Hungry

"Then Jesus declared, 'I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty.'" John 6:35

When I was 15, I developed some bad dieting habits that followed me into my college years. While I never stopped eating entirely, I generally ate only one small meal in the evenings. I drank crazy amounts of diet soda, and I exercised like a maniac (usually at least two hours a day). I never got incredibly skinny, but I did drop a lot of weight in a hurry. Then I would hang out at that weight before starting another attack against the fat. One of my friends split a candy bar into threes and that was her entire food for the day. I pretty much didn't eat unless my parents were around to make me. I sucked on Diet Mt. Dew ice cubes all day in the summer and ate a bowl of cereal for supper. My goal was to keep the total calorie intake under 600 for the day, and if I kept it under 400, I was a rock star.

After awhile, I got very comfortable with hunger. In fact, it felt good to be hungry all the time. It became a friend, and if it wasn't there, gnawing at my stomach, then I was not doing a good enough job of dieting, and I should definitely eat less. The harder the hunger, the better I felt. Sometimes, I still long to have those hunger cramps keep me company and eat less than 600 calories every day. Sometimes, nothing would make me happier. I swung out of this more when I went to college, but I would turn back to it every summer to take off the weight I had gained while eating three meals a day. Again, I was never skinny enough for anyone else to notice other than to compliment me on my looks, which became another drug to crave.

The thing that finally ended it was the year I was on some antibiotics for something else, had a couple allergic reactions to a couple of different antibiotics, and got so sick that I literally couldn't eat. I couldn't swallow anything without getting sick--not tea, not bread, not vegetables, not even water... nothing. I was so dehydrated that they were going to put me in the hospital. I lost at least thirty pounds in less than a month. I had to teach my stomach to deal with food again by eating bannanas, rice, apple sauce, and toast (BRAT diet--no dairy, no green veggies, no salt, no flavor, nothing). My stomach has never completely gotten back to normal from this. I get sick sometimes for no reason. And now, rather than being a (albeit treacherous) friend, hunger is a frightening entity because I can remember being so hungry and just wanting to eat one thing and knowing that if I did, I would wind up crying on the bathroom floor because I was too sick to leave and too weak to climb into my bed anyway. I like to say I got a sampling of what was at the end of the path I had been dancing down. I can't willingly inflict anything like that on myself again. I would rather be fat for the rest of my life than flirt around with something that can turn so dangerous so quickly. And what kills me is how many people told me how good I looked.

I think our spiritual lives end up like that. We get so used to being spiritually hungry and getting complimented for being spiritually starved that we think that's normal. That's because it's so easy to pretend to be full in this society while all the time, underneath it all, we are making friends with our hunger, coaxing it into setting up a permanent home and nursing it on a steady diet of emptiness. And everyone is always so pleased with the results of this destructive behavior because it looks so good on the outside.

It's OK if this appearance of beauty costs so much, we seem to say. It's OK if it makes you sick to appear this way, so long as you are ill in private. Cry on your bathroom floor all you want, but do not bring substance back to our worship. Do not confront us with something that might scare us and later feed us. We prefer to be empty and "pretty" than to be fed and "ugly." Do not show us the images that do not match our ideals. And all along we miss the point that ugly is ugly whether it's done in private or out in the open. It's just a matter of figuring out what is the least ugly. And believe me when I say that crying alone on the bathroom floor weak and sick is about as ugly as it gets.

I have had it with both images--the physical and spritual ideals--that say to be perky and skinny and starving and really just ill is better than being real and heavy and fed. Feed me, Father. I have had it with hunger. Fill me up with living water and the bread of eternal life. To hell with pretense. I'm ready to be honest and show my ugliness for what it is: The seeds of the things that are making me spiritually strong. Bring it on.