To Destroy My Peace...

I have always prided myself on being impeccably honest…except when I wasn’t.
 
One of the dark skills I have developed in my life is how to hide any wrapper, or evidence of having binged, in almost any situation. When binging in the car, you can always stop along the way home for a nearby trash can, put it in your outside garbage before going in the house, or shove it under the front seat of the car if someone is unexpectedly there when you arrive. 

One-Minute Faith Hack

When hiding is needed at home, wrappers can hide inside other containers in the garbage can, or at the bottom of the bag. There are all sorts of ways that the evidence can be hidden…except when it can’t.

​In all of those situations, I successfully avoided the immediately judgment of those around me, but I could not hide the long-term affects of my eating…weight gain…and worst of all, I could not hide the pressure of guilt and shame I felt as I knew my own deceit and failure.
 
Recently, I was reading a beautiful scripture where the prophet Nephi is lamenting his sins and subsequently praising God for his faithfulness and love. Verse 27 reads, “And why should I yield to sin…because of my flesh? And why should I give way to temptation…to destroy my peace and afflict my soul [ellipses added]? I have read this scripture hundreds of times, and yet this time this last sentence grabbed my attention.
 
I have given way to temptation literally thousands of times when it came to numbing my emotions with food. Every morning I would swear that today it would not happen. I would follow my diet…I would not cave in to anxiety…I would exercise faith in God. But far too often, I would fail before the Oprah show could come on, spend the rest of the day focused on food, and fall into bed with tremendous guilt and shame, only to arise with the same empty-but-sincere promises to myself and God the next morning.
 
For decades, I would have told you that if I could binge forever and not gain any weight, I would. I thought I loved food. I thought that weight-gain was the problem. But the truth is, food was only the symptom of self-hatred and anxiety, and the weight-gain was certainly not the worst symptom of a binge.
 
As Nephi pinpoints in this simple sentence, the worst symptom of binging…of turning to food in an attempt to find peace…was that “the evil one [had] place in my heart to destroy my peace and afflict my soul”.  Day after day, year after year, decade after decade, I was giving Satan an almost-daily opportunity to destroy my peace.
 
I believed his lies that I was worthless and powerless. I denied God the opportunity to show me His love and power. I was far too used to giving up real peace, for the false promise of peace through an inanimate object...food. Food has no ability to bring peace. God does.
 
Now, when I find myself engulfed in the temptation to turn to food for peace, this memorized scripture has the power to remind me that giving way to temptation only leads to “the evil one having place in my heart to destroy my peace and afflict my soul.” It does not lead to the peace I am seeking.
 
Once I began to truly understand this, I found that I was not so easily deceived by the false promises I had bought into for far too long. This simple reminder by an ancient prophet is usually enough to help me seek peace where it actually exists. It exists in truth. It exists in aligning ourselves with truth. It exists in God. ​