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.
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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. |
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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