake that occurred years ago. the earthquake was so massive, it actually moved the mississippi river. what is now some of the south’s richest soil was riverbed of the mississippi before the earthquake. “so you know,” the man said, “we think these natural disasters are so horrible- and they are- but something good usually comes out of them.”

as I’ve had an abundance of spare time to sit here and rediscover chocolate-covered pretzels (yes.) and think, I’ve found myself realizing how counter productive it is to ignore or numb ourselves to our problems. so often, we think we’re saving our lives by living around our problems rather than through them, but in doing so, I think we end up losing our lives (or at least potential pieces of them) instead.

I suppose I should have reviewed, for those less immersed in the eating disorder field, that eating disorders are in most basic terms, destructive efforts to escape negative circumstances or emotions. For me, I cared so much about being thin, that I felt no more than mere fondness for most other aspects of life. As long as I was thin, as long as I knew I ate less and worked our harder than anyone else, it didn’t matter what went wrong or what I lost. In my eyes, nothing could touch me.

But the thing that I failed to consider was the fact that things were touching me, regardless of whether or not I felt like they were. When I experienced disappointment, hurt, failure, betrayal, I thought that the sizes I could wear and the meals I could skip served as some sort of exemption for me from life’s faults- that the bad things weren’t actually bad because they didn’t matter in comparison to my size and I had my size under control.

The times I have been rejected have been most predictive of my downward spirals into my disorder. But no matter how many miles I ran or how many calories I denied myself- even if I would have starved to death itself- there was no way I was ever going to erase the rejection. instead of living and learning through my problems and imperfections and becoming the woman I could have been, I chose to become a person who’d been crippled by her struggles. I sought shelter in what I thought was a tunnel that would allow me to escape life’s troubles unscathed and I immerged a self-afflicted victim of the escape itself.

It is 12:50 pm. I am still sitting, seven hours late arriving home, still going to be thrown off tomorrow after crawling in bed whenever I’m finally afforded such luxury. A few moments ago, a short woman with spiky hair and stark white tennis shoes announced that those of us headed to little rock won’t be leaving until 6:30 am. in other words, i’m about to sleep in an airport.

Tonight, I have experienced to the minute-most degree, how it feels to be displaced. The airport venders are closed and our belongings are in the bottom of a plane- each of us is at the mercy of southwest airlines, and thankfully, they’ve come through with all the food, water, and sodas they have.

Tonight, I have been reminded of what people really need. once our basic needs are satisfied, there isn’t a whole lot we can collect for ourselves in an external sense that’s going to make our lives that much better. Once our basic needs are satisfied, it is to love and be loved, to meet the basic needs of others and to encourage one another the best that we can, that will leave us with feelings of overabundance.

Tonight was a problem. But as I sit here with a heart full from the ways total strangers and I have served one another in a time of need, I have trouble calling tonight a problem at all.

I don’t know who I would be if I’d have lived through my problems, rather than around them via my disorder. but I do know, that I want to bear my problems to their full extent from now on, and trust God to bring beauty from all the ashes.

Love,

ea

the girl with the blanket.

one summer night after my sophomore year of college, i remember sitting on the kitchen counter of a friend's apartment, swinging my legs and chatting with some little rock people i love.

a couple of younger kids- all boys- showed up. they'd all gone to my high school and had just finished, i suppose- it was one of those situations in which each of us knew the others names, but we'd not necessarily met or conversed before.

after a few awkward moments of deciding whether or not we were going to plow through and talk as if we really knew each other or take the time and effort to do official introductions, we opted for the latter.

i was somewhat full of myself that summer. i slanted my gaze a yard or so across to the other counter, a slight grin on my face, and told them my name. "yeah, yeah," they said, "you hung out with so and so and what's her name."

a dark-headed one, leaning on the backs of his arms against the counter tipped his head upward and piped in, "hey," he said, "you're the girl with the blanket."

even then, amidst one of the less-severe stints of my disorder (i'd decided the key to recovery was to maintain my weight ** pounds below healthy but no lower. it didn't last long.), i remember it stinging a little to think i'd been remembered that way.

when my eating disorder first started, towards the end of my sophomore year of high school, i remember finding myself in a state of constant cold. it wasn't the kind of momentary cold that passes on to be forgotten. it was a cold that lived its own life from the inside of me out. for awhile, i wore this massively oversized fleece sweatshirt of my boyfriend's, but when we broke up, i started to bring blankets.

i remember wrapping myself from my neck down to my feet. the blanket protected my underweight body the way i thought my underweight body protected me.

looking back, i must've caught more eyes than i know. i not only covered myself up in class, but i walked the halls with the blanket, too. i wore it wrapped around my shoulders like some kind of old woman who'd used up all her objectives in life other than to remain comfortable.

its been a long time since my blanket-covered body roamed the halls of little rock christian academy. so long in fact, that a new high school building's been built and the old building became a new middle school. my mom teaches in it.

yesterday mid-morning, i went to see my mom and my old art teacher. i made it through the parking lot, in the front door and past the office feeling just fine, but when i hung a sharp left into the bathroom i'd used a hundred million times, it was as if an overflow of nostalgia had pressed itself against the wooden door, waiting to envelope me when i opened it.

the bathroom had been painted a random shade of apricot, but somehow felt the same. i stepped inside and stared at myself in one of the medicine cabinet-sized mirrors above the sinks. i felt one with myself- i thought back to the times i'd stood there and stared blankly, the times as a senior that i'd excused myself during class and reached under those very countertops into the skinniest freshman girls gym bags so i could try on their jeans, the time i'd become so overwhelmed with hatred of my body that i'd left spanish class and sat on those same white tiles and sobbed- i wondered where the person i am now had been all those times. i wondered where she'd been hidden and i shuddered at the fact that my disorder was screaming so loud that i'd forgotten i had ever been someone else.

those moments i spent in the bathroom, staring at myself like a long lost sister i'd newly found, enabled me to step back and to rethink the past few weeks of my life.

graduating college is a scary and slightly painful endeavor. it's uncertain and it's overwhelming and to be honest, it's left me longing for the old comforts of my disorder.

although i've not given in, temptation to restrict lurks in the back of my mind. working out has become equal in priority to things it should fall far below. just moments after i typed the previous sentence, a dear friend called. i immediately threw on shoes so and ran outside so i could walk as we caught up. i found myself having to apologize for breathing so loudly into the phone. as soon as we finished talking i figured i may as well do a workout dvd if i had my shoes on, so i started one up. i pushed play and i went for 60 seconds or so, but felt a pressing urge in the depths of me telling me to stop.

when i looked in that same mirror yesterday morning, i thought about the girl with the blanket, and i couldn't believe that she and i were the same person.

but the truth is that the hands typing this post were the same hands that clasped the edges of my blankets closed around my chest, and the voice that's pressing me to spend far more time working out than i should is the same voice that talked me down the road to becoming the girl with the blanket.

i will not listen.

“No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the

one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and

despise the other..."

Matthew 6:24

love,

ea

what happens when we fight.

towards the end of my last post, i said i was going to click "publish", put my computer down and continue to study for my last final of college.

i said i was confident that everything would make sense because in spite of my less-than-desirable body image, i had eaten all that i needed for that day and the one before it and that one before that one and so on.

the final took me nearly the full two hours. i did my very best and i felt okay about it.

yesterday, i checked my grade;

it was a 96%.

i considered the circumstances surrounding the final and the day leading up to it. it would have been easy and comfortable and natural for me to restrict food. i could have combatted body image with the knowledge that a few more days of sparse eating and all would be well (except it wouldn't have).

but i had my research methods final and i wanted to do well, so i ate.

and now i'm thinking about a 96% on a test versus bad body image. it would have been really funny, i think, if i would've restricted to improve my body image, because my own perception of my body is false. so in essence, i would have deprived myself of the necessary fuel to do well on a test so that i could advance myself on some continuum of body satisfaction that is based in delusions and lies in the first place.

instead, i chose to fuel myself for function, and i achieved a score that cannot become an object of distortion or delusion, a score that is an exact reflection of the intelligence on my inside rather than an false projection of my outside.

i think i made the right choice.

in a little over two hours i'll be graduating from college.

i am infinitely thankful i didn't waste my last year on my disorder.

love,

ea

today wasn't fun...

...it started wonderfully.

the sun was bright and the sky was clear. i had oatmeal with blueberries, almonds and flax seed for breakfast with some wonderful south american coffee.

around 7:30 i started studying for a final i have tomorrow. at 7:45 i got a text message from a friend wanting to go for a walk.

at 7:47 i was brushing my teeth and liking myself in the tank top i'd thrown on.

around 7:50 i was putting on my shoes and running out the door.

i'm not sure when or where things went wrong, but by noon i found myself fighting back tears. bad body image came out of nowhere and nestled itself in for the duration of my day.

i had a counseling appointment, which i'd hoped would help. i purposefully wore a tank top because i wanted to tackle this unhealthy obsession i have with arms. my counselor had two points of advice: that i need to accept i'm not perfect, and that some people's bodies don't respond to exercise.

i think she wanted me to cope with the arm issue myself, and that was why she took such a non-directive approach. but i didn't want to be brave today. i just wanted her to say all that i wanted to hear.

i left counseling aching more deeply than before.

hobby lobby is a peaceful place for me, so the fact that i'd been planning on going all day worked out beautifully.

i wandered inside and thought i'd sneak past the aisle of full body mirrors for sale and see if i couldn't reconcile myself with my body. i stepped in front of a mirror, hopeful that it might right the day's wrongs and soothe the ache in my chest. i saw a belly poking over the waist band of my white gauzy skirt and two chunky arms fluffing out from either of my rounded shoulders. the overweight young woman staring back at me grew red-eyed and she began to whimper. I walked away, vowing to forget what I'd seen and suck my sobs dry, when a familiar voice called my name. i turned around and my eyes met who i knew was already there: one of my very best friends. She put her arms around me and i told her what i was feeling. my friends have grown to learn, i think, that there isn't a lot that they can do when i'm attacked with body image other than to love on me.

hobby lobby calmed my mind and softened the stabbing pain that accompanies bad body image days. i left feeling slightly stronger. i studied awhile, then cleaned my kitchen just in time for my friends to come over and make breakfast for dinner.

i didn't want to eat because i spent the majority of the day thinking that i'm heavy.

i ate anyway because i only had one reason not to eat, but i could have named a million reasons to eat.

in roughly 60 seconds, i will be finished typing this post.

i'll put my laptop down and pick my study guide back up. everything will make sense to me because even though i saw a fat person in the mirror today, i fueled my brain with carbohydrates and i got plenty of fats and protein too.

i'll wake up tomorrow and i'll eat breakfast and i'll do my best on my last final of college.

i don't know how long i'm going to have to look at the fat version of myself in the mirror, but however long it is, i'll keep eating and i'll keep living.

love,

EA

right now...

...i'm sitting in my bed, leaning against some pillows as i type. heat is coming off of my back shoulders, making this daily ritual a littles less comfortable than normal. the reason for the heat and its accompanying sting is something that happens to me far too easily: sunburn.

it happened on saturday as i spent the day cleaning up yards in pratt city, alabama, a small area that was hard-hit in the disastrous series of tornadoes week before last.

i kept having to remind myself that i was merely 20 minutes from my apartment, not amidst the impoverished mountains of tegucigalpa, honduras. it's hard to believe that a mere drive down the interstate from the regality of Samford and mountain brook's castle-like homes is devastation so severe it appears third-world.

i kept having these swells of emotion that left me near tears, but i think what kept me from losing it was the vast spectrum of feelings that were occurring simultaneously and with equal intensity. i was too overwhelmed to start crying.

part of me was undone by the damage and the pieces of peoples lives- teddy bears, parasols, tricycles- that had come from who knows how far and clothes hanging in closets without walls or roofs and the church building, crunched like a dollhouse dropped in a driveway with a pew sticking out of the top of it and the national guard armed and uniformed on every street corner.

other parts of of me swelled with joy and amazement at the number of volunteers and especially at a tent full of women beside the doll-house church. a huge grill sat just outside the tent and they were surrounded by tables with hundreds of brown lunch bags sorted on top of them and coolers full of water and soda. the bags were filled with food and the women offered them to any and everyone walking past. they weren't rationing the food or soliciting forced gratitude the way people helping sometimes do. they were a bunch of mothers and the white tent was their temporary kitchen. they were there to love and serve and care and laugh. their common desire was that every person who walked past left with more food than they needed. as i watched them serve i couldn't help but think i was experiencing a micro-sliver of what heaven will be like.

working all day was the perfect outlet for the intensity of my feelings. at first, it was hard to feel like i was really doing anything. the damage in a single yard was seemingly endless, and alone, i am capable so little. but the thing is, no one is really capable of that much alone. it's not until we all get together and do the the little bit of which we're individually able that anything can really happen.

during the second half of the day we found ourselves standing in an oblong circle around the edge of a mass of the branches of at least two trees that had overtaken a man's backyard when they'd fallen wednesday night before last. the man was kind and seemingly peaceful. he needed a chainsaw and our group had one and so we went to work, moving branches as the men cut them. i found myself using my strength training, squatting low to the ground, grabbing huge limbs and pulling them up and out into the yard's outer edge, trying to use my legs more than my arms so i wouldn't strain anything.

we worked for hours, moving branch after branch. some of them were big enough that it took two of us to move them. i was loving that i was capable of moving whatever i wanted. there was this one section of the tree's trunk i'd watched the men cut. i'd had my eye on it for awhile. when we'd moved all the limbs and were waiting on the chainsaw to cut more, i made my way to the piece of trunk and started to move it. i was making some headway when an old man with a round belly and a straw hat took several bowl-legged, hop-like strides towards me, "too heavy little lady!" he crowed, "yer gonna hurt yerself."

i was annoyed, pissed actually. but not wanting to be disrespectful, i smiled and said, "sorry, sir. i get a little ambitious at times" then he offered me some sunscreen for which i was apparently too late, hence the redness of my back and shoulders.

but regardless of whether i moved the branches alone or with someone else or not at all, i was just so proud of myself for being physically able to move them. there are times throughout the past five years that i remember reveling in my physical weakness, wearing it like a medal of honor, feeling completely capable of incapability. i could run with the best of anyone, but when it came to muscle and strength, i wanted to feel like i'd reduced myself to such a skin and bone state that i was unable to lift anything. i went from being a base on the cheerleading squad my sophomore year of high school, to people telling me i was going to have to get a bone density test if i even wanted to try out again as a flyer ( which i didn't end up doing). sometimes i would attempt things of which i knew i was incapable, just so i could hear someone tell me a little scrawny thing like me shouldn't try such things. those comments were to me as a rush of water is to a dry tongue. nothing could've satisfied me more.

the larger implication of me loving that i was weak was the fact the i loved that i couldn't offer anyone anything. as my group and i moved branches, we watched a man's yard slowly reappear. it was an incredible feeling to know that taking care of myself had played a small, indirect part in a man being able to walk outside his house and see more of his yard than he had seen in a week.

life is not about me, and that's why i make sure i'm up for it.

love,

ea

my mom...

...makes this pie. this chocolate chip pie. i grew up on it and several other staples- one of them being egg and cheese sandwiches.

mom's pie is a big deal. sometimes i feel like other moms only bring us Christmas gifts to ensure that their yearly pie will appear all wrapped in green and red cellophane on their doorsteps. and then they end up fighting their kids and husbands for it.

one thing i never did give up for my eating disorder was my mom's pie. i think deep down i always knew that i would look back one day and hate myself for having an eating disorder for so long, but i didn't ever want to look back on time with family and wish i'd invested myself better. so whenever that pie was around i took one for the team and i ate a piece. granted- i somehow managed to keep my caloric intake vastly beneath what i needed- even on the days i ate the pie. and if not, i always made up for it afterwards- sometimes one piece of pie projected implications as far as a week ahead for my diet and exercise. but it was worth it to me to be present with my mom and her deep-dish chocolatey masterpiece surrounded by steam swirls from coffee, beneath the kitchen lights at our raw wood table.

my mom is a lot like her pie. this pie- it's got a layer of dark, dark chocolate chips and then another layer of some other-worldly kind of goodness. my mom is the same way in that she isn't just one flavor of woman.

she's got a heart so vast it's intimidating- she nurtures and she loves with an artful brilliance- but she's completely willing to say what needs to be said- even if that means telling someone close to her that they're being an idiot. she takes life seriously enough to know that laughter is sometimes the only appropriate resort. she is gentle and kind but genuine and real. she is sweet, but never so much so she is limitedly tolerable.

eating disorders are often stereotyped as being rooted in the mother/daughter relationship, but recent research does not support such stereotypes. although the idea that a mother could play an integral role in the development of her daughter's eating disorder is more than valid, it is hardly generalizable across the entire eating disorder population. and it certainly is not generalizable to ginger wade.

i remember being a little girl, walking down the sidewalk in my red mary-janes after school. i was in awe of how beautiful the autumn leaves were, and i noticed two or three that i just couldn't bear to leave behind. i picked them up and put them in my backpack. in the moments that followed i became so overwhelmed by the beauty of the leaves that i realized i was going to have to save as many as i could. i ended up 20 or so feet behind my class, stepping and pausing, stepping and pausing, putting flame-colored leaves into my backpack until it was full. when i got home, i ran inside, opened my backpack and dumped the pile of leaves onto the living room couch. mom asked me please not to do that again, but not before she thanked me for bringing the leaves home so she could see them and for appreciating fall because it was the best season.

when i was in second grade or so, i had this smelly red slicker. it had navy blue lining and big pockets. my mom has always loved cinnamon rolls and i somehow knew that. mom made my lunch almost everyday, and they were the best lunches, so when they served cinnamon rolls one day at school i had an easy time trading some kid something for his. i wrapped it in about 30 napkins and tucked it safely into the pocket of my slicker. i tapped my foot and bounced in my chair the rest of the day because i was so excited to hand my mom the sticky white package and watch her open it. i didn't take off my slicker until i walked inside my house, just to make sure the cinnamon roll would be safe. when my mom pulled the sugar saturated napkin away from the gold-brown roll, her face lit up and she went on and on, thanking me as if i'd just presented her with a gift she'd been wanting all her life. she had this soft yellow sweatshirt with red writing on it and that it seemed like she wore more often than not when we were around the house. i remember her standing there in that sweatshirt, microwaving the cinnamon roll and then eating it. she told me it was the most delicious thing she'd ever had. she ate a cinnamon roll that had made its way from an elementary school cafeteria tray to the pocket of a second grader's rain slicker to her kitchen counter, just so i could feel like she appreciated me thinking of her. years later, she told me she didn't even mind eating it- all germ-covered and tasting like wet rubber- she was just so touched by me bringing it to her she was happy to eat every bite.

i remember my mom coaching my basketball team and getting so into it. all the girls loved her because she was perfectly real with them. there was this one girl who was really tall, but just a little bit slow. my mom told her all the things that made her good at basketball, and that if she would just anticipate what was going to happen, that she could intercept any pass she wanted. i don't think there was a game that followed that the girl didn't end up with 4 or 5 steals. one practice, my mom sat the whole team down and told them about Jesus.

when i turned 16, my mom found a barn some way or another and she planned the most magical surprise birthday anyone has ever had. it was perfectly chilly and the barn's wooden beams glowed with white twinkle lights. music was playing and there was fire for roasting marshmallows. she had gotten me this wonderful poncho, woven in a million colors of yarn and i felt special and beautiful and loved. it was the best birthday i've ever had.

it was roughly three months after the surprise party that my eating disorder started.

my mom always says that having a child is like pulling your heart out of your chest and letting it walk all around outside your body. i suppose it was for that reason that my mom fought when i wouldn't fight, ate when i wouldn't eat and loved me when i wouldn't love myself.

even when recovery felt unnatural and all wrong, and i couldnt think of any reason i wanted to keep going, knowing that i was giving my mom her daughter back made perseverance worth all the struggle.

thank you, mom.

i love you.

happy mothers day.

in Christ,

EA