“Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness.”
- Isaiah 41:10
Game night, oh what a fun night it should be. Friends, laughter, and games. But only one thing is on her mind: food. She knows that she will need to eat something, or people will question her. But she came prepared, she has not eaten all day. With this in the back of her mind, she knows she can eat a little of everything. She starts to put small amounts of food on her plate making sure she is calculating the calories. Then she starts to eat. The smell of the food is making her want more. She forces herself to throw her plate away, even thou the hunger is becoming unbearable. The anxiety of being near the food is making her feel sick, she needs to leave. But how can she leave when no one else has? So, she sits and waits for the first person to leave, then she can make her exit. She watches her friends enjoy the food and the evening with no cares in the world. Oh, how she longs to be like that, just enjoying the evening. But she sits in fear of gaining weight from tonight. Finally, someone leaves. She waits just a few minutes then quickly makes her exit. Before heading home, she stops, for one thing, ice. Ice will stop the hunger and trick her into thinking she is eating. She gets the biggest cup of ice she can. Before she even gets home it's gone.
The hunger is still there, growing by the minute. She knows what she needs to do, but she can’t make herself do it. She tries one last thing: she heads into the kitchen to find something. Once she does, she does something she has never done before: she starts to chew the food and then spit it out in the trash. She only wants the taste of food, nothing else. She cannot risk gaining weight tonight. As she is spitting the food out, she realizes how low her life has become. How did she end up this far into an eating disorder? She no longer enjoys food, cooking, or baking. It all has become a chore in her daily life, a chore that drains all her energy. Every waking moment is focused on the number of calories she will intake in a day. There was a time when she enjoyed learning how to cook and bake. She thought of selling her baked goods one day. Oh, what a dream that was. But now, it is a distant memory because she can’t even bring herself to bake the high-calorie sweets. Oh, what a day it will be if she can ever recover from this. If that day happens, she will sell her baked goods.
According to the Webster dictionary, Fear is an unpleasant, often strong, emotion caused by anticipation or awareness of danger or anxious concern. Often when you hear the word fear you think of a dangerous situation. However, fear does not always mean that. You can know you are in a safe place, but fear suddenly gets ahold of you. Or maybe when you hear the word fear you think of an animal you might fear. For example, I am afraid of snakes! I am truly scared of them.
But some people have irrational fears. Irrational Fear is a feeling of being overwhelmed by anxiety, panic, or fear. It’s a strong feeling of needing to escape.
The fear of gaining weight is an irrational fear called Obersophobia or pocrescophobia. This fear has caused me more problems than fearing snakes. I am not going to see a snake every day – at least I sure hope not! However, the fear of gaining weight, I deal with daily. For I must look at my body daily, it’s not going anywhere. On top of that, the clothes we wear are not all true to size. I can be an XSmall in one thing and be a medium in the next. This can cause problems when people fear weight. Because we never know if we have gained or lost weight or simply stayed the same. This is when I started hating going shopping for clothes – even more than when I was at my heaviest! Simply because I didn’t know what size I would end up in that day. If the medium fit better than the small, I had a mini panic attack. Which would result in me leaving the store with nothing, no matter how much I loved that piece of clothing.
Fear of gaining weight is usually one of the first signs of an eating disorder. However, there are times we overlook this fear and brush it off as if it means nothing. Overlooking it mainly because many people seem to always be trying the next “best” diet. Maybe you have heard people joke about this fear. Yet have you stopped to think that this could be their reality? The only way for them to move through their day is to joke about it. I can recall several times that I joked about this fear, but people would just wave me off as if it was no big deal. This can allow people to hide their eating disorders in plain sight. I know – I was one of them.
I hid my eating habits from even my close friends. If you worked with me or hung around me, you would think I ate throughout the day. However, I ate when I was with people and just enough to hide the habits. If you watched close enough, you could see a few habits. After eating I would leave the area to go to my office, a bathroom, or just outside so that I could move and try to exercise in some way. If I was not able to leave the area, once I arrived home I would work out for the next few hours. I was in fear of that food causing any type of weight gain. I would simply not allow that.
Yet have we have thought about what the Bible says about fear? We know that God did not give us the spirit of fear. It says in 2 Timothy 1:7 “For God hath not given us the spirit of fear, but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.” Then why do we allow fear to come into our lives? I have asked this question several times in my life.
Someone once told me I wasn’t praying enough or reading my Bible enough, so that’s why I had the spirit of fear. I don’t believe that is or was the case. What I do believe is that I listened to the enemy one night and he was able to bring the spirit of fear into my life. It only takes one moment to change the course of your life. For you see, instead of getting up and rebuking the enemy, I listened to him.
That one moment of listening to the enemy took me down a path of darkness. In turn, I started to listen to his lies, and little by little it was harder for me to hear God calling me. I still went to church, read my bible, listened to Christian music, and even worked in a ministry at the church. Yet all the while I had the spirit of fear yelling in my ear. Telling me, “They are going to find out about your little secret.” With that in the back of my mind, I did not want to get close to anyone inside the church. I would hide it from even my closest friend because I feared the judgment that could be given to me. The more I pulled away from the church the stronger the spirit of fear became. I allowed the enemy to start to win.
When you don’t rebuke the enemy, telling him to go back to where he came from, he can start to control your every movement. That’s what he was doing to me. Little by little I would pull away from the church. It started with missing one Wednesday night and progressed to missing every Wednesday night. I didn’t attend extra events at the church. I was scared that they would find out my little secret. In return, I become isolated from everyone. Which is exactly what the enemy wants. The enemy knows that if he can isolate you from the church body, it’s easier for him to win the battle. Isolating allowed depression and anxiety to start to take control; which in turn caused the spirit of fear to become stronger than before. When I was around the church or near church people, my anxiety would shoot through the roof. It was as if I was in a dangerous situation and needed to escape. Even though I was safe, I allowed the spirit of fear to tell me “They will find out your little secret.” Therefore, I allowed it to keep me isolated from people, the very people who would have helped me through this dark moment. However, I did not give them that chance until a while later.
Remember it only takes one moment to change the course of your life. For me, that moment was dark, but it resulted in a valuable lesson. Before June of 2021, the spirit of fear held me captive in my daily life. It felt like a ton of bricks laid on my chest. Every move I made was harder than the next because I never knew when an anxiety attack would happen. The fear had caused anxiety to creep itself into my life. It was like living on the edge of a cliff waiting to be pushed off. Until one day the spirit of fear tried to push me. But God was ready to catch me and bring me back down to safety.
I had to scream out to God asking him for help. God not only was there for me, but I had found out that He had never left me. I just could not hear Him simply because of the enemy’s voice in my ear. I had given the enemy power over me, which made it hard to hear the voice of God. But little by little, the voice of the enemy stopped talking once I was able to hear God calling me again. God showed me that He still loved me, even after that dark moment in my life. But God didn’t just show me He still loved me, He showed me the people in the church loved and cared for me as well. I learned that I could lean on God and His people. I was not shown the judgment that the enemy told me would happen. Instead, I was shown God’s love through His people. I found a wonderful support group that has been there for me during this healing process.
Does the spirit of fear try to come back? Yes, but there is a difference now. I can recognize when it tries to come at me. As soon as I feel the spirit of fear enter my home, I stop what I’m doing, and I tell it that it to return to where it came from. That spirit does not have control over my life anymore. God is in control and that is the way I want it to be. Does it mean that life will be easy? No. God never promised us that living for Him would be easy. But I know that when life gets hard – and it will! – that God is right there ready to fight my battles for me. All I must do is go to war in prayer and give it all to God.
That one moment you are facing right now will change your life. It’s up to you to decide if it’s for the better or for the worse. I know what I’m choosing. What will you choose?
“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me. “
-Psalm 23:4
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