photo by Nathan Walker
My husband's favorite holiday is Thanksgiving. He loves to spend it in Mississippi, where he grew up. His parents are no longer with living, and navigating a new normal is still hard. But we try to build our own traditions and ease the ache where the old ones used to be.
On Thursday, we cooked up the delicious fat-back, butter fried, Southern dishes and lined them up on the dining room buffet. My husband offered thanks for the food, family and a host of other gifts. I was the last to fill my plate and sit down at the table. I looked at my my son, my husband and my sister-in-law. We had shared many meals at this table and longed for those who weren't there. We were missing Grandma Nancy and Papa Juju and friends that used to come. There were only four of us yet we'd prepared enough food "to feed the five thousand."
It should have been one of those moments where I was deeply present and grateful. But instead, I felt hateful. I looked around at our plates and saw them overflowing with calories and cholesterol and sodium and cardio-vascular threats. My pulse quickened and my neck got splotchy as I clenched my jaws.
I am badly broken around food. The constancy of needing it, the addictive properties hiding within it; the weight I lose and gain again from it; the willpower that must conquer it; the exercise that must counter it; the diseases that result from the wrong kinds of it; the obesity of those who have too much of it and the scarcity for those who don't have enough. Food is the devil's playground for my deep-seated control issues.
Before I knew what was happening to me, the top popped and my food stories began to spill out of the container I stuff them in. My fears about fatness and sickness and death were in full swing. My stomach was in knots and I felt like I might be sick. "No!" I snapped at myself. "It's Thanksgiving! I'm not thinking these thoughts today!" But it was too late. I sat silently at the table -- surly and judgmental and raw and confused.
Typically, when I feel like we are making poor food choices as a family, I make snarky comments to show my disapproval. I held my sarcasm through dinner, but my guts were churning with disdain. I prayed, "Jesus, pretty please help me get my shit together before I ruin this holiday."
I've known this inner demon intimately throughout my life, and I was deeply angry with myself for letting it seize my thoughts again.
Just as I was about to come undone, a question rose up from the center of my being:
Why are you here, Sweetie? Not just at this table but in this life?
My mind stopped spinning and grew still. "I know this one." I thought. And I said a silent prayer, "Thank you, Jesus."
And because I knew my "why" (once I was reminded to remember it), I was able to rise above what was petty and painful. I could suddenly see my role and decisions from a different perspective. I was able to say "no" to my suffering and return to a place of presence and community.
I'm not saying that knowing our "why" makes all of our personal problems go away. But I am saying that knowing helps us when we are stuck and suffocated by our signature frailties -- those things that come back to attack again and again.
We all have problems... issues that isolate us, wounds that scar us, hardships that haunt us, dysfunctions that daunt us. It's not our difficulties that have to define us though. Our "why" trumps and triumphs over all when we know it.
That's why it's imperative we know it.
Want to push past a persistent problem that keeps you spinning? Know your "why."
When you know your "why," you have the power to change things. It doesn't have to be a mystery either. I'll be holding a free event in January to help you uncover your "why."
Sign up here and don't miss the chance to change everything in 2016!
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If you're struggling with an eating disorder, call the National Eating Disorder Association hotline at 1-800-931-2237.