“He Redeems Your Life From the Pits”

Psalm 103

1 Praise the LORD, O my soul;
all my inmost being, praise his holy name.

2 Praise the LORD, O my soul,
and forget not all his benefits-

3 who forgives all your sins
and heals all your diseases,

4 who redeems your life from the pit
and crowns you with love and compassion,

John 5:5-9
5One who was there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. 6When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, "Do you want to get well?"

7"Sir," the invalid replied, "I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me."

8Then Jesus said to him, "Get up! Pick up your mat and walk." 9At once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked.

The above are two Bible verses that have meant a lot to me throughout the years. Over and over again, God has used them to speak to me on many different occasions, often for the same purposes. He has used the whole of Psalm 103, but the line that most often stands out to me is: WHO REDEEMS YOUR LIFE FROM THE PITS. And, yes, He has done that, time and time again.

Those verses were, once again, active over the past couple of weeks. As I’ve been struggling with some of these emotional issues I felt as if I was drowning in the seas of the past. I’ve been grappling with things I wasn’t sure HOW to grapple with. Here’s an excerpt from one of my “private” diary entries:

When I confessed to my therapist that I had been cutting again, he said, “It could have been worse. At least you didn’t eat two pies,” as a response to my cutting.

I heard, “There is nothing worse than being fat… even tearing yourself up.” Which validates the assumption that’s been crawling across my mind for some time now, first on a subconscious level but has now emerged into my consciousness… I was valueless as a fat person. When I was obese, I made myself miserable because I suspected I was valueless. Now that I’ve lost weight, I see everybody’s reaction and I realize my suspicious were correct.

Oh yeah, they’ll tell you it’s not true. They’ll tell you that EVERYBODY is worthwhile and that your looks and weight aren’t important. They’ll tell you it’s for your health and that you are still a worthy person, worthy of love and respect and that you are cared for… but it’s all crap. Since I’ve lost the weight my mother falls over herself in praise of me. I never got this kind of positive reinforcement for ANYTHING else I’ve EVER done in my life from her! EVER! My boss tells me how much he respects me for this and is treating me great. I get compliments from all sorts of people. My therapist admits he looks at fat people a little differently and tells me, when I cut myself up, that “at least I didn’t eat two pies.”

Other things matter, but weight and looks matter most. If you are fat, nothing else is going to make you worthy. Nothing! You are valueless. That is what the world is confirming for me now. You can only SUSPECT that when you ARE fat, because they try to hide it from you so as not to hurt your feelings. Now that I’m “normal” the truth is coming out.

That’s just part of it.

I had been cutting and I had been working… not like a normal person, but like a person gone mad. I wouldn’t even stop to chat… just work work work, until one of my manager stopped me and said, “L____, are you alright?”

“Yep, I just want to get things done!” I answered her.

Busy busy busy.

And I wasn’t eating right, sometimes not eating at all. Not that it was showing up on the scale because, you know, when you starve yourself your body stops metabolizing properly and you don’t lose weight.

I knew things were going wrong and I prayed. “Jesus, please help me recover emotionally. I’m a mess.”

And I heard Him ask me, “Do you want to be healed?”

I couldn’t say I exactly DID. I wanted to keep cutting. It felt good. It’s like an addiction. The pain of the slash releases endorphins and it grabs your focus so that you’re not thinking about your emotional pain your too busy focusing on the horror of your bizarre behavior (that way you don’t have to face what’s causing it). Along with that there’s a certain comfort to the after pain as your sleeves rub against your arms. You have a little secret from the outside world. A secret behind that smile. There’s a you that they cannot touch… they don’t even know it’s there.

So I couldn’t really answer Him that I DID want to be healed.

Miserable, I prayed it again. “Jesus, help me… get me out of this mess. I know it’s my own fault because I lost my focus on you. Please help me.!”

“Do you want to be healed?” He asked again.

To be honest, I knew I didn’t. It seemed so much easier to just give in to the depression, the cutting, the misery. Could I be partially healed? Just somewhat… SOME healing and keep the cutting, just once in awhile maybe? Jesus doesn’t wheel and deal.

I kept praying for something, some break through and I read the Bible, at least as best I could. Then last Saturday, after my oldest daughter found no heartbeat, I went to my husband’s bbq determined to drink some serious wine – which I did. I drank and I drank until I was more than tipsy.

It was no big deal. His friends have been our friends for a couple of decades and got a kick out of my goofiness. I don’t get tipsy often if ever so they found it remarkable and funny to see me lose it a little. I was a fun drunk, making jokes and laughing a lot. I didn’t embarrass myself or anyone else but, knowing that overindulgence in liquor can be dangerous to me, my husband cut me off after awhile. Of course I copped an attitude and ended up going home. That was just as well because I needed sleep and sleep I did. When I awoke I felt like heck. I haven’t had a hangover in years and years and years but I had one on Sunday morning and I, at first, thought I’d better get my butt out of bed and get ready for church otherwise, I worried, people would think my devotion to God was less than acceptable.

Suddenly I realized that this was it… this was the end. I needed to take this day and think. “Jesus, I want to be healed,” I was able to honestly pray. First, I thought, I needed to figure out exactly why I was being so self-destructive these past few months. And I listed for myself all of the above behaviors that I had indulged in that were self-destructive: the poor eating, the over-working, the cutting, also purposely allowing myself to be burned bysurfaces at Starbucks when I was working, and now the drinking. I traced it back to a few things. One of these was that now that I don’t over eat (my former method of self-destruction) that same emotional dysfunction was appearing in other ways. A second reason was due to the whole dad-book/therapist confusion thing and me feeling rejected by yet, another father. And the third was this dealing with the over-attention to my weight loss and exactly what that meant for me as a fat person. I mean, there were many good things about me as a fat person and the only difference about me now is that I’m 110 lbs less. That’s all.

It took awhile to think all this through (even though I was able to fit it into one paragraph, it required lengthy analysis. Plus, I drifted in and out of sleep as I plodded through my own thoughts and emotions. I was sick and dizzy and dehydrated and exhausted. Everything seemed to have come to a peak.

Next I decided I needed a plan. The plan was this: Every day I would eat and I would eat protein and the healthy things I’m supposed to be having. Also, every day I would remember to take ALL of my medications AND my vitamins. Secondly, I would limit my hours to approx. 20 at Sbux and 15 at the Law Office per week unless there was a real reason to work over, not just because the work was there to be done. Third (and this is not in priority order) I would pray and read at least SOME of the Bible every day INSTEAD of or BEFORE spending so much time in OD and/or the Internet because once I heal spiritually, I am sure I will begin to heal emotionally also because I needed to feed my mind some healthy things and I’ve been focusing in on people and their problems and that is beginning to overwhelm me. I have just kept a few of my most favorite favorites and have focused away from other troubled people. I am weak… so weak and will go right under with everybody that I read. The ONLY thing that saves me is Jesus.

And what is so weird is that He is so clean the way He saves… it’s not like some weird little crutch thing, although by rights it should be. C.S. Lewis said that God IS a crutch and, just as one with a broken leg NEEDS a crutch, one with a broken soul also does. Still, I don’t feel as if I exactly hide in Jesus or turn off my senses, blinding myself as I find protection in my religion. Instead I feel as if it takes the glasses OFF of me so that I can finally see clearly and wonder at why I didn’t realize there was distortion before! I was made to realize that this body is not MINE to do with as I please. It is on loan and I am merely a steward over this flesh. We were put here on Earth to glorify the Father and do His work. This flesh is not here for MY purposes but for His. Consequently, it is really not up to me whether to cut or starve or misuse it, but only up to Him. It became so clear all of the sudden. Cliché, but true, “it’s not about me” (or what I want) and I was really out of line to think it was. And the whole world shook up and into perspective. I feel so different… so much stronger, but not in MY strength, yet it’s more MINE than the little bit of will-power I may have used at any time over the past few weeks when, with trembling hands I TRIED not to cut. How to explain this??? I don’t think I can.

And, as I was worshipping God this evening, it all went back to Psalm 103 for me, as it so often does, and back to that line – WHO REDEEMS YOUR LIFE FROM THE PITS. Over and over He has done that… from the FIRST time He did it, when I was seventeen years old and He reached down and took me into His hands, and time and time again when He pulled me out of a minor skirmish with drugs, when He rescued me from money problems and living in poverty, when He protected me from the victimization of others, over and over again… When He allowed me to become a published author but guided me out of the world of porn, when He rescued me from a fate of obesity, and now, yanking me from the grasp of depression and self-mutilation. My life has been in the pits so many times and in so many ways, yet He never gives up on me… He just keeps asking, “Do you want to be healed?”