“Though an army besiege me, my heart will not fear; Though war break out against me, Even then I will be confident.”- Psalms 27:3
As a history teacher, battles and wars have always fascinated me. Apart from the movements of troops, the journals that the soldiers kept and how the leaders made decisions interests me. Throughout the Bible, there are many wars and battles, whether in person or on the spiritual plane. The writers mention battles and wars throughout much of their text because people could relate to it so easily.
Now, we don’t relate to it quite as much. We have studied them in history class, but most of us don’t live in threat of going to war. The fear of going into a battle isn’t as tangible.
But the symbolism of a battle is so important. While we may not fight physical battles, we all fight in some way during our lives. Whether it is a mental illness, a physical ailment, a relationship, the past- we all fight something.
During these battles in life, it is so easy to get caught up in the language of it. With an Eating Disorder, my daily battles look like thoughts about food, about myself, and about safety. On the outside, I may be having a nice conversation with you while smiling. Inside, I am battling the thoughts, the language of ED that not many people understand.
“This food is unsafe.”
“I can’t handle this food, so I’ll just eat at home.”
“My anxiety is too high to even think about eating right now.”
“This emotion is too strong, I can’t handle it.”
“I’m not good enough, or worthy enough to eat this food.”
The enemy besieges us with thoughts daily to make us think like HE wants us to think. And unless we know we are being attacked, we will most likely believe these thoughts! The enemy shows us twisted evidence to prove that he is right. We see the evidence and believe the thought pattern. Suddenly, we are trapped in that thought pattern by behaviors and we don’t know how to escape.
The battles, those daily fights against the enemy, are important. It’s important to do everything in you to win those battles. But in recovery, sometimes you are going to loose a battle. That’s life. Perfection is not an attainable or sustainable goal. Perfection thoughts only cause you to feel like a failure when you are unable to live up to your own unattainable standards.
I have been in recovery for a while now, and I can truly sit here and say that I am fully recovered! (Praise God!) BUT, are there times that I have let fear control me for a meal? YES! Are there days and weeks that are sometimes harder than others? YES!
A lot of us are waiting on this ‘perfect’ recovery to come. Beautiful girl, perfection isn’t going to show up in this area of your life either. This ‘perfection or failure’ mindset will do nothing but ensure your failure. We are human. When we think of recovery most of us think of perfection where emotions are only ‘good ones’, food is easy, and we are smiling and happy. But that isn’t realistic! That isn’t life! Recovery is dealing with hard emotions by feeling them, not pushing them away with disordered behaviors.
When we continue to live in this perfection or failure mindset, the enemy has a way into our minds. That one slip up? He is going to throw thoughts at you so hard you’ll be knocked over.
Give yourself some grace. Giving yourself grace doesn’t mean letting recovery go! It means that if you mess up, you forgive yourself. You don’t beat yourself up about it for days hoping to go back and change what you did. When you give yourself grace, you admit that you are a human who makes mistakes. No one is perfect. The enemy has convinced us that if we can live up the the idea of perfect that we have in our minds, then we wouldn’t have any problems in life.
So yea, you might loose a few battles.
But GOD is going to win the war.
That’s why I love this verse so much. It lets us know that during the battles, we are not to be afraid. No matter the situation, the emotion or the circumstance, we are not to be afraid. The WAR is what is important.
Wars are the overarching issue that we have. World War Two was made up of hundreds of battles. Some of them the Allies lost. Some of them the Allies won. And yet… the Allies won the war.
At the end of the day, God is going to win that war in your life. But, as this verse points out, we have to be confident in the Lord’s power and strength in our life. We have to trust that God has already won the war, even when we loose battles in life.
These battles and these wars that we fight were already known by God before you were even created. To think that God doesn’t have a plan of how he is going to use all of it to knit together the most beautiful life for you is a lack of trust and confidence in our Father.
When we go through a battle, we have to trust that God is going to get us through it, win or loose. We just have to try our best and trust Him. We have to put Him first in our lives. I understand how difficult that can be when all you see is the problem in front of you or the enemy coming at you. Putting God first when you want to fight that battle with old tactics is hard. It’s one of the most difficult parts of any recovery process. But breaking the pattern of using that old tactic is part of it. It’s part of God’s plan to guide you toward your purpose.
As we go into the Holiday season, emotions get louder as we get more stressed. I encourage you to start your day in the right frame of mind. Affirmations, daily Bible Studies and prayer will help prepare your mind for the battles in the days ahead.
I know that recovery is hard. Fighting with yourself for so long can be so tiring. Each day, waking up with the thought that you can do this, that you have the strength and the power to do it because you are God’s child will help you. God is fighting with you! God is fighting for you when you are too weary to hold your head up.
Recovery is that daily choice to fight the battle in a way that God wants you to. It’s a daily choice to trust that God is in control of the situation, so no matter the outcome, He ordained it so therefore it is good. Recovery is confidence that we are going to win the war, even if we loose a battle or two. It’s is trusting God more than the rules that the enemy gave you to abide by.
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