Blog

Today’s post is written by Emily Wierenga, and it broke my heart, perhaps in a way that hearts should be broken because I find myself wanting to randomly hug my four children all the time (but especially my 8-year-old girl). Let down your walls, inhale these words, and then please, please, please pre-order her book (there’s a link at the bottom of the page). These are the things worth writing about and speaking about but they need your financial support if they’re going to get off the ground.

So I Stopped Eating, by Emily Wierenga

We were moving, for the tenth time in seven years, and I’d seen a bad word on the side of the grocery store wall (but had no one to ask about it) and Mum didn’t tell me I was beautiful and I couldn’t go to public school and Dad was never home, so I stopped eating.

I chewed pencil, tasting lead. Our heads were bent over textbooks, together at the kitchen table, and Mum’s back was turned, while she rolled dough on the counter, and I wanted her to look at me, tell me she loved me, over and over, give me a mirror and trace my cheeks and help me believe I was worth something, but she didn’t know how, having never known it herself, and so I broke my pencil pressing it into prose and tried to find myself in the lines of the page.

I heard the sounds of girls going to school, ran to the door, and saw they were wearing pink backpacks and I wanted to run with them, but my legs were too fat; no one likes a fat preacher’s kid. Besides, we were home-schooled in case we should move again. Also, I had cried when I’d gone to kindergarten, so Mum had brought me home, ordered books, and vowed to teach me. That kind of thing was supposed to tell me she loved me, but I didn’t feel it. Because, to me, love was words and gifts. So I sat down to do my math and tried to forget.

I tried to forget the way Dad laughed with strangers in their pews, listened to them, as if their stories were more important than mine. And the way he closed the door to his study and sighed when I knocked, timid to ask him a question. I tried to forget the way he spanked me not knowing what I’d done wrong, only that Mum told him to because she was too angry to do it herself, and scared of that anger. It didn’t hurt me anymore, not even when he used his belt, because I refused to let it.

A neighbor saw me on the carpet, toy-playing, seven-year-old oblivion, and said, “What a big girl,” and I carried those words around like a bird in a cage, until one day the bird got loose and I stopped eating. Soon I would run on thin legs with the girls next-door.

It was a slow-stop, one that began with saying “No,” and the “No” felt good. I refused dessert. I refused the meals Mom dished up for me. I refused the spreads on my bread and then the margarine and then the bread itself. And it felt good, like the ribs on my fingers, as I practiced my counting.

 

I was nine and I felt 109. Mom let me go to school again, but I wasn’t allowed to do English class, because the books were too risqué, and she still didn’t say I was beautiful. The days were long and I was tired and no one could hear me, so I starved harder and the teachers couldn’t see me, so I shrunk my words making them smaller, smaller, until the teachers were forced to pull down their glasses and study the prose I’d made, the winning prose, and I aced class and I flunked recess.

At night, I dreamt of food. Mum found me, hunting for chocolates in my bedspread. I wanted her to hug me and make the fear go away, but then I was worried I’d eat real chocolates, because my guard would be let down with the soft of her touch, so I stopped hugging her for two years. My legs were getting thin, and that was what mattered, but I dreamt about her arms, and woke up hugging myself.

God didn’t care. He made me recite names each night before bed and I couldn’t go to sleep without reciting, because then people would die, and I wanted to die but I didn’t know it until the day everyone tried to force me to eat and I refused it all, and now it was clear to the world and maybe to God too: I was in control.

It was supper and we were seated and Mum was dishing, dishing, dishing and the macaroni and cheese piled orange and white as she handed them, plates plunking against old wood table, and I’d already decided, it tasted like straw, even before I took a bite.

Tonight, I would eat only half, and she’d threaten me with no dessert and I’d tell her point blank, that’s fine. Maybe it would make her worn sweaters unravel and her straight-lined school schedule smear and maybe then she’d take me into her arms and tell me she was sorry.

Sorry for praying that prayer when I was in her womb, the one I learned of later on, the one she said with good intentions not knowing how it would hurt me, the prayer which uttered God, don’t make my baby beautiful, in case she becomes vain. (I can see Mum’s hands trembling on her abdomen in the night as she offered her baby like Hannah did with Samuel, and it makes me love her, yet, despise).

In my own dark nights I worked to reverse that prayer. I’d train as though for war, to see food as nothing but a trap. I’d lie there feeling ribs, measuring wrists, planning the next day’s meals. And if there was to be a party somewhere, soon, I’d eat less in preparation, allowing myself the freedom to snack for then no one would know the difference.

By day, I’d peer into the mirror as if into my soul and imagine myself skinnier, beautiful. I’d creak onto the toilet seat after bath, spend half an hour turning this way and that, analyzing naked bones. Sucking in and pulling skin and strategizing how to become invisible.

 

Salvation came through imagination.

The apple grew a face which mocked me, and so I didn’t finish it, for every time I defeated the food, I gained points against Mum, and maybe God, and I was winning. The food had nothing on me. Sometimes I’d trick it, making the piece of bread think it would fill me up then rip it into halves and eat only one, and there was a thrill in leaving food on the plate, as though I could disappoint it. Even the raisins in the tapioca seemed to stare holes, and I would push it away, feigning fullness.

But food was everywhere, and it never slept. It would beat me in my dreams—the cakes, the pies, the sandwiches. In my mind there would be a buffet, high-calorie. I’d gorge, drool, and crumbs would spill over into daytime and I’d wake feeling bloated, spend the next day getting back at food by eating less.

I’d suck in my cheeks in the mirror; I’d suck them in for photos and I’d try not to talk so I could suck them in day-long. It was tiring, this looking like a model, but I was determined to be beautiful. I would weigh myself every time I ate, every time I went to the bathroom; I’d take off my shoes, my socks, my pants, just to see the numbers drop.

And I wept through the pain, wept behind closed doors with my arms wrapped tight, but I couldn’t stop.

 

Emily Wierenga is an author, artist and freelance journalist from Neerlandia, AB. Please pre-order her book, Chasing Silhouettes: How to Help a Loved One Battling an Eating Disorder, to donate to your libraries, churches or the family down the street in need of hope and healing. Thank you.

 

(Repost; originally appeared at The High Calling, November 2010)

There are four chairs, like four points on the compass, one in each corner of the room. An old man reclines in one, his thick glasses magnifying his closed eyes. I’ll be honest – he doesn’t look like he’s alive, but when his machine beeps, he stirs, and the nurse goes over and changes his bag.

In the chair in the opposite corner, a young man is told he can’t receive his treatment for one reason or another. He takes it in stride, runs his hands through his hair, and shrugs.

In the third chair, a middle-aged man falls asleep watching the news. He doesn’t have a port like most of the patients do: a long needle hangs awkwardly from his arm, a massive mosquito, not sucking blood but injecting poison. Some strange kind of poison that will hopefully save his life.

And in the chair beside me, my aunt. Her bald head somehow proud and distinguished. Her kind eyes flit from person to person, willing them not to give up. From a clear bag her own brand of medicine drips. In previous weeks it stood out, ruby red, and nurses injected it slowly through her port – they wore rubber gloves so as not to expose themselves to the chemo. But this week it’s a clear bag. It could be vodka. Or water.

* * * * *

It defies all odds, the quiet hope clinging to that room. It is like a soap bubble that just keeps rising. You wait and you wait and you wait for it to pop, but higher it goes.

* * * * *

We talk for hours. Hers is a unique regimen that takes half a day to leak into her body. We talk about life and cancer, friends and future plans. 4:30 comes quickly. Nearly finished, she has one last request, so I walk down to the guest shop and come back with Heath bars and Snickers, Rolos and Twix. She savors her Heath bar slowly. I devour my Snickers in an instant.

Then a young man enters the room. He looks lost, disoriented by grief, wavering like a wine glass that’s just had the table cloth yanked out from under it. He walks towards the nurse and she greets him warmly. In the quiet room I cannot help but hear snippets of their conversation.

How is she?

…turn for the worse yesterday…

…she seemed fine during chemo!

…kidney failure…stroke…intensive care…

Tears leak slowly from the man’s eyes, a saline drip. Suddenly my aunt whispers tersely.

“This isn’t right. Put the chocolate away. Please. Here. Put it away.”

It didn’t feel right, our celebrating the end of another treatment with chocolate, at least not in the presence of such eroded hope. I pushed the candy bars into obscurity, then sat quietly, our own eyes stinging.

After he left, my aunt turned to me and said quietly.

“Every time I leave this place, it is with a grateful heart.”

* * * * *

And this is it, I suppose: the things most necessary for life, things like hope and courage and thankfulness, spring up from the most unlikely places. I leave the hospital with a certain appreciation for life, and it spreads from me to others, slightly diluted but moving outward nonetheless. Then I wonder, if I traced back all the thankfulness in the world to its original source, would I find that it comes from these places we label as dire? Could hardship and struggle and even death somehow be the catalyst for good? The launching place for healing and redemption, hope and gratefulness?

Do our responses to situations such as these determine how high the tide of hope will rise in the world?

My uncle looked at me.

“You know, to live this life you’re living, make these kinds of decisions, you have to be a little bit crazy,” he said. The worrying thing is, his face showed no sign of amusement.

I nodded and smiled.

“I know.”

* * * * *

It’s been one month since we returned from our four-month trip around the United States. It’s been one month since the tachometer turned over its 9800th mile, we crossed through the 31st state, and we pulled our big blue bus named Willie into my parents’ driveway.

One month. Sometimes it feels like we never took that trip – it feels like it happened in a dream, or underwater, or in a book that I read.

But here we are. We returned to empty bank accounts and not a major project to be found. I realized it was time to scrap for work, so I took anything I could find: working at a farmers’ market, writing SEO articles, and driving Amish people from one place to another.

And, with the help of family and friends, we inched along.

* * * * *

“People thought I was crazy when I quit my job and took out a second mortgage on my house so that I could start my business ten years ago,” my uncle said, shrugging as if to say, And who could blame them? “And maybe it was. Maybe it was crazy. Maybe what you’re doing is crazy.”

I nodded. He sold his business two years ago for a substantial amount of money.

“Yeah,” I said. “It feels that way sometimes.”

“I see a lot of people think about chasing their dreams,” he said, looking off into the distance. “You see them go up to the edge, but security draws them back in, and I shake my head. But I can’t blame them.”

He shrugs and says it again. “I can’t blame them.”

* * * * *

Last week, thanks to a wonderful reference by a friend of mine, I landed my first big project since we’ve returned from our trip. With more in the pipeline. A lot more.

I feel like, finally, I’ve turned the corner. After almost three years of digging and searching and striving, I get a sense that I’m making headway. My mindset has changed, and I’ve learned so much.

There were a lot of times along the way when I wanted to give up on trying to make a living writing, telling other people’s stories. But here I am. I made it this far.

* * * * *

You could do it, too, you know. You could start that business or plant that church or make that move. You could begin the process to adopt or provide foster care. You could create that non-profit. You could live a different life than you’re currently living.

Sometimes you just have to be a little bit crazy.

I’m thrilled to deliver the first of what I hope will be many adoption stories here at the blog. On every Friday in the foreseeable future, guests will post here about their experience with foster care and adoption. It’s a lifestyle I have watched my sister, Sharalee Halvorsen, and her husband Ben dive into feet first. They’ve taken in two children in eight months (in addition to the four children they already had). I hope you’ll enjoy their story and Shar’s perspective on adoption.

* * * * *

“We have a mama due in 3 weeks with a baby girl. And we were wondering if you could be the family she is looking for?”

Private adoption.
An option that for some reason had never been in our radar. A long year pursuing an international adoption only to have to pull our case when things got a bit messy. Foster training nearly complete but feeling like we still had such a long way to go. We were confused and unsure as to where our baby was,
a baby that already felt like ours, yet never had a face.

24 hours after receiving the first email from a friend we were sitting across from the mother, listening to her story.
Disbelief that someone so young could have been through so much.
Hurt.
Abuse.
Abandonment.
She wanted her baby girl’s life to be different.
She wanted it to be filled with love,
acceptance,
laughter,
security.

24 hours later she was signing the forms that confirmed we were the ones.

3 weeks later we got the call.
Everything felt surreal. Walking into the hospital room is a moment I will never forget.
Mama was yelling. She felt alone and was scared.
Curtains and blankets hung to ensure she made no connection with the little one she had just brought into the world.
All I could hear was sweet baby girl’s cry. She felt alone and scared.
Curtains and blankets hung to ensure no connection with the only mama she had ever known.
And I stood there wondering my part in all of this.
I wanted to run.
She didn’t want me. She didn’t cry for me.
She wanted to be placed on her mama’s chest. She wanted to be close to the only voice that was familiar.
But in that moment I realized that things don’t always work out they way they are intended.
The situation wasn’t ideal.

~
90 minutes.
An hour and a half.
That’s how long we had to prepare for baby boy.

9 days old. So fragile and small.
The scene in our kitchen was surreal, and it is a moment in my life that I will never forget.
We were strangers yet instantly bound by the common paths we were walking and the treasure they were entrusting us with.
The couple had dreamed of their first baby,
longing to love him and give him all they had,
and now they were here handing him to us because the circumstances had changed.
chances were they weren’t going to be able to keep him
lies
deceit
so many things out of their control
birth parents playing tug of war
with the baby right in the middle.

They held him
cried,
said their goodbyes,
and walked out.

And we stood in our kitchen, staring at this little baby boy
helpless
alone
vulnerable.
We knew nothing about him
how often he ate
his schedule
Was he scared?
What were the pieces of his past, his story?
We didn’t know him.
And for a second
I wanted to run.
Deep down I knew that it was impossible not to fall for this baby that had landed in our kitchen.
I knew deep down that it was going to be torture for our four other kids if we had to say goodbye.
And now, four months later,
I know the weight of the loss we would feel if he were to go.
It would be more than I could possibly handle.

It doesn’t make sense. This isn’t the way it was supposed to work out.
~
When things are in limbo with my babies
fear
anxiety
worry
are ever present.
We walk each day with a weight on our shoulders
some days the weight is lighter
but it’s still always there.
Last week as we talked through the latest developments with baby boy,
I could feel my chest tightening and anxiety setting in
trying to figure out how this was going to work out.
I looked at my husband,
hardly able to get the words out
and I said “Why would we ever do this again?
It’s just too hard.”

“Someone has to.”
That’s all he said.

It would be so much easier to run.
When things don’t make sense,
when things aren’t working out the way they are supposed to,
when things are less than ideal.
Sometimes I wish we weren’t that “someone”.
Sometimes I wish I could just walk away
and not feel anything
but to be honest
with each baby that has been brought to our home
my feeling couldn’t be more opposite.
Looking at our baby girl and baby boy
there is only one thought that consumes my mind

One more.
We can love on one more.

I wonder how many times in the past I have made a decision based on the thought that if it’s
hard or painful
if it doesn’t make sense
then surely it isn’t right.
I wonder how much I’ve missed out on because of that thought.

Thank God I didn’t miss out on my babies…

* * * * *

You can check out Sharalee’s blog HERE, as well as her beautiful photography HERE.

If you’d like to submit a post for consideration, please email your 500-word story to shawnsmucker@yahoo.com. I’m looking for stories regarding a poignant moment in your foster or adoption process to post on a Friday.

There’s a silly little voice that will whisper into your ear and tell you that you aren’t there yet. You can’t possibly benefit anyone with what you are doing. Maybe someday, when you’re a bigger deal, but right now? You’re mostly nonessential.

Your platform isn’t large enough.

Your church isn’t big enough.

Your non-profit doesn’t have enough funding.

Your business doesn’t pull enough profit.

You haven’t been married for long enough.

You’re single.

You’re not old enough.

You’re not young enough.

In other words, you’re not there yet. Someday. Maybe. But not now.

* * * * *

I got a text the other day from a friend. It went something like this:

“I was just talking to a guy I work with. He said his wife reads your blog and it was the deciding factor that led her to agree with his dream of opening his own store.”

But I don’t have enough readers to influence that kind of meaningful change. My novel hasn’t been published. I don’t have a bestseller. Right? RIGHT?

* * * * *

Have you considered the thought that right now you are enough? Have you considered the thought that your

small church

small non-profit

small business

small blog

small book

small acts of kindness

are making big waves in someone’s life? Someone you don’t know or will never meet or will probably never hear from. Someone who needs the words you are writing or the good you are doing or the questions you are asking. Someone for whom your existence

is enough.

* * * * *

Believing this, how does it change the way you do what you do? How would you approach each day differently if you believed that a person’s life will be altered, in large ways or small ways, by the quality of the job that you do?

Your purpose in life isn’t out there somewhere, in that faraway land when you have 10,000 Facebook followers or sell 100,000 books or your church goes mega or your business expands or your non-profit has enough money to save all the children in the world.

Your purpose is today. Right now.

Whatever you’re doing, do it well.

That is enough.

* * * * *

Please come back tomorrow for the first installment of a new Friday series in which individuals involved in fostering or adoption share their stories. Trust me – you don’t want to miss it.

Some of you may have read my post on Friday about “Surviving the Worst Case (or, Finding a Stranger in Your Kitchen at 4am).” Basically I wrote about how God is with us even through what we consider to be the worst case scenario, and I told the story of a friend who discovered a man standing in his kitchen at 4am, covered in blood. The following is an email I received from that friend after he went to court for the man’s hearing:

I was summoned to appear at the preliminary hearing of the man who broke into our house that night…

I found myself a little nervous pulling up to the district judge’s office and I realized upon entering the tiny little office that I was again face to face with the man that I had found in the kitchen that night. I wondered early this week if I would recognize him when I saw him…I realized a split second after seeing his face that I did recognize him and that I was unlikely to ever forget it. I sat there and waited for my name to be called, unsure of what the process would look like and what would be required of me. My heart was to extend grace to this young man and encourage him in his journey.

After a while the assistant district attorney and the arresting officer called me outside. They explained what was going on and what charges were being brought against the young man and how he was someone with no previous record who had made some bad choices. They wondered if I would be okay if the charge was lowered from a felony of criminal trespass to some type of misdemeanor instead. It would mean avoiding a trial for the young man. I told them that I was happy to lower the charge and that I didn’t have any ill will toward the man and that I would sign off on the paperwork that they were asking about. The judge (who happens to be a good friend of mine) came out in the midst of our conversation and told the men that he wanted to see me when we were done.

So I went into the judge’s office and shared with him – previously I had wanted to avoid any type of conflict of interest for him, so I hadn’t discussed the details of the event…oddly enough he had just realized yesterday when preparing for today that I was the person whose house this had happened at. We had a great conversation – I signed the paperwork and thanked the Assistant DA and the officer for what they do and then I went to walk back through the narrow hallway past the young man who was still sitting there next to his father. Before I left I asked the judge if he thought it would be okay if I invited the young man to get a cup of coffee sometime so that I could share my heart with him a bit and some of my journey through life – the judge felt great about it so I walked into the room unsure of how it would go.

As I had sat just a few feet away from [him] when I had arrived for the hearing I felt waves of emotion wanting to rise up inside of me and I felt like I could cry. Now as I approached him I was excited and curious to see how things would play out. Before I said a word he rose out of his seat and extended his hand toward me.

“Sir,” he said, “I have been advised not to speak to you. But I wanted to let you know how deeply sorry I am for what happened. I really appreciate you being gracious with me and having the charges lowered to help me out. I have wanted to contact you before but I have been advised not to speak to you. I apologize. I’m sure if I was in your shoes it would have been a very scary thing to experience.”

“You are forgiven man,” I said. “I accept your apology and you are forgiven. I was hoping that we would get a chance to talk. God has been gracious with me when I have made mistakes and I don’t hold anything against you. I was actually hoping that I could share some of my journey with you sometime if you would like to get together.”

“I would love to hear about your life,” he said. “If I give you my contact information will you call me to set it up?”

I was so happy. This is exactly what I was hoping for, an opportunity to sit down and talk about life with him and get to share my story and hear some of his. I took his number and then introduced myself to his father who again thanked me for being gracious and helping them out. Again I assured them that people have been gracious with me and that God has been gracious with me and that there are no hard feelings. I told them to hang in there with things and we said our goodbyes.

Then I went out into my car and started it and sat there and cried. I cried because I know that God loves me. I cried because of a million bottled up thoughts. I cried because of how redemptive God is and I cried because of that young man and how I know that God is going to move in his life. And I cried because I felt God’s pleasure with me as a son and I cried because God is good and I love it.