Anita Mathias: Dreaming Beneath the Spires

Anita Mathias's Blog on Faith and Art

Set Free from Food Addiction Through Intimacy with God (A Guest Post by Lynda Alsford)

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Being known gull 2Freedom

I used to be a food addict. I love saying that sentence, so please indulge me as I say it again. I used to be a food addict…until Jesus set me free in March 2012.

My journey to freedom has taken many years and in that time I’ve learned many things. One that stands out to me is that in order to appreciate freedom fully, you first have to understand the preceding captivity. In my experience, the greater the darkness the brighter the light seems when it comes.

Part of my personal darkness was that I didn’t know how to deal with difficult emotions. I would do anything rather than feel them. I ate them away, piling on huge amounts of weight. Once I started eating I could not stop. Food was an anaesthetic and its anaesthetising powers had me imprisoned. It is near impossible to describe to someone who has never had an addiction what it actually feels like to be in the grip of one. The poem below is my attempt to put into words how I felt as I struggled with something that was beyond my control.

Captivity

Unbidden thoughts arise, so sorrowful and sad.
Volcanoes of pain that threaten to erupt.

Searing red-hot lava expands within my chest.
The god of addiction requires his sacrifice.

From somewhere deep within, he cries ‘appease me now’.
‘Appease me now or this pain I’ll surely spew’

This pain, I don’t doubt, will rip me quite apart
So I do what I must do this idol to placate.

At the start of my journey I didn’t realise how dark my darkness was. I thought I could overcome my problem with a little will power. But that was the problem. I thought I could overcome it. But I couldn’t. Eventually I realised I was fighting a losing battle. And that is when I realised just how dark my darkness was. I thought I was worthless and no good. I even made a list of all the things about me that I thought were not good enough for God. I gave God this list, expecting Him to agree with me. But all He did was tell me how much He loved me despite every last thing on my list. I wept that day. I was overwhelmed by His grace and compassion.

I started to seek freedom, hoping rather than knowing it was possible. I tried and failed to rid myself of the unhelpful addiction to food by pushing countless doors. Some opened and helped me take a small step forwards but many didn’t open at all. However, I didn’t give up my search. Jesus said, “Seek and you will find” (Matthew 7:7) so I kept seeking.

“Keep on keeping on” I told myself as I pushed yet another door.

In 2005, God in His mercy caused one of those wonderful God-incidences to occur. I discovered New ID (www.newid.org ), which is a 6 week Christian eating disorders course. It gave me the message that I was not alone and that freedom was definitely possible. I thank God for this course because He used it greatly in my life. However, it was another seven years before I would find freedom.

Ultimately, it was finding deeper intimacy with God that finally set me free. For years, I was seeking healing from my compulsive overeating. But I wasn’t seeking God Himself. I was seeking healing not seeking the healer. In 2009 I lost my faith for a year when I struggled with the devastation of broken dreams. I stopped believing in God but in an unexpected way it was this that set me on the final part of my journey to freedom. You see, I suddenly realised I missed God. I missed Him so much it hurt. And that made me start to seek Him, really seek Him for His own sake. And there is no prayer God is quicker to answer. Just like the father in the parable of the prodigal son in Luke 15 at the first glimpse of our turning towards Him He is running with all His might to meet us and hold us in His loving divine embrace.

After coming back to faith in January 2011, I was finally seeking God for who He is not for what He could give me. I longed to know His love. I longed to find more intimacy with Him as Father. I devoured books about the Fatherhood of God. I listened time and again to Christian meditation CD’s that drew me into God’s presence (my favourite is Liz Babbs, A Quiet Place).

One day in March 2012, while sitting in Church, I knew I finally trusted Father God enough to let Him remove my food addiction for good. A wise Christian friend, Wendy, listened to me as I prayed, asking God to take it away. She then prayed for me too. I haven’t binged since then. Not once. The temptation to stuff myself with food still came knocking at the door of my mind occasionally. But when it did I found that if I went to the fridge I didn’t want to eat. It is a miracle!

Over the last year I’ve lost 2 ½ stone in weight without trying, and the weight is still coming off, very slowly but I am losing it. There have been hard lessons to learn as well. I’ve learned to sit with the difficult emotions and feel them rather than eat them away. This first year has been very challenging while I have learned this new skill, but it’s been so wonderful too.

I’ve been a Christian for over thirty years and it is only in the last year that I’ve found freedom from my addiction. It’s been a long painful journey. It has taken patience, dedication and a great deal of hard work but it’s also the most rewarding thing I’ve done in my life so far. The thing that has been so challenging is learning to trust Father God with the very deepest part of me, learning to live in intimacy with Father. Once I did that, He took the addiction from me, because I trusted Him enough to let Him do so. I don’t know what Father has in store for me but one thing I do know. Freedom tastes so very good!

Lynda Alsford

Lynda Alsford

Bio

Lynda Alsford is a Church Army Evangelist and lives in Sussex very near the sea which she loves. She enjoys various creative crafts and loves reading. She went through a major crisis of faith in 2009-2010 when despite being a trained evangelist she stopped believing in God. Her first book, ‘He Never Let Go’, describes how she evangelised herself back to faith once more. She is currently working on her second book, ‘Being Known’, which portrays her struggles with, and eventual freedom from, food addiction through finding deeper intimacy with Father God. Find out more about her and her books at her website and blog.

The Light and Easy Way of Sanctification or Transformation

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I strayed onto an acquaintance’s blog, and started feeling tired.

Oh, it was all so bossy, so prescriptive. 10 ways to be a better wife; 10 ways to be a better mum; 10 ways to lose weight in a Biblical way; 10 ways to read more spiritual books.

It made me feel so tired. I scrolled through the blogs she had  blogrolled, even more prescriptive and bossy, and began to feel even more tired.

* * *

18 years ago, when I lived in Williamsburg, Virginia, I had taken a theological course called Sonship developed by the brilliant Westminister Seminary Professor and founder of World Harvest Mission Jack Miller. It was the most heavily theological material I had encountered to date, and gave me a taste for theology!

At the outset, Miller reports someone raving about Richard Foster’s“The Celebration of Discipline.”

And Miller, a big, hearty, larger-than-life man, laughs a big booming laugh and says, “I am too big a sinner to be fooled by the Celebration of Discipline.”

* * *

Huh? I did not understand what he meant then, but understand it perfectly now. Discipline cannot save us. 10 ways to study scripture, fast, give, serve are not going to change our selfish, self-seeking, ambitious, twisty old hearts. If anything they might just make us more self-righteous. For our hearts to change, we need a heart transplant. We need God to pour his Holy Spirit into us and give us a new heart (Ez 36:26).

* * *

We do need strategies—for ensuring we pray every day, spent time soaking in Scripture everyday, and for our own particular battles: eating healthily is one of mine.

But strategies cannot save us. For me at least, lists of food rules, or domesticity rules or spiritual rules or time-management rules get a bit boring and feel like too much of a strait-jacket and I soon drop them. They are the law, a yoke that neither we nor our ancestors have been able to bear? Acts 15:10.

What helps me, and fills my days with sweetness is going through my day with Jesus, sharing the easy yoke.

* * *

I do have food rules, as for much of my adult life, I have medicated boredom, low spirits, stress, anxiety, and even happiness with food. So my two rules are: Limit eating what is not a blessing to your body (sugar, white carbs, chocolate). Do not eat when you are not hungry.

I was energized when I first formulated them, but now, especially that I am walking 6 km. a day, I sometimes buy chocolate or pizza or Indian takeaway after a long walk. The law, my strategies, weren’t strong enough to save me. On the other hand, slowing down, and asking Jesus for help and grace and the filling of his spirit does help me to resist things which are a curse to my body.

Slowing down. I wondering if that is a major secret of the spiritual life.

It’s the same with exercise. I know I will be stronger if I do it. I know I will be happier if I break up my writing with housework breaks (pomodoros) but this is very hard for me, for really, I like to work till done—and if what I am working on takes 3 to 4 hours it is quite painful almost for me to leave it and switch gear. So I need Jesus’s help to get up and get moving more than rules.

* * *

Hudson Taylor after continued spiritual failure, and self-excoriation stumbled upon the secret of abiding, which is known as Hudson Taylor’s Spiritual Secret. He writes:

“Not a striving to have faith, but a looking off to the Faithful One seems all we need.”

Here, I feel, is the secret : not asking how I am to get sap out of the vine into myself, but remembering that Jesus is the Vine-the root, stem, branches, twigs, leaves, flowers, fruit, all indeed. Aye, and far  more too! He is the soil and sunshine, air and rain-more than we can  ask, think, or desire. Let us not then want to get anything out of Him, but rejoice in being ourselves in Him-one with Him, and, consequently, with all His fulness. 

” I have not got to make myself a branch. The Lord Jesus tells me I am a branch. I am part of Him, and have just to believe it and act upon it. If I go to the bank in Shanghai, having an account, and ask for fifty dollars, the clerk cannot refuse it to my outstretched hand and say that it belongs to Mr. Taylor. What belongs to Mr. Taylor my hand may take. It is a member of my body. And I am a member of Christ, and may take all I need of His fulness.”

Perhaps this is the easy way of sanctification—to see yourself as a branch in the vine of Jesus, and pray,  relying and drawing on the wells of his strength and sweet life when tempted to indulge your temper, your gluttony, your laziness, or any of the deadly seven temptations.

 

 

Starlight (A guest post by Angela Shupe, La Bella Verita)

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shutterstock_95537227

Starlight

Sleepless, I walked through the dark to my kitchen to peer out the windows at our backyard meadow cradled by woods. The strain of life had led me to feel things were more chaos than calm. Looking up, I saw the dark night sky speckled with tiny flickering lights. A moment of wonder turned into a half hour of stargazing. Stars carrying names from their Maker hung overhead. If that One, that Maker, could bring order to a sea of glimmering lights, surely He could bring order to my perceived chaos. I returned to bed, falling asleep in a room lit softly by starlight that soon gave way to dawn. Peaceful.

But, life is unpredictable. And I had no way of knowing as I gazed at the stars, that in a few hours, I would lose my closest friend. The one like a sister to me would wake up after dawn and breathe her last breath, only hours before I was to visit her. With her passing, a part of me died, as well.

Two months into my grieving, my husband decided it was time to take a trip. “I want you to get away…somewhere different,” he said. We drove five hours to a place we’d never been before, to be together, to mend a numbed and grieving heart. Get out into nature, hike along trails of dirt, dust and rock, deep into the woods. Years before, we’d backpacked into the wild, immersing ourselves in nature’s unspoiled beauty. His act of love and compassion moved me greatly. He was grieving, too, but watching me grieve deeply for one so loved, was difficult.

We arrived at our destination, a little inn perched on a hill with cabins scattered in the surrounding trees. On our first hike I stood breathless from the scenery, the otherworldly beauty a shock to my senses. Trees shot up from emerald green moss-covered rock. Bubbling alongside was a creek lined with delicate ferns that led the way deep into caverns carved into towering sandstone. Waterfalls spilled over the highest edges.

After a full day of hiking, we walked from our cabin to the inn for a quiet dinner by candlelight. Everything seemed hushed and intimate, the quiet necessary for a heart in pain.

We walked back to our cabin, hand in hand, after dinner. The trail was rocky and we’d not brought anything to light our way. We walked with eyes fixed on the path, to not lose our footing. Something made me stop suddenly and as we stood, I looked up.

Above us, the dark velvet sky was overflowing with starlight. A blanket of lights spread thickly over us like a canopy. Every square inch was covered in stunning brightness. Lights hung so low, so close, I stretched out my arm, sure my fingertips could just reach. In our focus to keep our footing, we’d almost missed it – until that moment. Beauty poured forth in starlight. And we stood in awe, beholding its intensity in a silent act of worship.

My mind returned to that sleepless night months before, the flickering stars and the reminder that God is a god of order, not chaos. He most certainly could order my world spinning from grief. Stars that were called out by name, marched into position and shone vibrantly, warming my grieving heart and reminding me that my friend is not so far away.

After arriving back at our cabin, we stood on the tiny deck trying to capture the night sky on film. No picture could do justice to those stars now shining brilliantly in the not so far recesses of my memory.

Although I wouldn’t choose the pain of great loss, it’s a part of life on this side of the veil. After grief, we’re never the same. Perhaps out of the deep ruts of grief come understanding and knowledge that simply will come no other way. Joy after grief is deeper and richer, scars and all. We become more pliable, more teachable and the muscles of our faith are strengthened. We can stand on the other side of our battles with adversity, with questions yet unanswered, more certain of the goodness of a loving God, who stoops to intervene in the smallest of ways and sometimes brings the starlight to woo us.

 

Angela Shupe

Angela Shupe

Angela M. Shupe writes about life and faith on her blog, Bella Verita: Beautiful Truth at www.bellaverita.wordpress.com. Her writing has appeared in Women’s Adventure Magazine, Beliefnet.com, Today’s Christian Woman/Kyria, Relevant Magazine, Just Between Us Magazine and Radiant Magazine. Her writing has also been recognized by Biographile and Travelers’ Tales.

Deliver us from Evil

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When I try to pray while walking, or in the car, I use the Lord’s Prayer (Matt. 6 9-13) to organize my thoughts, and am often astonished again by its richness. Forgiving aught against any as a condition for receiving the Lord’s forgiveness, for instance.

“Do not bring us to the test,” the Lord instructs us to pray. Would he instruct us to pray this if testing were inevitable? Is it possible that one might be spared soul-wringing and heart-wrenching testing if one prays to avoid it?

And then, the lovely sentence, “Deliver us from evil.” Would Jesus instruct us to pray to be delivered from evil if he did not intend to deliver those who requested deliverance? So deliverance from evil is a strong probability for those who pray for it.

* * *

I am reminded of Jabez’s outrageous prayer,  “Jabez cried out to the God of Israel, “Oh, that you would bless me and enlarge my territory! Let your hand be with me, and keep me from harm so that I will be free from pain.” And God granted his request. (1 Chron 4:10)

Be free from pain? What a huge prayer! And it was granted simply because Jabez asked.

I feel sad I have not asked more that I might not be led into temptation, not be brought to the test and that I might be delivered from evil and “be free from pain”. But these are prayers I will assiduously pray for the rest of my life.

Isn’t it scary to think that the life we lead might just bear a faint resemblance to the life we could have had if we prayed more?

Oh, what grace we often forfeit
Oh, what needless pain we bear
All because we do not carry
Everything to God in prayer

But it is never too late to ask God to wrap our lives in his protection. And I am going to ask him to right now!

On Public Rewards for Private God-Chasing & on Prayer as the Root of a Life

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I’ve been to some good church conferences, among them John Arnott’s International Leaders School of Ministry and Paul Miller’s A Praying Life and The Person of Jesus courses. However, the St Andrew’s church weekend away led by Rupert Charkham of Holy Trinity, Cambridge, was among the most refreshing and interesting among them.

Charkham talked about prayer, and about how prayer, by the strictest divine command, must be secret (Matthew 6:6). When we pray, or live a life of prayer, we are OHMSS, Oh His Majesty’s Secret Service, and none should know it but ourselves.

He went on to say that people–even (or especially!) the committed, bustling, ubiquitous church men and women, upfront, on stage, on every committee, running everything—are tempted to neglect the life of prayer because they feel “no one can tell.”

However, Charkham went on to say, “People can tell. Prayer has a profound effect on your life. And prayerlessness has a profound effect on your life. You can’t hide either of them.”

As 90 % of the bulk of an iceberg is below the water, so 90% of what happens in our lives, and what makes us the men and women we are, and makes our lives turn out the way they have, happens in the realm of prayer. Prayer is like the roots of our lives, hidden, but vital to the health and strength of the visible plant–or life.

That’s why there is a quietness about mature Christians. Their big work is done in prayer.

Like giving, like fasting, Jesus commands us to pray in secret, seen only by God (Matthew 6 1-18). As such, it is an act of pure faith, pure love.

We are promised a reward, though. A public reward—“and your father who sees what is done in secret will reward you openly.” (Matt. 6:6).

A reward from God. Wow, it makes me rub my hands in anticipation. I am happy to take whatever reward God chooses to give me–whether in the earthly realm of health, wealth and success, or the spiritual realm of good relationships, peace, joy, shalom and happiness. Or, God willing, both!!

The things we do in secret will be revealed openly, both the good things–our prayer lives, our giving, our fasting—and our hidden intrigues, manipulations, evil words and gossip. “There is nothing concealed that will not be disclosed, or hidden that will not be made known. What you have said in the dark will be heard in the daylight, and what you have whispered in the ear in the inner rooms will be proclaimed from the roofs.” Luke 12:1-3

* * *

 

 

There will be “the essence of dogness” in Heaven: C.S. Lewis

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Jake, my collie, in a buttercup meadow.

‘And I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, and all that is in them, saying, “To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever!”’ (Rev 5:13).

Every creature! Wow! Not only will we ourselves be healed, restored, and lost in the ecstasy of contemplating God and the Lamb, but every creature in heaven and on earth, and under the earth, and in the sea will join us.

We shall be healed, and all the sad, abused, dumbly suffering animals of all history will be healed with us.

We will stand, and sing together.

I have loved animals all my life, and have always had as many of them as my family would permit. A couple of years ago, we had 9 pets (I live on an acre and a half in deep country, in Garsington, Oxfordshire)–rabbits, ducks, chickens, and a dog.

But decades of pet ownership do not leave one guilt free. There is the dog I could have walked more, the dog we had to give away when we left America, the rabbit who died of myxomatosis, the duck mauled by the fox on the one night we forget to put her in her shed, the hen eaten by the fox on the one night we forgot to lock the coop.

And as for the beloved pets who have died, the pets I have had to give away—I hope I will see them in heaven, for I imagine—but what do I know?–heaven will not be quite complete without dogs
The feisty C.S. Lewis was a slave to the dog of Mrs. Moore, his friend’s mother with whom he eccentrically lived. His brother, Warnie sardonically comments on the great things Jack might have achieved if he were not always trotting off to get meat from the butcher’s for the dog, or to walk him, or take him to the vet.

When a grieving dog-owner asked him if we would be re-united with our pets in heaven, Lewis did not let his lack of acquaintance with that undiscovered country prevent him from having opinions about it. “No,” he said, “not our dogs.” However, he said, there would be, in heaven, “the essence of dogness.”

I hope he’s right about the Platonic essence of Dogness in heaven. Surely he is.

But though there is nothing in Scripture about the resurrection of the dogs, I would love to believe that my dogs past and present will be there in heaven. Oh, please, Lord, let it be.

I particularly want to be reunited with my wonderful dog, Jake, whom I got from a rescue, as I have got every dog we have ever owned (or will own). He fell fast in love with me on the day we brought him home 4 years ago, and has been my constant shadow, sleeping at the foot of our bed, following me everywhere even to the bathroom, constantly repositioning himself to keep a vigilant eye on me. Though what an active collie and a sedentary writer could have in common is probably one of the mysteries of the universe!!

So tell me, do you viscerally believe you will be reunited with your pets in heaven?

Converting a Gray Plot into Wild Spirals of Colour

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When the stream of our lives

Seems to vanish into desert sands,

and we wonder if we’ve lost our way,

 

When between our talent and output,

Between our aspiration and achievement.

Falls the shadow,

 

When we have reaped less than we’ve planted

And we wonder if we’ve given our children

Solid skills for this whirling world.

 

There is still hope. A lever

Which can change everything

And revise the plot

Of what seems like our wasted lives.

* * *

 

Prayer which can take the story of a life

Which seems hopelessly mired

Unpromising and bleak,

 

Oh, and just reverse the whole thing!!

Making it burst into colour,

Twists and turns, whirls and spirals

 

When we call out to the Lord in our despair

He comes,

Scouring our spirits with repentance

 

Filling them with his Spirit,

New ideas, new vision, new love.

Fresh grace, fresh strength, fresh fire.

* * *

 

And again and again, when my life

Seemed stymied, and my dreams

Have crashed, and sadness surrounds me,

 

When I seemed unable to do the simplest things,

Lose some weight

Write some words,

Parent well,

And I cried out to you in my despair,

 

You came, you came,

Flooding me with your tenderness

Bestowing new ideas, new grace!

* * *

 

Oh Lord, we see so little of reality:

We see the caterpillar,

Not the iridescent butterfly,

The acorn, not the oak.

 

But the drab apple seed

Is never the end of the story.

 

Help me remember, Lord,

That you take five loaves and two fish

And multiply and multiply.

 

So I give you my hopes,

I give you my dreams,

My weakness, my strength.

 

Take and receive, Oh Lord,

Breathe on them, transform them,

Bring fruitfulness from these seeds.

In which I resolve not to be afraid

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So the disciples row for “three or three and a half miles.” (I love these charming details, John striving to remember accurately, and how they make it easier for us to believe in truth of these memoirs and autobiographical reflections of Jesus.)

It’s dark; the wind is raging; the waters are rough.

And a figure looms out of the darkness, walking on the waters, approaching the boat.

And they cannot see his face; and they do not know his name

And understandably, they are terrified.

* * *

Who is he who comes walking on the waters, in the dark, when the winds rage, and the sea is rough?

The dark figure terrifies, until he speaks, “It is I. Do not be afraid.”

And that too is the aspect He sometimes wears. He shows himself sometimes when it is dark, and the winds are strong, and the waters are rough. He comes towards us, a dark figure, and we cannot see his face, and we do not know his name, and we are terrified.

But it is Him, nonetheless, and face to face with the stranger in the darkness, we are to remember God’s consistent command: Do not be afraid.

And so I will not be afraid.

I shall live, tasting the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.

* * *

The Israelites response to the manna which sustained them was “What is it?” In Hebrew, Manna.

“Tell me your name,” Jacob uncertainly asks the dark figure who disabled him. “Who is it?” the disciples wondered, terrified, as a dark figure loomed of out the storm and darkness, approaching them. “Who is it?” they asked. Or “Manna.”

The answer was always, is always, the same. In sunshine, in abundance, in shadow, in darkness, amid the wind and waves,

It is the Lord.

* * *

Everything we have comes from God. He comes to us in spring and summer–and winter too. In day–and night too. In birth–and death too. In success–and failure too.  In health–and sickness too.

“Yes,” I say to the dark figure walking towards me amidst the roaring winds and stormy sea. “I know it is you. I have trusted you in the past and I trust you now. I know you.”

“And so, however the dice falls, I know nothing shall separate me from your love, and all shall be well, all shall be well, all manner of things shall be well.”