When It Seems Like God is Asking Too Much

I’d like to tell you about a friend I met over the internet. I’ll call her Amanda. Amanda ordered my Bible study and wrote me after the first chapter, telling me how much she liked it. She felt sure God would use it in her life.

Then she got to the second chapter—the one on trials. Amanda is very familiar with trials. She has some serious health issues and a husband who is not only emotionally distant, but has also chosen not to work for much of their married life. You can imagine how that would make you feel toward your husband, and it was no different for Amanda. She’d been angry with him for more than thirty years.

It was the third lesson of the second chapter that really stumped Amanda—the one where Bill is being a deadbeat and Mary has to choose whether or not she’s going to forgive him. Amanda e-mailed me and told me she was having a difficult time getting past that lesson. I encouraged her to move on—that the fourth lesson in the chapter might help.

Well, Amanda did move on, and God began to do a great work in her heart. Let me let Amanda tell you:

My truth journaling started out angry and defensive, I was trying to justify to God why I should be allowed to hold this grudge and anger. And then I was angry that your Bible study should even suggest that I deal with this!! I cried hot angry tears. I thought there was no way you could understand just how hard my marriage was. After all I was trying to stop emotional eating, what did my emotions have to do with my husband!!

Boy did I find out!! Yes, then the lies started to pour out. And I realized I was not wanting to forgive myself for marrying my husband. You know like - how could I have been so stupid. So I truth journal ALL of those emotions and am starting to see the lies that I had no idea were there!! Then I started feeling lighter, freer. But if I stop truth journaling about this when I think I'm too busy I can feel the heaviness returning. I'm looking so forward to God helping me resolve this. I now believe He will, no matter how my husband treats me, I can cling to Him!

This was only the beginning. God has continued to work in Amanda’s life. She realized she needed to work on the anger before she could really break free from the emotional eating, and so that’s where she focused her efforts. God blessed her work. This is what she wrote to me later:

I realize now that as God allows my husband to follow his own will, God is telling me to come even closer to Him. Maybe it sounds silly, but sometimes those angry lies become security blankets! So letting go of them for me was frightening. The biggest lie I believed was that I deserved to be angry with my husband if he sinned. It is freeing to finally let go!

I can see now that my husband's behavior comes from the lies that he is caught up in. I can feel empathy and sadness for him, instead of anger. And I no longer expect God to fix him for me! :o)

Have you ever been in a situation like Amanda, where you feel like you have a right to hold on to your anger? I know I have, and I’m guessing most of us have. For me, anger was a stumbling block. It got in the way of my relationship with God. When I was finally willing to forgive, that’s when I really started growing close to Him.

It was the truth that made me willing to forgive. As I carried my thoughts captive to Jesus Christ through truth journaling and option charts, God gave me the strength to forgive and submit to Him. I found it to be an incredibly painful experience, but the joy that followed made it worth the pain.

Sometimes I wonder if anyone else is having a difficult time with the second chapter of Freedom from Emotional Eating. I realize the lesson in the third day of that chapter is a hard one—especially being raised in a culture that tells us we have a right to certain things. Let me encourage you today that God is always worth the sacrifices we make for Him.

Sometimes it helps to have someone to talk through your problems with. In another week or two I’ll be telling you about a yahoo group being formed where women who are doing Freedom from Emotional Eating can get together and discuss the things you’re working on. I hope it will be a blessing.

Working on the Emotions

According to a 7/19/06 ABC news report, about 140,000 people have weight-loss surgery each year, and it's estimated that somewhere between 5 and 30 percent of them pick up new addictive behaviors afterward.

That was three years ago. I can only guess that the numbers have gone up.

This underscores for me the importance of not just working on the lies that make us eat, but also working on the lies that are causing our negative emotions in the first place. If we don’t go to God with those negative emotions, we’ll have to do something else with them—and that something else could very well lead to another addiction.

Let’s look at this issue from the standpoint of just one emotion. Take the emotion of anger—do you ever feel annoyed with your friends or family members? Is there anyone at church or work that really gets on your nerves? How do you respond in these situations?

Here are some possible responses:

1) Eat.
2) Truth journal so you don’t eat.
3) Withdraw—ignore them or get out of the relationship.
4) Try to be nice even though you’re silently resenting them.
5) Get your feelings out by talking to a friend or writing in a journal.
6) Try to change them. Maybe if you say the right thing, they’ll see the light and change.
7) Feel sorry for yourself.
8) Yell at them.
9) Learn to see them through God’s eyes, then accept, forgive, and love.

Of course, we all know the right response—but it’s certainly not the natural response, is it? We would really have to spend some time bringing our thoughts captive to the truth if we wanted to respond with that last option. That option, though, is the only option that will bring peace (unless of course the other person is willing and able to change, which doesn’t usually happen).

Now you might think that the second option is a good option also. I agree—it’s a good option—but if that’s all you do, it can be a dangerous option. Why? Because those negative emotions still need to be released. If you only work on not eating and don’t work on getting rid of the anger, you’ll be in danger of turning to another escape to get rid of those negative emotions.

Women often tell me that Freedom from Emotional Eating is just as much about regular life as it is about eating. That’s because it’s regular life that makes us eat. If we don’t learn how to deal with our problems the way God wants us to, those emotions will still be there in need of an outlet. If we don’t eat, what will we do?

So much of the Christian walk is about dying to our “rights” and being willing to do anything for God. Because we’re so entrenched in the world’s way of thinking, it’s hard for us to do that without first taking the time to carry our thoughts captive to the truth.

I find that when I take the time to line my thoughts up with God’s thoughts, it helps me submit to Him—and submitting to Him always brings peace.

And peace is one of those emotions that doesn’t make me feel like eating.