What does hunger mean to me?

• No one loves me
• My needs will not be met
• I am all alone

At some point this past year I realized that I was afraid of being hungry!  How strange!  It made me really nervous and panicky if I thought I was going to be or on the verge of being hungry.  How did this happen?  Well, because I will analyze every behavioral or emotional issue I can get my hands on, I traced this irrational fear back to the first 6 months of my life.  I lived in an orphanage, you know.  So what would a state orphanage have been like?  Would I have had one-on-one attention from a caregiver or would I have gotten a bottle and a diaper change at whatever time the work schedule called for it?  When I was hungry and cried, did anybody come?  My mom said that when she adopted me at 6 months old, I never cried and was on a very tight schedule - went to bed at 7:00 p.m. and stayed there all night with nary a peep.  Did I learn that if I cried no one would come?  When I was hungry, no one cared?

Of course, I have no idea if this scenario is anywhere remotely accurate and really, does it even matter.  I know Freud was all about those first few years of life but if you trace back every dysfunctional thought pattern or behavior it really just gives you an excuse to keep doing it.  My mother and father abandoned me so....I have an excuse for every bad thing I have ever done or will ever do.

To counteract some self-sabotaging thoughts that I have had, I practice speaking the following confirmations out loud several times a day:

• Hunger is never an emergency
• Hunger is only mildly uncomfortable.
• I can tolerate hunger.
• Hunger will come and go.

When my belly gets empty and starts to growl, it doesn't mean that no one loves me.  It just means that at some point in the near future, I need to eat.  No big!  Really wish I would have figured that one out before the age of 43!!!

I spent so many years of my life trying to figure out the psychology of me.  I don't know if it was necessary or not but I do know now that my needs are better served by focusing on the here and now and the future.

Joyce Meyer says that forgiveness is the beginning of all healing.  So maybe it is necessary to look back, examine the wounds, name them and forgive where necessary.  Then forge ahead.

Philippians 3:12-14 says

...but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.  Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it.  But one thing I do: forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.

Why I became a vegetarian...

God told me to! How crazy does that sound? 2005 was the worst year of my life. Lots of heartache and loss and as I was trying to recover and heal, I started praying for healing. Well, what happened was that God didn't just heal the losses and pain I encounted that year, he went back and healed every wound I had ever experienced. I had always walked around feeling as though I had huge holes in my heart that were constantly oozing blood. I would try to patch up one and another hole would spring a leak. I was unable to be filled because of these wounds/holes in my heart.

This healing occurred over the course of the summer of '06. God started showing me a path to leading a truly healthy life. I had made efforts in the past at trying to be healthy, but they were my efforts and I asked for no divine intervention. But God placed on my heart a series of verses that became my life verses - Prov. 3:5-6 and Rom. 12:1-2. That summer I was drinking too much wine. I had always enjoyed wine, but I had started relying on a couple of glasses every evening when I came in from work to destress. Sometimes it was 1/2 a bottle. Sometimes it was an entire bottle. The most important thing that it was usually 6 or 7 days a week that I was drinking. It was becoming a problem. Also, I was and had been for many years, taking anti-depressants, ADHD medication and meds at night to sleep. And let me say that I truly expected to be on antidepressants for the rest of my life. I couldn't imagine living without them!

As I prayed for healing and for God to show me how to lead a truly healthy life, I started to realize that with God's power, I could overcome my undisciplined, unhealthy lifestyle and as scary as it was, I could stop taking medication. God revealed to me through my prayer and meditation and reading of His word that I needed to stop living in the world and as the world lives and let God guide me to a path of health and healing. He revealed to me several things: I needed to get outside as much as possible and move my body - I need sunshine and nature; I need to exercise hard - releasing all those feel good chemicals is necessary for my peace of mind; I needed to change my diet to a vegetarian diet and eat food as close to the way God made it as possible so as to set myself apart and to stop using food to medicate my moods; I needed to stop drinking; I needed to spend time in God's word daily; I needed to fellowship with other believers by going back to church; my depression was more of a spiritual emptiness caused by my disobedient lifestyle and my distance from God and that once I started getting closer, I would have no need for the medication. God healed me! All I wanted was to make it through the heartache but he took my heart and totally healed it of all its wounds! God is good and he lit my path.

That's why I live the way I do - and I have always understood that my path is by no means the path for everyone. Everyone must make their own way, but God will lead you on your journey if you pay attention!

Accept no mediocre life!

From the book - Accept No Mediocre Life

"It is a spiritual conspiracy to get us to accept mediocre as a standard of life. It is a war for control of our hearts, minds and souls. What is S-'s ploy? He's fixed on our spiritual destruction. He's a 'liar and father of lies' (John 8:44). But his tactics are exceedingly subtle. He bombards us with feelings of inadequacy. He seeks to clothe our hearts and minds with a drab coat of beige. He delights when we are labeled average and mediocre, for he knows most labels are libels that limit our capacity to dream, aspire to greatness or even feel worthy to know God or accept His love. The result? We live well within our perceived limitations and grade-point averages."

For much of my life I wanted to eat "normally" like everyone around me. Problem was, I was adopted, and my family all had much different body types than I did (them - ectomorph, me - endomorph/mesomorph) and my friends all seemed to be itty, bitty petite girls. If I ate what everyone else around me ate, I gained weight. Heck, if I looked at what they ate, I gained weight. But I tried to be like them. I went back and forth between gaining weight (topping out at over 200 lbs.) and exercising to be able to eat what I wanted.

Then I got older and everyone who ate "normally" was now overweight. "Normal" had changed. I didn't want to be normal any longer. I didn't want to be average. I felt called to be better than that - I wanted to be the best me I could be. All that God created me to be, I belive that I can now achieve!

Weight and food have always been such a struggle but I realize now that the actual mental struggle was taking up so much mental energy - was I making food an idol? As they say in AA - "let go and let God".


Shellene