Speaker 1 (00:03):
From Austin Stone Worship, this is Stories from the Austin Stone. In the midst of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, believers around the world are striving to be faithful to Jesus and love their neighbors. Alone Together is a series of stories about how the people of the Austin Stone are living faithfully in uncertain times. Today, across Austin and around the world, doctors and nurses, restaurant owners and delivery drivers, singles and students, moms and dads, artists and accountants, and more are loving God, their church, their city, and the nations in the midst of this season. We might be spending our days apart, but in Jesus, the church will always be united. These are stories of God's people, alone together.

Speaker 2 (00:50):
So I grew up in northern Michigan and I went to school in the upper peninsula of Michigan, and that's where I met my husband. He was an exchange student there from Mexico. And then I was an exchange student in Mexico at his university. And by the end of that, we were engaged. And so we lived in South Texas for almost a year. And then we were starting to look at where I would go back to school for my physical therapy degree. We didn't know anything about Austin at that point. And actually on a little vacation to San Antonio mostly, to check out the area, to check out the university I was applying to, we decided to do a side trip to Austin. And we were walking around and sort of at the same time, we looked at each other and said, "And if we move here instead?" And we just fell in love.

Speaker 2 (01:47):
And so we moved here pretty quickly. After that I started physical therapy school in 2015. I graduated 2017. I work part time at the university that I graduated from in something called the pediatric neuroplasticity program. So I'm working with kids and I love it. It's exactly what I wanted to do.

Speaker 2 (02:12):
My first memories of having issues with food or issues with my body are from a pretty young age. I remember that in our family, we had something called the Happy Hank clean plate club. And so what that meant was we had to finish what was on our plate in order to get dessert. And we were often served larger than child size portions of food. So as a child, of course I want dessert. So of course, I'm going to finish up everything on my plate.

Speaker 2 (02:53):
And I wasn't a super active child. I loved reading. I loved sitting and just completely being enveloped by the story of a book. So I was not thin. And I had a lot of friends that were thin. I was told at some point in elementary school that I couldn't do ballet because I didn't have the right body for it. So I agreed with that. I don't have the right body, period. And I remember, I think it was 5th grade, we were shopping for clothing for school and we couldn't shop in the girls section. We had to shop in the husky boys section, which we joke about now. Like my undergraduate school, the mascot was a Husky. And so I remember from a pretty young age thinking that my body wasn't right. And I think out of that, I pushed myself really hard academically. I wanted to prove myself in a different way.

Speaker 2 (03:58):
And so I've always been a good student and my perfectionist qualities came out in that. And all of that combined, I'd say in high school, I was an athlete. I did downhill ski racing and basketball. I hurt my knee ski racing in the 11th grade and I gained some more weight, and in an effort to try to control that I started restricting. I didn't know that's what it was called then, but I went on a diet and it really spiraled from there. And I remember the first time that I made myself throw up. I thought I'm not bulimic. This was a one time thing. I'm never going to do that again. Why would anybody do that? And then it happened again. And then it happened again. I thought I was still in control, but I had never been in control of it.

Speaker 2 (04:54):
Moving forward into college, it got worse. I was living in a dorm where there was lots of food available that I really wasn't used to having. And I also had a lot more privacy than I was used to having, in that there were individual bathrooms. And so I became pretty good at hiding it pretty fast. And looking back, I can see how much of my life was hidden away from other people, even if I didn't think so then. When Daniel and I got married, it was better for a while. I think that because I wasn't alone as much, and because we were really busy, I worked as a teacher in Harlingen, and I didn't have time to think or worry about what I was eating or not eating or my body or anything. It seemed to lessen up a little bit.

Speaker 2 (06:03):
And that happened during grad school too. I think when I'm very busy, it's easy to throw myself into other things. But it definitely never was completely gone. It's embarrassing to say how long it took me to realize that I was not in control of it. I had really awful morning sickness when I was pregnant and that manifested in throwing up a lot, whereas I've heard other women say, "Oh, I just felt sick. I never actually threw up." For me, because it had been a habit for my body, it just happened. At that point, honestly, in pregnancy, I wasn't making myself throw up, but my body just was so used to doing it that it did. And so I had a hard time gaining weight during pregnancy, which was actually then reinforced positively by the comments that I heard from people. "Oh, you're such a skinny pregnant lady. You've got such a small bump. You're so cute."

Speaker 2 (07:10):
And then when she was here and I got back to pre-baby weight fast, it was the same thing like, "Oh, that was the fastest I've ever seen somebody lose the weight, and you look so good, and what a fit mom," which I know that all of those comments are meant well, but unfortunately, because of what was going on in my head, they were received as, yep, I'm in control. I'm doing the right thing, I'm going keep doing what I'm doing. And throughout all of this, every single time it happened, said, "I don't have to tell anybody. I just have to confess to God and he's going to help me get through this. And I don't have to do that again. I'm not going to do it again."

Speaker 2 (08:00):
Finally, when Mena, our daughter, was about nine months old, we started ASDP, Austin Stone Development Program in September. And first of all, that's the closest that I've gotten to any small group of women ever, and from week one, I was in the cohort crying every week about lots of things, not initially about this sin, not initially about this struggle. I was not ready to give up my control over that yet. And finally, we got to the week where we were talking about sin, and I was reading the readings, and I want to say that we have the class on Sunday evening. So on Friday night, I was in the midst of a binge. My husband had gone to bed early and I stayed up later, saying that I was reading or doing work to prepare for teaching the next week.

Speaker 2 (09:09):
And I binged and purged. And when I got into bed that night, and I'm careful to say this because I don't know if it was a dream or if it was something that like still happening when I was awake, but I have this vision of myself in the kitchen binging on ice cream and it gets everywhere. Like it starting to drip all over me. It's getting all over the counter and I try to clean it up because if my husband comes out and he sees me like this, I'm found out. And the more that I try to clean it up, the more it spreads everywhere, it gets into every crevice in the house and it's covering me completely. And I'm just standing there sobbing. And I hear this voice saying, "You can't do this alone. You can't clean this up by yourself." So that was the moment. And it of course coincided with that next Sunday, learning about the doctrine of sin. And I just realized that I wasn't going to be able to get the sin out of my life by hiding it.

Speaker 2 (10:29):
I told my husband first, and it was the next day after I had the dream. And it was the scariest thing I've ever done. I was so afraid that he was not going to love me, that he was going to be so angry at me for keeping this a secret and not just keeping it a secret, but lying, because he had ask me lots of times, "Are you okay?" "Yeah, I'm great." I was so afraid, actually, that I told him in a text when I was at work on Saturday, when I wouldn't be able to respond for an hour. I just was convinced that he was going to see that thing hidden in my heart and not love me anymore, which was not true. I was afraid to tell him the depth of it, how long it had been going on, how bad it was. So from that moment, he was like, "No, you don't get to hide how bad it is, how long it's been going on. I need to know that too."

Speaker 2 (11:30):
And the next day was ASDP, so I told my cohort then. After telling everybody, after telling my husband, after telling my cohort, I definitely felt both relief and fear. Relief that it's finally out there, I know that I'm not alone in this, and fear that, oh, no, now I have to stick to this and actually do something about it. I don't get to hide it anymore, which of course is a good thing that I'm not hiding it anymore. And me, my real self, my saved self, wanted that. And there was still the voice of my eating disorder really, really loud in my mind saying, "We need to go back. We need to back pedal. We need to hide this again."

Speaker 2 (12:27):
So I started seeing a counselor in November and I started to see a nutritionist in February, beginning of February. And through seeing them, have really built a team of people that are helping me in recovery. I've got a physician who specializes in eating disorders. My counselor talks about the fact that she went through an eating disorder. My nutritionist specializes in adolescent eating disorders, and I can see how God orchestrated things perfectly that I started my recovery process at exactly the right time, because I don't know how I could have found them if it had been during this pandemic. And having the support of my husband and my MC and my cohort and my nutritionist and my counselor, even if it's virtually during this time, has been crucial in me continuing in my recovery.

Speaker 2 (13:45):
So the pandemic has definitely made some parts of recovery more challenging, in that I am at home all the time, surrounded by all of the food in our pantry. And we have more food in our pantry because we're always eating at home. And I order things online through Whole Foods on Amazon. So things just come to the house and I don't have to think about what the person at the grocery store is going to be thinking when I'm checking out. And the first week of the pandemic, my husband had to leave. He had to go on a work trip just down to San Antonio for half a day, which historically would have been my time to binge and purge, like, "Oh, Mena's going to go down for a nap." And I did that first time. I binged and purged. I'm like, "Oh, this is going to be how quarantine is going to go. I am going to struggle with this every single day."

Speaker 2 (14:44):
And I stopped that thought in its tracks and said, "No, I am recovering. I am not doing this by myself and God is changing me. And so I don't have to do that again. It doesn't have to happen again." And the next time that he went on a day trip like that, I didn't binge and purge. And when I got through that, when there was this period of time where Mena was asleep and I didn't binge, and I didn't purge. I made it through that. I can make it through it anything. When the pandemic started, I was at a point in recovery that if this had happened a couple of months ago, I would be at home surrounded by food and worrying about food all the time, and when can I purge, and I'm going to stay up late every night to binge. And I really have instead found freedom. I've not had the same consuming thoughts that I used to have about food when I was at home, surrounded by it.

Speaker 2 (15:56):
It used to be that I had to leave the house in the hours that I wasn't working. It's just another reason I'm thankful that I have gone through this in that it's changed the way that I'm going to approach patients in the future. I'm not going to talk about their body size. I'm not going to comment on a friend's weight loss because I don't know what's going on in their head. The struggle with an eating disorder feels embarrassing to me because I am a perfectionist and I'm an Enneagram Type 1. And I feel the need to be in control over everything.

Speaker 2 (16:37):
Control is definitely my top idol, [inaudible 00:16:40] idols that we talk about, and yet here is this glaring inconsistency of, this is not following the rules of how you lose weight. This is not following the rules of how to be healthy. This is not following the rules of I'm a healthcare worker, for goodness' sake. I tell people, I work with adolescents who are athletes and I counsel their parents on the signs of an eating disorder. I should be in control of what I'm able to put in my mouth when I'm eating. And I was embarrassed by the fact that I had really no control over it. And that shouldn't be something that I'm embarrassed about sharing. It's a part of my story. And I really believe now that it's really what has kept me, where it's been one of the things that I have... Looking back now, I can see how in all of this, God has been walking with me. He's been bringing me closer to him. He's kept me closer to him.

Speaker 2 (17:59):
If I'm honest, initially I was angry that he let me go through this for so long. I was angry that he didn't just take it away, the way that he takes away other people's illnesses sometimes. I know looking back and the more that I talk about my story, I can see it even more clearly that in my particular case, I don't have to be on the other side of this to give glory to God. He's being glorified in the process in me and in me sharing my story. And when I brought it to light, when I brought it to my husband and my ASDP cohort, for the first time it felt like I wasn't walking in darkness. It felt like finally I've opened the curtains and let the light in.

Speaker 2 (19:00):
My fear when I was getting ready to tell my husband and my cohort was that there's no way that anybody could love me when they know this about me. When they know that not only have I been doing this and in my head it became the ugliest sin ever, the most disgusting thing anybody could do, if they really knew the depth of it, how much I ate when I was at my worst binge and how disgusting those purges were, there's no way that they could still love me. There's no way that they could see me and not think about that all the time. But he wasn't disgusted by me the way that the enemy told me he would be.

Speaker 2 (19:50):
And my cohort was not mad at me for keeping it from them and talking about other sins these past six weeks. They were not judgemental of me. They we're encouraging. They were the ones that told me who to talk to about getting into counseling through the Stone. And I know that, even if I never recovered, even if I struggled with this every day for the rest of my life, they with still support me. They would still love me. They would still be there to encourage me.

Speaker 2 (20:30):
And thinking how that's a picture of God for us. We have a savior who endured every temptation and the worst pain on the cross. And he's walking with us through these sins, through these struggles. When I look back at the time where I was hiding this from everybody, I really was hiding everything about my life. It has completely changed the way that I live every day to have this in the light. And the more that I bring it to the light, the more that I share about the same struggle that I've had, the illness that I've struggled with.

Speaker 2 (21:27):
First of all, I realized that we're all struggling with sin. We're all struggling with things that maybe we'll struggle with for the rest of our lives. That was something that I was afraid of at first, that this was going to be a lifelong battle. And even if it is, especially if it is, having it in the light and having people that I am constantly talking with about it, who are constantly checking in with me about it, that is the only way that I'm going to be able to keep fighting the battle. I'm not going to win if I let it hide again. I'm not going to win if I let it go back to being in darkness. And we're not going to win every battle because we're not perfect, but Jesus has already won the war and we don't have to be embarrassed when we lose a fight, when we lose a battle. We just have to keep fighting.

Speaker 2 (22:27):
Initially losing a battle for me, meant giving in and binging and purging. The further that I come in recovery, I've had fewer instances of that, but I've noticed other sins come up. And that's been important for me to remember too, is that even if I get rid of this particular sin struggle, even if I am completely healed from it, there are going to be other sins that I struggle with throughout life, because it's what we're going to do until we're in heaven with Jesus.

Speaker 2 (23:01):
And that is both like a good reminder for me and really difficult because I'd like to just be done completely with the battles, but I see how it's really important in that to make sure that we've got our community because I'm not going to continue to fight the battle if I'm alone. If I lose one battle and I don't feel like I have other soldiers around me, I'm going to think it's done. But if I'm surrounded by my community, if I remember that I'm surrounded by saints and angels and that the war is already won, then I can keep fighting.

Speaker 1 (23:50):
Thank you for listening to this episode of Stories from the Austin Stone. Please help us spread the word about the podcast by rating and reviewing us on Apple Podcasts or wherever you found this episode, and by sharing this episode with your family and friends. If you have a story to share with us during this time, please visit austinstone.org/share. That's austinstone.org/S-H-A-R-E. Finally, for up-to-date information on how the Austin Stone is responding to the new coronavirus, please visit austinstone.org/coronavirus.