Who You Say I Am
October 24, 2023
My dietitian loves Jesus. Our sessions, though we process food related topics, are full of conversation about Jesus and who He is to me when it comes to food, my body, and recovery. Recently, we’ve been working on further healing in my relationship with food and focusing on permissive eating. She has helped me dive deeper in processing my worth in Jesus’ eyes and how I can diminish that worth through my eating disorder behaviors.
I have learned that permissive eating is giving myself permission to eat any food without any restriction, while conditional permission is allowing myself to eat a food but with limits, compensations, or rules. My assignment to reflect on this in my own recovery was to make a list of my permissive foods (what I can eat with no restriction or limitations), conditional permissive foods (what I can eat but with limitations), and nonpermissive foods (foods that I have made off limits to myself). With this list in hand, my dietitian and I talked through food science, needing both soul and body nourishment with food to thrive, and finding a healthy balance with the two. We discovered that my thought around permissive eating is, “it makes sense why I can eat those foods and why they’re not good or bad (because food has no moral value and does not dictate our value)… But I can say and believe that for everyone else, just not for myself.” We talked through my need to surrender my inverted pride (being selfish by taking control because I believe I have no value - seems backwards, right?!) and my desire to renew my mind when it comes to these thoughts that eating certain foods makes me worthless.
Going way past just a relationship with food and into our walks with Jesus, we don’t receive blessings because of us. It’s about God. He gives to us because it’s His character, not because He’s rewarding our character. It’s Christ’s very nature to unconditionally love His people, despite our constant disobedience and sin. Satan shrieks lies that food will take away from my worth. Believing those lies for so long has become comfortable. Miserable but comfortable. The question is, am I willing to accept what Jesus is giving me, even if it’s uncomfortable in its unfamiliarity to what I’ve let myself believe for so long?
Am I affirming my value as a daughter of the King through my food choices and permission with food? Ask yourself, “am I affirming my value as a son or daughter of the King through *insert what you struggle with, idolize, and/or use to take control from God*? If not, what is the belief that I have put above the love of Christ? What is the belief that I have made higher than the name of Jesus?”
Satan wants us to live our lives in fear. He wants us to go about each day focusing only on the lies. We know the lies of the enemy take away from what God has for us. So why do we continue to be fearful of Satan’s deceit, giving in to what he tells us, when he has already been defeated on the cross?
I’m thankful for my dietitian, not only because she is someone who helps me in my recovery, but because she pushes me to pursue Jesus more. I’m thankful that the reason I am healing from the eating disorder is because of Jesus and His love for me, knowing that “healing” rooted in any other thing is fleeting. I’m thankful that I have a Savior who calls me His daughter, not because of anything I have ever done or ever will do, but because of who He is.
Am I willing to accept that God has given me so many good foods to eat for nourishment, while fellowshipping with community, for fun while making core memories with my best friends, and because He has created my body so wonderfully and so perfectly? What truth from Jesus are you willing and ready to accept, despite the discomfort brought by the enemy’s lies? Jesus defeated Satan on the cross for us. We can affirm that victory by affirming our worth in Jesus and opposing Satan’s lies. I don’t know about you, but it fires me up to get to walk in the authority of Jesus Christ, trampling over the one who was kicked out of Heaven.
To my First Love,
I stand in adoration before You today, so humbled that You held me up as I learned to look at myself as part of the creation that You spoke into life and said was very good. I pray that we would go forward to walk in Your authority, affirming who You say we are. When the enemy throws fiery darts, may we ready our feet to stand firm on You, speaking Your truth aloud as we watch the arrows fall to the ground.
Amen