In an effort to convince others and ourselves that we have it all together, we have forgotten that no one on the planet truly has it all together. Cakes fall, cards get messed up, and children fight. But in truth, the cake still tastes delicious, the birthday cards are thrown away, and children make up.
Life is about progress, not perfection. It’s about the messy everyday ways we deal with the craziness of our lives, not about the family photo. It’s about the fact that we never stop cooking, even if it's not the perfect dish.
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My mother had returned to the states and my husband to work and I began to wonder if God had made a gigantic mistake by entrusting this amazing child to my care. I had no idea what I was doing, and this beautiful baby made that clear with her endless crying that she too was seeking someone more skilled than me.
The Japanese are incredibly generous people, and when someone has a baby, it is common to send gifts such as honeydew melon or cheesecake. At the time, I much preferred cheesecake, and I was not disappointed. However, the anxiety that came with the belief that I was an inept mother sent me running to food to calm my fears multiple times a day. And having a seemingly endless supply of cheesecake may not have been the best idea. One morning, while pacing the tiny apartment with this screaming infant in my arms, my mind kept looking at the cheesecake delivered the day before. Ken and I had eaten two pieces of it after dinner and now the other 14 pieces were calling my name, like the siren-song that would bring me peace. But how can I eat more without Ken knowing about it? The struggle was on. Soon, however, the cheesecake gods sent another cheesecake to the door…one that Ken knew nothing about. Driven by pure anxiety, I dove into yesterday’s cheesecake. You know the old saying, “First a sliver, then a slice, then a slab, then a slob.” And before I knew it, I had eaten the entire cheesecake from the night before, AND two more pieces out of the new cheesecake to make it appear like it was yesterday’s cheesecake. Putting the wrapping in the outside bin, I prayed that Ken would be none the wiser. Now physically sick and emotionally numb, I put a smile on my face when Ken got home, handed him the still-screaming baby, and promised myself once again that “this would be the last time”, still convinced that no one would ever know. The funny thing is, I have learned that the cheesecake always shows. It surely showed up on my backside. It showed up in the internal pressure I felt from my secrecy and dishonesty. It showed up when it made it just that much easier to binge the next time. It showed up every moment of every day as I knew in my heart that I was not being true to the person I really was. My body suffered, my spirit suffered, and my self-respect suffered.
Each morning I began with a recommitment to exercising faith in God, but every time a cupcake walked by, it seemed that my beliefs went right out the window until I found myself lying in bed that night, physically, emotionally and spiritually miserable after exercising more faith in food than in God. It just didn’t seem to add up.
As I began to learn that my problem was not food…that my problem was actually spiritual, it all began to make sense. I started to recognize a series of limiting beliefs that I had bought into as a child. For example, the belief that I would always love others more than they would love me, or the belief that it was my job to make others happy. When I started to see that those limiting beliefs were conflicting with what I knew about God, my purpose here on the earth, and the way things really worked, I started to see how my thought and behaviors were also conflicting for so many years. Once I started aligning my beliefs with what I knew to be true, the internal conflict began to cease. My “system” started functioning better. I started finding more peace in my heart and mind, which affected my behaviors, and the results of that system started to improve accordingly. If your system is getting results you don’t particularly like, it’s time to examine the system thoroughly to discover where the bugs are. Sometimes, a professional with training and experience can help us find and fix those glitches faster than we are able to on our own. However you go about it, when the results are not what you want, it's time to take pieces apart the systems we have relied upon for our entire lives and figure out what it is about that system that is creating the results we are getting. It's time to throw out the old and broken pieces and replace them with the parts that function properly and in harmony with the rest of the machine. In short, it’s time to fix the system. FREE E-Book now available!
The Fight Bred Out of Them...
Everyone in the family took turns gathering the eggs, from Ken to the youngest child. It was an easy job: Walk outside. Lift the hatch. Pick up eggs. Done. So I never could quite understand why every time we went out of town, my mother would make a big point of announcing that she would watch the dog, but was NOT about to gather our eggs.
Finally, after some investigating, I learned that she had grown up with chickens back in the 40s, and gathering eggs had been more of a war game than a chore. Protective hens sat on their eggs and defended them from intruders, and she was the intruder. They pecked and scratched and made gathering eggs a terrifying experience for many a grown-up, let alone a little girl. I wondered why our chickens didn’t fight to protect their eggs like my mother’s chickens had. Our chickens didn’t even stick around to keep their eggs warm most of the time. And if one did happen to decide it was time to play house, that was easily cured with some ice water on her backside. When my husband asked a local farmer about this, we learned that as the egg farming industry has grown, the instinct to fight and protect their eggs has actually been bred out of chickens to make the egg gathering easier. As a chicken owner, I was grateful, though Mom still wouldn’t be caught dead near our chicken coop. But I had to wonder…how much is this like us? Often, when we are young, we have lots of big dreams…loads of determination…a large store of "fight" in us. But through the years as our dreams are met with obstacles and our determination is faced with disappointment, we seem to have had the fight bred out of us. Our faith has been replaced with fear. But we are not chickens. We can determine our own destiny. It is never too late to keep fighting for our dreams. Each day is a new day, and I have learned that fears can actually be transformed into the faith we need to keep moving toward our goals! I have no desire to put the fight back in the chickens. But I do have a passion for putting the fight back in you. Let’s get back on the nest, look life square in the eyes, and dare the world to just try to take our dreams from us again.
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. |
AuthorAfter decades of my life being centered around food, I finally started to realize that I did not have a food management problem. In all actuality, I had an emotion management problem. - Becky Ivory Archives (August 2018-Present)
September 2021
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