not if, but when

My life is pitiful these days. I should've gotten up hours ago. By this time of the day, I should have already cleaned the apartment, gone Christmas shopping, made a trip to the grocery, and provided my husband with some sort of lunch. Instead, I am sitting in my underwear, waiting on an egg to boil, surrounded by dirty dishes and trash, writing.

Long sigh. All the things we should have done, right? They always haunt us.

I see my nutritionist tomorrow morning. I've had to keep a log of everything I've eaten for the past two weeks. I must say I'm a little nervous. I really have tried my hardest to keep up, but I'm still far from where I'm supposed to be. It's hard to go from eating practically nothing to a normal diet in just a couple of weeks.

I'm trying, though, and that's what matters. I think.

Eating disorders are a confusing thing. I was just going to therapy at first, and then I had to add a medical doctor and a nutritionist to beat the addiction because my therapist said she couldn't do it alone. I remember thinking at the time, Can't do it alone? This isn't even that big of a deal...aren't you a professional? I've learned since that it is a big deal. And yes, it is an addiction. An awful one. I don't even want it; it's not enjoyable. At least people who are alcoholics probably enjoyed alcohol at one point. It's not like I ever really enjoyed starving myself. Yet here I am, struggling to put food in my mouth every day. How did this even happen?

It's an emotional thing, really. I hate my body, yes, but it's more than that. I'm learning that it has to do with all these dark things that happened in my childhood that I never dealt with. When I learned about stuff like that in psychology class, I never really bought into it much. Now, I wish I had paid more attention.

I'm also learning that eating disorders are dangerous - highly dangerous, actually. When I was at the peak of self-starvation, I had somehow convinced myself that food was an option. Surprise to me - it's not.

Before I went to the doctor, I wouldn't have even really considered my eating disorder "serious." After I visited the doctor, though, I realized that I've already done some damage. I'm waiting to find out how heavy the damage is. At the doctor, they took my blood pressure three different ways, took tons of blood, and took a urine sample. I filled out mounds of paperwork. They did an EKG (electrocardiogram, I think?) on my heart. I was there for two and a half hours. During my appointment, I remember thinking, Okay, I guess this is actually a big deal.

If that wasn't enough to shake me up, the results were. My weight was dangerously low for my height, there was blood in my urine, and my EKG was off. I was put on lexapro and prilosec and was finally released for the moment. When I had arrived at the doctor's office that afternoon, the sun was still out. When I left, it was as dark as midnight.

A couple of days later, I got a call from the doctor's office just telling me to call them back. Nervously, I dialed the number, and the nurse on the other end told me that I had to go to the hospital to get an echo on my heart. When I asked what that was, she informed me that it was a heart ultrasound. She even had the day and time already set for me, later in the week. I remember feeling like I had been hit by a car that I had never even seen coming. Hospital? More tests on my heart?

Why didn't I realize I was doing this to myself?

Addictions are a funny thing, though. Even as I lay there in the hospital bed, naked with ultrasound gel on my chest, I remember wondering if I really wanted to get better.

What the heck is wrong with me? Getting better isn't an option. I have to eat. There's nothing optional about food.

But I still have to remind myself of this many times a day. Like it's something I'm trying to convince myself of but don't really believe.

I believe in Jesus, but I feel like people who have never really experienced him might do this sometimes. They never make a conscious decision to follow him, but when things start going wrong, I feel like they probably sit around trying to talk to him, thinking things like, If you're up there, can you make the cancer go away? Come on, Jesus, didn't you say you came to save the world? Why can't you save my brother from his cocaine addiction? And they sit around like the Little Engine that Could, whispering to themselves, "Jesus is real, Jesus is real, Jesus is real."

But if you don't really believe it, it means nothing. There's no "if you're up there." He's either there or he isn't. And when you really believe he's there, you know. It transforms you - everything about you. Yeah, you'll still have a lot of problems (hello, look at me). But at the end of the day, you won't wonder if you're going to make it up the mountain like the Little Engine; you'll know for certain that you will.

I don't really believe food is a good thing yet. But I believe in Jesus. So I know that I'll conquer this, even if I don't feel like it at the moment. And that's really all I need to know.