Ten Thousand Freedoms

Oh sweet freedom.
Yesterday was my country’s celebratory day of independence.  Where we celebrate freedom. Freedom that was bought, paid for, and ransomed at very high prices.
But what freedom isn’t acquired that way? For surely the cost of freedom is very high, and the removing of shackles can come with a lot of pain, a lot of tears, a lot of blood, a lot of loss.

Over the course of this blog I have mentioned, maybe alluded to, a little bit of my past. A little bit of my struggle, or that which I have been freed from and continue to find freedom from.

Plain and simple, my story is written with a lot about eating issues. Disorders, if you will, for that is what they are: a lack of the rightful order of things.

I am not alone in struggles like this, even though the devil would want anyone who struggles with anything to feel nothing but aloneness.
Freedom from these has come within the last few years, after what seemed like ten thousand days of struggle. I can look back now and see how even the length of time the Lord allowed me to walk in those bondages was to his glory; to his weaving.

He really is the only one who can take our scars and make them into jewelry, can’t he?

Praise to his name.

I was looking through some of my writings the other day, and on this day-after-July-4^th it seems that now is the appropriate time to tell you all a little more of my freedom story. This was penned March 21^st, 2011. I called it that day, “On Running.” I had no idea it would end up to be better called “On Freedom”:
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About a year ago at this time during my devotions one day, I was praying for Obama and about the end of the world when, in very Bethany-esque fashion, my brain switched gears to make the phrase cross through my mind, “God, you should help me become a runner,” to which he answered in one of the most vivid responses of my day thus far, “You never know who you might have to run away from.”

*Gasp!*

*Terrified Gasp!*

Let me tell you one thing. If God can’t get a girl to run, no one can get a girl to run, so when God says something as blatant as that, this girl decided she should start running.

At first it was murder, as I was expecting it to be. Couldn’t hardly go five minutes without wanting to stab my eye with a pencil, but somehow I kept putting one foot in front of the other and the feet somehow kept going further.

It was amazing what “becoming a runner” can do to a girl who struggles with insecurity like I do. I started seeing these changes in my body and I LIKED THEM. For the first time, I started liking my body, feeling comfortable in my own skin, wanting to be healthy, feeling like my body was something worth taking care of.

So through April,  May, June, July and all that blasted heat and humidity, every night that I got home from work while it was still light out…the running shoes were donned, and the black pants covered those still-white legs.

It helped immensely that I knew absolutely no one in my town. What else was a girl to do?
I had all of these visions of me finally getting the body I always dreamed of, trying to convince myself that I was STILL doing this because God said so, and because I was preparing my lungs for the day I might be chased by some dragon, not because I got results I had never had before.
I definitely thanked God for giving me such a task, thanked him for helping me do something I seriously never thought I would do.

But then there was this one day in August.

It was hot. It was August. Which part of that was redundant? Now you tell me…

Anyway. So it was hot and it was August and I was out like I had been for the last 5 months, cruising around town when I had the thought, “I think I have gone further than I ever have before” when I stopped to walk for a spot. One block later I started running again.

Or should I say, ATTEMPTED to run again?
Because let me tell you: there was no more running happening.
My right knee was locked and it was hurting with a solid pain.
ABSOLUTELY no more running.

I hobbled my way back those few blocks to my apartment, not really sure what had just happened. I mean, I was a runner, for goodness sakes! Runners do not injure!

The next day it was a little swollen and a little bruised, so I decided to take a week off. I don’t remember if I had pain during the day or not in that week, but when I tried that handful of days later to run again, it was still a no-go.

I took a month off and thought that surely by September I should be mended.

But no.
October.
No.
And then it got cold.
And then it got dark at night.
And as much as I had grown accustomed to the running in the summer, I had not grown accustomed to the cold and to the night.
“Well, I was going to have to do workout videos this winter anyway what with all that snow. And the cold.”
I got a few DVDs from the library over the course of the winter and those went well for a while. Until my knee started hurting. Or rather, since it kept hurting because it never really had stopped hurting.
When I would wake up in the morning or in the middle of the night and it would hurt, that was it.

In Googleing my symptoms one day I was convinced that I had torn my meniscus and I thought “I don’t want to have arthritis when I am thirty! I will have kids to chase by then!” so I broke down and went to the doctor.

And you know what he said? “If something was wrong you would have swelling. Take some Aleve.”
Hmm. I was relieved a little bit, but still angry that my knee hurt and that he had no intention of healing it.
In taking matters then into my own hands, I gave myself 2 months off from working out over the winter.
And you would not believe how insecure I became. Like, it was BAD. All of my ill-feelings I struggled with at any given time were combined into ONE giant feeling of BLAH about my body, and worse yet, about who I was.

You know, it is an interesting thing to have God tell you to do something, you do it, and then he takes away your ability to do it. What a confused mess I was on top of feeling all kinds of worthless!
I would pray, “God! Let me run! You are the one who said I needed to do this! You are the one who provided me with lungs to do this! Yet you are the one who allowed my knee to give out on me! What are you doing?”
Isn’t that strange? I just couldn’t figure it out.

And to be honest, I still don’t really get it.

Earlier this week I think I had a little bit of a break-through in how I view my body, and I don’t want to get ahead of myself, but I haven’t nearly obsessed about whatever body part I obsess about since then as I usually do.

 So that is what progress looks like for a girl whose very own self is her thorn in the flesh. And progress makes me happy.

And tonight?

Well, I got home and it was still light out. While it wasn’t warm, it wasn’t really cold, either, so I thought I should try it again.
So I did.
The knee hurt a little.
But my lungs could still do it.
I probably went a mile at the most.
But knowing that my lungs could still do it; that I could still run away from a dragon: that was comforting.

Here now I sit on my bed typing this. Feeling some pain in my knee. But all of the sudden I feel like maybe I don’t need to run anymore. As if God has released me from that. Almost like he said, “I will give you the stamina to out-run the dragons I want you to out-run. But I really want you to be able to run around playing with your kids. So maybe we should just power-walk from now on.”

Ha. God is funny.

I will still buy a knee-brace, probably. Every now and again I might even try to see how far this girl can go.

But, to be completely honest, I feel as if there is still this dragon that is chasing me---beating me.

This dragon I deal with about my body. It is my constant battle.

Oh dear God I pray this is not my thorn in the flesh. I don’t think I can deal with this forever.
There is an inch of pride in me that wants me to be completely free from it. Actually, there is a whole boat-load of pride that wants me to be free from it. It has been my “Jesus-crutch” for so long. I can say, “Look at me. I am a miracle standing before you. I am a girl who once starved herself and now is a chef. Only Jesus can do that.” The pride in me wants to be able to say, “And now I love my body and never look negatively in the mirror.” I want to be totally cured from it.

But as I type this I think, “Maybe that second part isn’t what God wants me to say- and that’s why I can’t say that.”

He just reminded me that even if the second part doesn’t come true, the first part still is. No matter how much of my pride wants to say part 2.

I guess I just wanted my testimony to have a different ending. I wanted my change to be “radical.” I didn’t want to still struggle with it, post-salvation. I wanted to be one of those who said, “Oh yeah, and then I met Jesus and all of my issues melted away.”

“Maybe the beauty of salvation isn’t that you don’t struggle with it anymore, but that you don’t struggle with it ALONE anymore. And that one day your victory over this—the victory over this I already won—will be complete,” he just said to me. “Oh pretty girl, you are just waiting for your “new dress.” One day ‘the earthly tent you live in will be destroyed’…and you will ‘be clothed with your heavenly dwelling’ and ‘what is mortal will be swallowed up by life.’” (2 Corinthians 5:2-5, segments).

Oh to be swallowed up by life!

Wow. I think I just got another perspective.

This, too, this struggle with this flesh, is just a constant reminder of this sinful pit of death I was saved from.
A pit where, left to my own devices, I would still be living, being totally consumed by it, eaten alive by its darkness. But a pit that holds me no longer.

Thank you, Jesus. How great a salvation to not walk my dark nights alone (Psalm 18:28b).

And if nothing else, to now have a Running Partner when I am being chased by all kinds of dragons.

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I can’t read this anymore and not start crying. Maybe it doesn’t make a dent to any of you, maybe your struggles DID go away when you met Jesus. That would be sweet if they did. But I think some of you might be like me; some of you might have struggled post-salvation, and maybe some of you have or had a Running Partner who helped/helps you outrun the dragon, rather than having one who just slays the dragon right before your eyes.

That part where he talked to me about the victory one day being complete, when he throws that dragon away one time and for all---what a day that will be. A day I will be waiting for. And a day I now know I will be more grateful for BECAUSE He had me run away from him for so long.

But for now, I will choose to let him walk this freedom walk with me. Some days we do in fact walk, or stroll peacefully, and some days we will for what seems like my life, run away from that dragon chasing me and run to the freedom He offers.

I am just glad that freedom comes in Him. That whether it be on days of peaceful strolls, or marathon days, or 24-hour sprints out of the darkness, that he, the One who carries me through, is the One where I find freedom.

What a good God.
He didn’t have to give us freedom. He didn’t have to do what he did.

But he did.

And freedom is a good thing.

This is a song called “Ten Thousand” by the artist John Mark McMillan.

For those of you who have known what it’s like to run for 10,000 days, I pray you can sing the lines of this chorus, and know His freedom for all of the next 10,000s days.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PC8eNJ4PsIE