I know what it's like to be there for your life without actually being present for it.
For years, an eating disorder took up so much space in my mind that even when I was physically there, part of me was somewhere else.
Thinking about food. My body. What I ate. What I shouldn't eat. What I needed to change.
Life felt dull.
I was missing the joy, peace and connection in moments that were happening right in front of me.
And I didn't want to live like that anymore.
Things started changing when I stopped keeping everything in my head.
I started speaking my fears and anxieties out loud.
Naming them. Talking about them. Actually saying what was going on inside my head instead of letting it stay trapped there.
And when I brought those thoughts out of that isolating space and into the light, something happened.
I could finally get enough separation from them to look at them.
To question them.
To see how much trouble they were causing in my life and think:
Man, I need to do something different.
God gave me my husband, Adam, during those first critical years. He listened. He supported me. He loved me. He encouraged me.
And I started questioning the things I had been telling myself for so long.
I started calling out the lies—and looking to God for what was actually true.
I was already a Christian.
But there were truths about God, about myself and about the way He created me that I had forgotten—or maybe hadn't fully received.
So when I started recognizing the lies I had been believing, I looked to God for the truth.
And He kept showing me:
His way is better.
Recovery wasn't just about changing what I was doing with food.
There was fear underneath it.
Control.
A need to trust.
A need to surrender.
I had to learn to recognize the lie, replace it with God's truth, and then trust Him enough to actually walk in that truth.
That's when recovery became about so much more than food.
Today, I have the freedom and the space to be me.
I'm not spending all of that time and mental energy trying to change myself into somebody else.
I can sit at a table with my family and eat.
Laugh.
Hear the conversation.
Actually be part of it.
I'm not just physically there while mentally I'm somewhere else.
I'm there.
Fully present. Fully connected. Experiencing the gift God has given me in that moment.
And you know what?
It's lovely.
It's simpler. More meaningful. More fulfilling.
That emptiness I used to feel isn't there anymore.
And all of that space that used to be consumed by an eating disorder?
Now there's room for my family. My marriage. My girls. Coaching. My podcast. Writing. Building a business. Having fun.
Living.
Then I looked at the recovery spaces around me and thought: Where is Jesus?
I understand the importance of doing the work of recovery.
But I also know changing behaviors isn't the whole story.
Because underneath those behaviors there can be so much fear. So much control. So many lies we've believed for so long that we don't even realize we're believing them anymore.
And I kept coming back to the same thing:
She needs to bring Jesus into the battle with her.
Because the woman struggling with an eating disorder isn't just someone who needs to stop certain behaviors.
She is a woman God created on purpose, for a purpose.
And I'll tell you what—it makes me angry to think about a light God created being dimmed because an eating disorder is consuming her life.
There is something God created in her that only she can bring into this world.
And when she's trapped in food fear, obsessing over her body, trying to control herself and spending all of that mental energy trying to become somebody else—
we're missing her.
I don't want that for her.
I know what it's like to be in that darkness.
God extended His grace to me there.
And now I want to turn around and extend that grace to the woman coming behind me.
To reach my hand into a darkness I've already been in and help her come out of it.
I want to help her turn her light back on.
I didn't go through all of that for nothing.
Today, I get to sit across from women carrying some of the same fears I carried for years.
I get to listen.
To help her slow down and say the thing that's been spinning around inside her head.
To ask questions that help her see what's actually underneath the fear.
To help her recognize the lie, come back to what is true, and make a different choice.
I've walked through eating-disorder recovery myself. And today, I coach other Christian women as they do this work in their own lives.
I don't take that lightly.
I believe God has called me to this work.
And as long as He keeps asking me to do it, I'm going to keep showing up for the woman who needs someone willing to reach a hand into a darkness she already knows.
You don't have to spend the rest of your life mentally somewhere else.
You can be doing all the things.
Raising your kids. Going to work. Sitting at the table. Going to church. Showing up for everyone around you.
And still have so much of your mind consumed by food, your body, fear and control.
I know what that's like.
And I also know there's more available to you than simply surviving it.
There is freedom. There is space. There is a life happening right in front of you.
And I would love to help you be fully there for it.
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