Faith

a love letter to palmer theological seminary

~ swithrowking ~ 5 Comments

Tomorrow, Palmer Theological Seminary will have officially been fooled into giving me an advanced degree in theology. It’s a two-year degree that took me three years to complete because a few months in, I started a job at the seminary that was, at the time, the most perfect gift I could have received.

Four weeks from now, I’ll leave that job to return to PETA for what could very possibly be the last job I’ll ever have – working to help Christians make more compassionate choices about nonhuman animals.

I think I might be in a deep state of denial over the impact that leaving this community will have on my life and soul, as I’ve been feeling a bit dead inside about it all. So, in an attempt to healthily process my own feelings and acknowledge the amazing people who I’ve met in the last three years….a love letter. (a love letter that’s sounding a bit like an award-acceptance speech in my head….but a love letter nonetheless)

*********

My dearest Palmer peeps,

I love you. Thank you.

To the professors: you have challenged me. You have exposed the richness of the scriptures in a way I never imagined possible. You have taught me new narratives. You encouraged my exploration of the theological foundations of our relationships with nonhuman animals and let me write loads of papers on the topic, even in church history. When you asked how I was doing and I glibly responded with some current struggle, you took a genuine interest in me and offered empathy.

To the staff: you are an extraordinary family of colleagues. Leaving you is so bittersweet. You celebrate one another. You are deeply committed to the students. You welcome everyone. You make me laugh. I feel at home with you, in a world in which it’s hard to find a home.

To the students: I feel like the luckiest girl alive to have journeyed with you. You accepted and loved and supported and challenged me. We worked in groups together and I survived sharing the labor of papers and presentations. You showed me how to examine (and check) my privilege. I am so happy that you are following your calls, but will deeply miss your laughter, tears, and prayers.

Sure, I learned about the Bible at Palmer, but I also learned about living and working in a diverse community. I learned how to stop and connect, how to prioritize relationships, how to listen. I learned how to examine, question, doubt, and deepen my faith.

I love you, Palmer Theological Seminary. You are the super best.

Yours Truly,

Sarah

isolation

~ swithrowking ~ Leave a comment

Isolation is a sign and symptom of two particularly difficult struggles in my life, food addiction and depression, and sure, they feed each other (feed! get it?!), but they manifest themselves in very different ways. And while the isolation that results from addicted behavior is always unhelpful to me, the isolation from depression can either be dangerous or productive.

When food addiction isolation takes hold, I basically just want to shut myself up in a space and eat. I do this in my office many days – that afternoon snack that I don’t want anyone to see me eating (“Do you really need that, fat girl?” says the imaginary-surrogate-authority-figures-whose-approval-I-crave-as-much-as-salty-fat). So, I close the door, inhale the food, and then open it up again when I’ve cleaned up all the evidence of my wrongdoing. Or I might stay up long past everyone else in the house, stand alone in the kitchen, and graze by the light of the refrigerator. There is nothing helpful or healthy about this behavior. Nothing.

Depression isolation looks a little different. There’s more sleeping and less shoveling involved. It’s a slow-paced isolation, without the racing heart and shame.

Today’s isolation was the unhelpful kind. Last night, I was awake until four am…first watching a very dark, but compelling television show and then obsessing over updates about the Malaysia Airlines flight that has gone missing, particularly drawn into the horror of imagining being on a flight with my own child as it dropped into the sea. Staying up late and sleeping late is one way to ensure I face people the least amount of time, because I can only come up with so many half-truths to explain how I feel or am doing on any given day, and it’s exhausting.

I had every intention today of locking myself away to catch up on some of the school writing that I’ve let slide for weeks (this is a reasonable and healthy kind of isolation to which we will turn in a few moments). In fact, I ditched a training and the opportunity to have my friend Beth kick my ass at the gym in order to be productive. I was going to isolate FOR A GOOD CAUSE! I didn’t, really, though. Today was mostly an obsessive internet surfing, excuse-making kind of day.

There are some days, when you open your eyes and know you’ve already failed. That’s the kind of day this was.

Last fall, I spent several very productive and restorative weekends at a spiritual retreat center about 45 minutes outside of Philadelphia. I went to read and to write, and I mostly felt really good about the time there. I’d call Giehl to check in here and there, and on Saturday if I had been very good, I’d buy dinner at Whole Foods and speak to the cashier there, but other than those short interactions, those weekends at the hermitage were just me, my wifi-less laptop, and God. I even managed to keep distractions to a minimum. I will read anything with words, from tween dystopian drama to bird watching guides…anything to avoid hearing my own thoughts. On these trips, I brought the books I needed for research, a Bible, and nothing more. I wrote and wrote and wrote and prayed and listened and wrote some more.

But the last couple of times I went, I cut my time there short. I started to feel alone and afraid in the woods. I craved the warm light of my own living room, the soft fur of my dogs cuddled beside me. I felt something like a sense of panic before I frantically packed up the laundry and locked the keys inside the cabin on my way back to the city. The silence was too much. I felt the kind of vulnerable that comes just before I plunge off a cliff into the darker depths of depression. Instead of face the fear with Jesus in the woods, I left.

So now, I’m trying to figure out how to find a disciplined, monastic space in the midst of my daily life. Trying to discern if I should risk going back to the woods. Trying to figure out where I’m going to write the rest of this damn book that I’m supposed to finish in two months.

Just as soon as I’m caught up on my Hulu queue.

ag gag laws, lent, and journeying with jesus

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My brother and I have never been particularly close, despite the relative proximity of our birth years, but one thing I’ve always admired about Jesse Joe is his ability to throw himself whole-heartedly into loving another. It is always my tendency to hold back.

I think others might also have a hard time being vulnerable, exposed, whole-hearted. Our hardness and caution is demonstrated in a thousand tiny ways every day, but for me, one of the most in-your-face demonstration of cutting ourselves off from the experience of others is eating flesh. And it’s *literally* in our faces, isn’t it?!

Intentional ignorance about where our food comes from is a barrier to our reconciliation with God’s creation. But possibly worse is punishing those who enter into the suffering of others in order to expose cruelty and abuse. Imagine watching your supervisor show you how to shock a lame cow to force her to move a few more feet; being shown how to slam a baby pig into the ground until he was dead; asked to sort male from female chicks from a conveyer belt and told to throw the male chicks alive into grinders. Imagine being in the suffering of a factory farm or a slaughterhouse for days, in order to expose what agri-business doesn’t want consumers to see.

Less than a week before Ash Wednesday and the start of the Lenten season, Idaho governor C.L. “Butch” Otter, a member of the Roman Catholic church, signed a controversial “Ag Gag” bill into law, making Idaho the seventh state in the U.S. to penalize individuals who use undercover footage to expose abuse on factory farms and in slaughterhouses.

As a native of Idaho and a lifelong Jesus follower, I’m embarrassed and disappointed that my home state and a fellow Christian would choose to imprison and fine advocates attempting to curb abuse of God’s fellow creatures. That Otter signed the bill into law just days before Christians around the world entered the Lenten journey is bitterly ironic.

Through the pain of Lent, we begin to prepare for the restorative, transformative Easter morning. It is a time of shadow and struggle undergirded by eschatological hope. It is a special time of intention, in which we move with Jesus towards the suffering other, to the hill on which he was hung, and ultimately to the reconciliation promised by the empty tomb. In Romans, Paul reminds us that the whole creation groans for this reconciliation. In fact, the whole of the scriptures are woven through with admonitions to care for God’s creation, praise for the miracles of God evidenced through God’s creative work, and clear indications that though humans may be specially privileged with the imago Dei, all of God’s creation sings in praise to their almighty and loving Maker.

Though these creatures will one day bow and confess at the foot of the throne, countless undercover investigations of factory farms and slaughterhouses have revealed systematic, horrific abuse of the nonhuman animals we breed, raise, and kill for food. Mercy for Animals, PETA, Humane Society of the United States, and Compassion over Killing are just a few of the groups who have documented animals being kicked, bludgeoned, dragged, shocked, mutilated, thrown, sexually assaulted, and more by farm and slaughterhouse workers.

It was the Mercy for Animals investigation of a Bettencourt Dairy location in Idaho that led to the introduction and passage of that state’s Ag Gag bill. The video footage of Bettencourt revealed workers viciously beating and shocking cows, violently twisting their tails in order to deliberately cause pain, using a chain attached to a tractor to drag a lame cow by her neck, and the sexual abuse of animals on the farm.

Yet despite the clear evidence of wrongdoing, Otter wrote that he has “confidence in [Idaho farmers’] desire to responsibly act in the best interest of the animals on which that livelihood depends. No animals rights organization cares more or has more at stake than Idaho farmers and ranchers do in ensuring that their animals are healthy, well-treated and productive.” Decades of undercover investigations on farms big and small from coast to coast paint a very different picture of the real priorities of agri-business: profit at any cost.

Last week, ashes in the sign of the cross were placed on my forehead, to remind me that I am made from dust, and to dust I shall return. In the short time I am on earth, I am charged to journey in the dust of Jesus’ footsteps.

One of the very astonishing facts of Jesus is that he calls his followers over and over and over again to embrace those who are “othered.” In first century Palestine, he stood with widows, orphans, children, tax collectors, lepers, and Canaanites. Jesus’s love stretches from the gates of heaven to the depths of hell in order to retrieve and love the lost, the lonely, the abandoned, the forgotten, the unseen. I like to imagine that when the stone was rolled away from the tomb, after the women had come and gone, perhaps a few lambs, chickens, cows, pigs, and sparrows grazed on that holy ground.

The Ag Gag fight may soon make an appearance in your state. There is legislation currently pending in Arizona, New Hampshire, and Indiana. Eleven states defeated similar legislation in 2013. In six states, including Iowa, it is a crime to be hired at a farm under false pretenses, thanks in large part to this investigation, which prompted the not-exactly-super-animal-or-people-friendly McDonald’s to drop a major egg supplier because of the egregious cruelty and filth the investigator exposed. If you get a chance to weigh in on the Ag Gag debate in your state, please remind your lawmakers that Jesus journeys with those who suffer, as he admonishes us to love “the least of these.”

And this Lent, consider going vegan. Consider forgoing flesh in favor of foods that don’t require suffering and death. Here’s how to get started.

anxiety

~ swithrowking ~ Leave a comment

I’m traveling tomorrow morning, early, to the west best coast, first to go to a conference and then to visit my family in Oregon.

I used to travel with abandon and without a care in the world. I’d throw a bag together and head out for an impromptu road trip, eagerly anticipated opportunities to go overseas, and relished the adventure of wandering through new places alone.

These days, that joyful excitement is tinged with a hefty portion of anxiety, particularly when I’m heading off without Isaiah in tow. I start to feel it in my belly weeks in advance – that crunching, churning, acidic fear. I feel my heart race. My sleep is restless and filled with disturbing dreams. I feel guilty for leaving my son so much, even though he’s here with his dad and a half-dozen surrogate parents who genuinely love and appreciate him. I know I’ll wake up the morning of travel, in the early morning hours, and feel a deep dread. I know when the plane takes off and lands, or hits a little patch of turbulence, I’ll cling to the arms of the tiny seats and pray “Please Jesus, please Jesus, please Jesus.” I’ll try to remember my friend Lily’s image of angels carrying the plane on their wings (even though I know, I know…physics). I know when my son and husband get on a plane a few days later to come meet me (forgetaboutit burglars, we have an awesome house-sitter), I’ll fret for their safety until I meet them outside of the security area in the airport. I know I have life-insurance and a living will and that if I do die, they’ll get through it. Life will go on.

I don’t want to be afraid of dying. I don’t want to dwell on the thought that my son might die before I do. But I do. I do.

And while some might say that makes me a bad Christian, I say it makes me pretty human. A human with a slightly defective brain who tries her best to use crushing anxiety and chronic depression as opportunities to learn to trust, to release the idea of control, in a world that wires us for FEAR! FEAR! FEAR! and to chase the lie that we are our own gods.

There’s been a lot of nasty weather around here lately (cough-climate change-cough). Earlier today, a little band of thunder and lightening rolled through the region. It was loud, and a little scary, but not catastrophic. As expected, the local 11:00 am news spent the bulk of their 30 minute newscast talking about the lightening-heard-round-the-city and showering us with information about the storm and its aftermath (one downed power line, from what I gathered).

Yesterday on my drive in to work, a local radio personality was interviewing an automotive writer about driverless technology in cars and during that interview she said, “Any technology that will keep us safer is a good thing.” Not to go all tin-foil hat on you or anything, but when we start thinking that way, we’re only a skip and a jump away from allowing technology (and the people and institutions who control that technology) to rule us. Safety is our god. Power is our lord. And information technology is our savior.

Gosh, does that sound familiar? I can’t help but think of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in Genesis 2. God’s creative power has resulted in a peaceful, nourishing, cooperative paradise. Men and women are partners with other created beings. They are all cared for and in loving communion with the One who gave them life. But their desire for control, to “be like God,” outweighs their appreciation of these gifts. And so the story of human history is now the story of brokenness and longing. Longing for more power, but also for reconciliation and restoration. A constant tug-of-war.

That conflict is in me. I know that the illusion of control is dangerous and, ultimately, doomed to be disappointing. I know that I can’t predict the future, that my son or I or anyone I love could keel over dead at any point, anywhere, no matter what I do or don’t do. That wars ravage the globe and injustice runs deep and wide. My goodness, my preparedness, my checklists and procedures and precautions don’t add up to security.

“I waited patiently for the Lord;
he inclined to me and heard my cry.
He drew me up from the desolate pit, out of the miry bog,
and set my feet upon a rock, making my steps secure.
He put a new song in my mouth,
a song of praise to our God.
Many will see and fear, and put their trust in the Lord.” (Psalm 40:1-3)

Security comes from the author of the universe. And we learn through Jesus that it doesn’t always look very secure. Jesus was crucified, many of his early followers were martyred. Jesus-followers today put themselves in harm’s way to be peacemakers and reconcilers. Think of this lone priest in Kiev, standing between police and protestors. That doesn’t look very secure to me. Think of medical professionals who enter countries ravaged by poverty, colonial rule, and war, called to minister through their vocation to those in desperate need. Think of the men and women who stand between warring gangs in the inner cities, trying to stop gun violence.

And think of the everyday people, like you and like me, who face everyday battles fueled by a culture of fear, violence, and injustice. Double- and triple-checking our doors and windows are locked at night, jumping a little bit every time the school calls in the middle of the day, choosing isolation over participation out of our fears of rejection or failure.

I hate to sound like a cheesy valentine, but I think the remedy for this fear is love. “God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.” (1 John 4:16b) God doesn’t abide in those who have it all together or get it all right. If you live in love, God lives in you. “Love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness on the day of judgement, because as he is, so are we in the world.” (v. 17) Bring it on, crappy, broken world. Bring it on. I’ve seen perfect love in Jesus, and I’m trying to live in love the best I know how. You can’t throw anything at me that love won’t absorb. “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love.” (v. 18) I know I won’t reach perfection in love. It’s far off, but I know that love abides in me, and that if I listen to that love when fear is screaming at me, trying to get my attention…my heart rate drops, by breath calms, and my mind starts to focus on something besides the chaos I create.

So, tomorrow morning, I’ll try listening to love instead of fear. And we’ll see what happens.  And I might listen to this a couple more times, too.

two things

~ swithrowking ~ Leave a comment

Two things:

First, I’m sorry to whoever has to be in or near a room with me in it tomorrow (and especially sorry to my fellow Circle of Hope Public Meeting team members), as I have made and enjoyed this oddly delicious garlic lemonade, in an effort to shake a persistent and cramping-my-style cough.

Second, Rod will be delighted to know that I’ve got this gem stuck in my head.

Here’s what the lyrics mean:

From starry skies descending,
Thou comest, glorious King,
A manger low Thy bed,
In winter’s icy sting;

O my dearest Child most holy,
Shudd’ring, trembling in the cold!
O Great God, Thou lovest me!
What suff’ring Thou didst bear,
That I near Thee might be!

Thou art the world’s Creator,
God’s own and true Word,
Yet here no robe, no fire
For Thee, Divine Lord.

Dearest, fairest, sweetest Infant,
Dire this state of poverty.
The more I care for Thee,
Since Thou, O Love Divine,
Will now so poor be.

I don’t know yet why I needed a reminder that Jesus didn’t come the way folks expected Jesus to come. But there it is. Perhaps as I face the uncertainty of the years ahead and the unanswered questions, I can remember that, in some respects, forming expectations is a fruitless endeavor. Perhaps the cries of a needy God-baby are a reminder that what’s right in front of our faces, the very moment we are in, is where we are needed most, where we can learn the most, and where we can find the most contentment.

getting published

~ swithrowking ~ 6 Comments

Well, eventually…

One of the many, many things that I love about Palmer Theological Seminary is that I have been able to explore the intersection of animals and theology throughout my two and a half years. Pretty much every paper I’ve written (even in Church History) dealt in one way or another with human relationships to nonhuman animals. As a result, by the time I graduate in May, I’ll have most, if not all, of a book written on evangelical animal liberation theology. They’ve given me the tools and opportunity to start to work out some pretty big questions. 

So, back in November, in a feat of bravery and optimism, I prepped and submitted a proposal to an editor contact at Baker Books (one of the biggest Christian publishers). I heard back from the editor today, who said he had taken it to the editorial team, and though the topic was important, they didn’t feel there was enough of a market for the work.

I’m discouraged and encouraged.

I’m encouraged because I got past step one. This is HUGE! I got someone not only to look at my proposal, but who thought it decent enough to bring to a broader group. I am thrilled that it wasn’t chucked out at first glance. 

And yet, I still had to fight these demons after I read and processed the email. It was a rejection. There’s no getting around that. I’m not used to rejection, because I don’t frequently do stuff that risks failure (see: resolutions). For a few seconds, I thought to myself, “Who do you think you are? No one will want to read this…you’re arrogant for even trying.” Etcetera etcetera etcetera, ad nauseam.

Then I got bored with my own self-doubt. Fuck that. And yeah, I mean to use harsh language. That shit’s the devil dancing in my head and that particular club is closed.

How many other evangelical Christians are committed to animal liberation? How many others have my experiences, at ESA and at PETA in the U.S. and Europe?  Not many. And while the number of Christians who are rethinking the human/nonhuman animal relationship is growing like wheatgrass in Berkeley, there aren’t many (yet) who are willing and able to beat the drum loud and long. Jesus gave me these passions for a reason. I’m on this path with confidence that my purpose is ordained by God. 

Maybe I’m too used to short-term victories. Quick payoffs. This is a long-haul kind of endeavor. So, after I replied to the kind man at Baker, I sucked up my self-pity and submitted queries to two literary agents today. And I’ll keep risking, writing, thinking, talking, and sometimes shouting as long as it freaking takes.

Bring it on, rejection. Bring. it. on.  

serenity prayer

~ swithrowking ~ Leave a comment

I dig this:

God, give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed,
courage to change the things which should be changed,
and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other—
living one day at a time,
enjoying one moment at a time,
accepting hardship as a pathway to peace,
taking, as Jesus did,
this sinful world as it is,
not as I would have it,
trusting that You will make all things right,
if I surrender to Your will—
so that I may be reasonably happy in this life,
and supremely happy with You forever in the next.
Amen.

bedtime

~ swithrowking ~ 2 Comments

Last night, I cried while I stood next to Isaiah’s bed and he drifted off to sleep. I was feeling the weight of what it means to be a parent. Fretting over the lifelong implications of behavior patterns he establishes now. Sure that a rocky week in Kindergarten foretells teenage hooliganism, succumbing to peer pressure, and drunk driving.

Tonight, it was Isaiah’s turn to cry while he went to sleep…well, while he started to think about going to sleep anyway. Since the apple really doesn’t fall far from the tree, Isaiah was also distraught about Really Big Things. The questions and comments came fast and furious, his little brow furrowed and his little body restless:

  • “I’m just really sad because I’ll never be a dog and be able to curl up like a dog.”
  • “When people die, do they become dogs?”
  • “Why didn’t you and daddy make me a dog?”
  • “How did you and daddy make me?”
  • “Are there heroes in heaven?”
  • “Where do heroes live? Do heroes live in your heart?”
  • “If nobody gets hurt in heaven, are there heroes and ninjas?”
  • “Will I die when I’m twenty?”
  • “What happens when we die?”
  • “I just really wish I was a baby. I wish I never had a birthday.”
  • “I wish we had a baby.”
  • “I just really like dogs and cats and babies because they’re so cute. Kids aren’t cute. I wish I was never a kid.”

Golly, dude. I’m sorry. Nights like these, I stand there in the dark, stroking Isaiah’s back, singing a song (here’s our current favorite lullaby), and remember my dad coming into my bedroom, sitting by my bed, singing to me, urging me to stop thinking, to close my eyes, keep still, and let myself drift off to sleep. The baby books tell you that “sleep begets sleep.” And I’m pretty sure in those list of begats in the Bible, somewhere it says, “And insomnia begat insomnia.”

 

The album description of our lullaby (Stay Close) says: “Our journey with Jesus often contains stretches of doubt, alienation, and loneliness…This song is a petition to be renewed and for a rich sense of God’s immanence to remain during a difficult season.” I think somewhere, deep inside, I’m desperately hoping that Isaiah doesn’t battle the same demons of depression that I face…and that, if he does, the plea from this song will fuse to that depressed DNA that I passed along, giving him a fighting chance for peaceful nights.

desert islands, life rafts, and house fires

~ swithrowking ~ 2 Comments

My dad has been reading some of my evangelical animal liberation theology book chapters and giving me feedback. I really appreciate his comments and thoughts because he thinks very differently about this issue than I do, and I need someone to push back on my ideas, hard, to make me refine them, to force me to think about the foundations and implications of this theology that I want to articulate well.

A few mornings ago, he emailed me this question, that I’m sure my animal rights activist friends will recognize: “Would you kill your son to keep your dog alive if faced with a circumstance where you must chose between them? or Would you kill your dog to keep your son alive in those same circumstances?” He wanted to know “whether or not there is, in God’s creational economy, a difference between humans and other kinds of animals in terms of how they are valued by Him; and, secondarily, of how they are to be valued by humans who rightly understand that divine economy.”

My dad’s intentions are not to belittle my work, at all. In fact, he stopped eating chickens long before I did! But I had to giggle a little when I read the question, because I think most everyone who has self-identified as an “animal rights person” at some point in life has had someone ask them an iteration of this question, from “If you were trapped on a desert island and had to kill an animal to survive, would you?” to “If you were in a life raft, and you had to pick either your dog or a human to throw out, which would you choose?” to “If your house was on fire and you only had time to save your kid or your cat, which would you pick?”

It reminds me of this hysterical scene from the West Wing.

Given the visceral rage I felt at the 10-month-old girl who shoved four-month-old Isaiah over during his first week of pre-school, I think it’s safe to say that I would go to, quite literally, any length to try to protect my son from harm. I’d toss my crippled mother over the side of life-raft if it meant saving my son’s life (I think she’d be okay with this, she’s remarkably self-sacrificing).

Jesus actually asked his own versions of the desertisland-liferaft-housefire question:

  • “Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?” Matthew 6:26
  • “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. And even the hairs of your head are all counted. So do not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows.” Matthew 10:29-31
  • “He said to them, ‘Suppose one of you has only one sheep and it falls into a pit on the sabbath; will you not lay hold of it and life it out? How much more valuable is a human being than a sheep! So it is lawful to do good on the sabbath.'” Matthew 12:11-12

Why did Jesus use these analogies? Was it to make a point about how silly it was to care about animals? Not at all. Nekeisha Alexis-Baker adeptly addresses these passages in her essay, “Doesn’t the Bible Say that Humans Are More Important than Animals?” in A Faith Embracing All Creatures: Addressing Commonly Asked Questions about Christian Care for Animals. Alexis-Baker argues that, “In these instances, Jesus’s message is that the Father’s care extends even to the nonhuman creation that humans devalue…Jesus invites his followers to look to creation to better understand how God works in the world.”

What we value, what I value, probably doesn’t perfectly reflect what God values. And that’s a good thing. A really good thing. But these passages don’t tell us that God doesn’t value sparrows or sheep. And they certainly don’t tell us that it’s okay to use sparrows and sheep in whatever way happens to please us. For that matter, let’s think about how Jesus asks his followers to respond to those who are routinely undervalued and abused by their surrounding societies. Oh, yeah…we include, embrace, and protect them!

Maybe islands, rafts, and emergencies are where our ethical rubber meets the road. But maybe they’re just places where, in a fallen world, we are forced to make heart-breaking and unfair choices. Maybe God’s heart is as broken by those moments as ours would be. In the meantime, in the day-to-day economy of the created world, we are given the freedom to choose compassion, reject cruelty, and practice kindness. I think those choices we make every day at the grocery store, in our kitchen, at a restaurant, at the drug store, choosing what clothes to buy, where to shop, how to spend our money…I think those choices are far more meaningful.

resolutions

~ swithrowking ~ 2 Comments

I did some math recently and was dismayed to realize that, at thirty-five years old, I’ve spent the better part of the last quarter century battling depression and body hate. A quarter of a century.

During that twenty-five years, I’ve experienced extreme lows, recovered, and then entered the depths again. I’ve hated the way I look and scanned every room I have been in to find someone, anyone, fatter than I am at that moment. Both struggles have been such an important part of my everyday world that I frankly just didn’t realize how much of my life they had influenced…consumed, even.

The two battles have similarities and differences.

I’m predisposed to both. I come from big, depressed, and anxious stock. How I’m wired is, in some ways, out of my hands. Like Gaga says, I was “born this way.” I remember the first time I ever used food to calm my nerves. I was around four or five years old, and I poured my brother and I a glass of milk to drink while my parents were in the middle of a fight. Depression and food addiction fuel each other in my brain and body, and always have. Both are destructive, joy-killing, and lead me to feel isolated and helpless.

But while I still feel shame over the numbers on the scale and the food I put in my mouth, I wear my depression like a badge of honor. I’ve worked hard to understand my mental illness, to work with it, to make my life work with it. I’m eager to share my story of dealing with this disease, because I am confident in my ability to flourish despite its best efforts to bring me down and because working through those valleys has strengthened and humbled me in exactly the right ways. Hell yeah, I go to therapy! And sometimes I need an SSRI and a sleeping pill to function! It’s all good, it ain’t the end of the world, and this weakness really is my strength.

My depression has also forced me to reckon with God and reconcile my childhood faith with my adult reality. I have lived through the darkest days only because God’s hand protected me. God is with me when I am in a blind rage, when I can’t drag myself out of bed, when I can’t stop crying, when I want to run away, when I do run away, when I hate myself, when I hate God, when I scream at people I love, when I try to hurt myself, when I am exhausted, when I give up, when I ask for help, and when I start to heal. And God is there when the cycle starts again. Maybe it’s the Lexapro talking, but I don’t feel like I need to escape depression. I have learned so much about who I am, who I can be, and have felt so loved and held through these experiences…it sucks, but it’s also a gift.

I can’t say the same about my body or food, my enemies.

There are parts of this battle that I can own. My choices are my own. My failures are my own. I decide what goes in my mouth. I decide how much I move. I choose. I don’t want to play the victim or improperly assign blame.

But at some point, the disease of food addiction began to take over my mind. I no longer made sane choices. I told myself if I just had enough willpower, I could stop eating potato chips and lose weight…but what I didn’t realize was that I had loads of willpower. If I wanted food, come hell or high water, I was going to get it.

I was…I am powerless against this drug, food, and I am not my will. I am more than my will.

Here’s what food addiction is like for me: I obsess over food. It is always on my mind. Though I have never experienced food insecurity, I worry constantly about where my next meal is going to come from, if it will be enough, and whether I will enjoy it. The idea of food is often much more delightful than the real experience. Dissatisfied, I will continue to eat, hoping for satisfaction. When I am anxious or angry and put food in my mouth, there is nothing like the instant calm that flows through my body. My heart stops racing. I can breathe deeply. My muscles relax.

This addiction is fueled by the messages that I’ve heard for so many years and internalized on the deepest level, the subtle and overt ways that usually well-meaning friends and relatives have participated in my shame. Here are a few that I remember:

  • Being called “thunder thighs” by a peer in middle school, while waiting for the bus.
  • A middle school PE teacher standing in a crowded hallway, hands on my shoulders, telling me she was worried about my weight.
  • The picture of a JC Penney model my mom kept on the fridge as a reminder for herself that she wanted to lose weight.
  • Going to Weight Watchers before I was a teenager, and then again, and again, and again.
  • Going to my first nutritionist and keeping my first of many food journals in high school (and yeah, I wasn’t a stick, but I look back at photos now and want to weep at how deformed I thought I was as a size 12).
  • Being told that I could have a pair of designer (acid wash!) jeans if I lost a certain amount of weight.
  • Getting complimented on how I looked only in the context of weight loss.
  • An uncle who offered me the “jumbo” piece of cake and my partner the “sliver” …to correspond with our body sizes.
  • Being congratulated for not eating dessert by an employer.
  • Watching a fat girl walk down the street being followed by a group of boys and my mother wondering aloud at how sad she was for the girl.
  • A friend laughing at a fat girl riding a ten-speed bike down my street.
  • The countless times my dad told me my fingers weren’t the fingers of a fat girl; hearing him talk about how beautiful other women and girls were; sitting in a grocery store parking lot as he remarked of a patron “she has such a pretty face, she’d be beautiful if she just lost weight, it’s too bad she’s so fat.”
  • Girlfriends who I thought were half my size constantly talking about how fat they were.

Maybe there’s more. I don’t know. I do know that my parents and friends love me. I’ve no doubt of that. And I should also make it clear that if I didn’t pick up these messages from these people who loved me, I probably would have heard much more damaging ones from folks who didn’t.

No matter the source, I soaked all those messages in. They became a part of me. They began to define me. I avoid photographs now like the plague. I manage to forget that I’m fat until I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror, or see a photograph. The disgust I feel is overwhelming. I don’t own a full-length mirror, I rarely go shopping, most days I try to hide my body in baggy clothes and when I wear something moderately fitted, I feel like an imposter…a toad trying to dress up like a princess. I gobble food in secret. In public, I try to eat small portions, to avoid real or imagined judgment from others.

There are a few things I haven’t resorted to in my effort to shake the fat off my body: I’ve never taken pills or had surgery, gone on a cabbage soup or grapefruit diet, or made myself throw up. I’ve never starved myself. But I have tried groups and books and plans and specialists and spanx. There have been so many gym memberships, VHS tapes, DVDs, and personal trainers. I quit them all and every time, put another point on the “Sarah’s a failure” board.

It’s a bizarre thing, this kind of failure. In other areas of life…in school and work…I excel and achieve. And while it often takes hard work, some of it comes pretty easily. I don’t quite know what to do with this trying, half-assed trying, and failing cycle I have going on here. But maybe it’s not working because I’m trying for the wrong thing.

I’m a work in progress. I feel really lucky to have met a wonderful friend this year who has helped me to connect the messages I’ve received from others to the way I think about myself. She’s helping me take the first baby steps towards believing that I really am fearfully and wonderfully made, and that my body size is not my beauty or my worth. I can do things that make me feel better, that make me hold my head higher, that remind me that I am strong. And those things aren’t directly related to my size. When I shave two or three minutes off of my mile time, when I can lift five more pounds than I could the week before, when I can sprint faster…I feel amazing. I want to capture that for its own sake, not for a result it may or may not bring.

And the OA mantra “progress, not perfection” is emerging from my brain in new ways.

When I was in middle school, at the start of every summer, I would make myself a very detailed daily schedule and resolve to follow it. The schedule included time for all the things I knew I should do: hygiene, exercise, daily bible reading and prayer, and Scarecrow and Mrs. King watching. A day or two later, the schedule was out the window and I was just reading novels all day, yet another failure.

At other points in my life, I would make these strict lists for myself: no more sugar, exercise every day for an hour, eat two pounds of raw vegetables a day, no more animal products (I took at stab at this one for years before finally going vegan, which I also assumed would be a phase – I really have very little faith in myself, I am coming to see). I have always loved me a to-do list. Little boxes to check off = worthiness to live another day!

This remarkable college kid who did weight-training with me this fall told me something that has stuck with me. He said, “I like it when you fail. It means you’re trying really hard.”

I like it when you fail. It means you’re trying.

I can’t remember the last time I wrote New Year’s resolutions. I think for years, I’ve just assumed that I would fail to keep whatever ridiculous and overreaching resolutions I made, so I never bothered. But this year, I’ve got Jordan and Nicole and Lexapro and Rachel and Beth and Paul and Grace and Giehl and Isaiah in my head, and I want to give them the microphone instead of the lame-ass crap I’ve been listening to for the last quarter century.

The first draft of my 2014 New Year’s resolutions read like the old middle school schedule. A bit strident, a bit negative, a bit too much. But I wrote until I stopped writing, and then I paused. I prayed. And Jesus sat with me and helped me write a second list, and then a third.

What I have now are two lists: one of resolutions and one of goals. The resolutions are the few things I’ve discerned are valuable to me, will feed me spiritually and physically. They are as much internal processes as they are external actions. The goals are where I hope to be by the end of 2014. In the past, I’ve wanted to do something “every day” and the first day I miss ruins everything. I hope these lists honor the reality that my growth is not predictable, that it won’t come in specific increments, and that there will be bad days and better days. I hope they give me something to reach for, not something to live up to.

Resolutions for 2014:

  • Wonder well.
  • Take risks. Fail.
  • Eat and drink mindfully.
  • Listen for God.
  • Bask in the sun.
  • Write more. Watch less.
  • Move and strengthen my body.

Goals for 2014:

  • Walk while working.
  • Run a 5K in less than 30 minutes.
  • Do 30 pushups in 1 minute.
  • Write 4 blogs per week.
  • Finish my first book on evangelical animal liberation theology.
  • Enjoy eating.