“Perfect”
“Yahweh will fulfill that which concerns me; your loving kindness, Yahweh, endures forever. Don't forsake the works of your own hands...”
Psalm 138:8
(Thin Enough Book Excerpt)
… He wasn’t close, involved, happy with me, or proud. I believed that it was entirely my fault because I was an ugly, bad, fat little girl. I needed to be ignored, fixed, and punished. I didn’t know that my Heavenly Father felt differently about me. By age ten, I knew only self-imposed hatred, blame, and shame, not my Abba Father’s love.
I desperately wanted my dad to notice me. I learned very quickly that one surefire way to do that was by winning awards. When I won something, I wasn’t completely worthless or useless. I was productive; I was “earning my keep.” I set impossible standards for myself. Try as I might with award after award, I’d eventually disappoint everyone, including myself, proving that I wasn’t worth anything after all.
My perfect attendance record in school is an excellent example. For three years in a row, I did not missed one day of school, knowing that I would win a perfect attendance certificate, tangible proof on paper that I was worthwhile. It became a standard I had to maintain because my dad seemed pleased in my performance. Of course, he never said that he was proud of me, but he did lay off the criticisms briefly. So for the next few years, I went to school with colds, sore throats and influenza. I remember going to school once with a temperature of over 101, sitting at my desk, on the verge of throwing up, yet only thinking of that certificate.
When I reached junior high, I became so sick once I had to stay home. I felt defeated and anxious. My dad, who had never really been sick with so much as a cold, was unsympathetic to my condition. With each passing day I stayed home from school, the tension mounted. Three days at home, according to my dad, was enough. He became upset at my mom for being “such a terrible mother.” After three days home, he had enough. He decided he would take me into school to make sure I got there.
On the way to school, he was fuming and I was scared to death, but my fourteen-year-old mind wanted to know something. We’d never had any father/daughter talks about anything, much less about the existence of a loving relationship, but I got up the nerve to ask him, “Do you still love me?” His answer? “If you do this again, I won’t.”
His answer proved it. It was my fault. I had to prove myself in order to be loved. I wasn’t the cute, good little daughter he should have had. If I could just look right and act right, he’d love me. All I have to do, I decided, is be perfect. That’s all…
…I took control. “All right,” I said to myself, “if I can’t have the love, the worthiness, the me that I want, I’ll make it on my own.” Control became the name of the game now. Even though I thought it was the beginning of my promised land, this was when the real danger, the real wilderness began.
Question: Do you feel in control of your life when you control your food and weight?
The summer after my senior year of high school became my “put up or shut up” summer. As I prepared for college, I had a lot to prove—to myself, to the haunting jeers of classmates, to the boys who had not been asking me out. I had to prove that I was a worthwhile, beautiful girl. During my entire adolescence, I had been the fat girl, the “good friend,” the funny sidekick to the beautiful girls. But that would all change this summer. So I started another diet. At eighteen, I’d had years of failure at diet and exercise programs. But this time I was determined—determined to re-invent myself for my new life at college.
I started looking for role models I could pattern myself after. I chose Audrey Hepburn for her thin, delicate beauty. I chose Madonna to be my fitness and female empowerment guide. She was a beautiful, lean, muscular version of what I’d deemed a woman “having it all” was like. I thought they had perfect lives, and mine would be perfect too if I could be as beautiful as they were. I coveted who these women were. So much for the “no other gods” commandment… I pursued my own idol of perfect, thin beauty and self-obsession…
“Yahweh will fulfill that which concerns me; your loving kindness, Yahweh, endures forever. Don't forsake the works of your own hands...”
Psalm 138:8
