A Pain in My Heart

I'm sitting here watching Oprah. Normally telling you that wouldn't be a part of the blog, but today's show is about overweight teens -- seriously overweight teens. Hearing them tell their stories grabs my heart and twists it -- the pain these young people are living with every day has become who they are. Their obesity has become their identity. Their reality. Their anguish can be felt through the TV screen as they relate how they feel about themselves and how society, as a whole, seems to feel about them. Many of them are, for the first time in their lives, beginning to understand that this isn't just about eating. It's about understanding why they have eaten, and continue to eat, to the point of endangering their health -- both physical and mental. Hopefully it will be about teaching them to change those patterns. I feel their pain, even though my weight problem would seem trivial in comparison to theirs. The feelings are the same.

Emotional eating. I did it most of my life. You feel bad about yourself or about something that has happened, so you eat and feel better. It's an area you think you're controlling, but really, it's controlling you. Food comforts you, if only for a time. Then you are disgusted with yourself for eating without thinking about what you're actually putting in your mouth, and gaining more weight. So you mindlessly eat something and feel better -- until you stop to think about it again. And then... well, you get the idea. I think perhaps I learned this from my father. He was well over 300 pounds for most of his life, until he died when he was 60 years old. He was a very unhappy person -- I saw a side of him that not many people saw. He didn't like himself much.

We must learn to be more responsible about our health and our habits. We need to understand how our eating is affecting our health, as well as being aware of what we are teaching our children by our example. Food should never be our best friend -- our comfort zone -- our safe place. As I write these words, I realize that describes what our relationship with the Lord is meant to be. How odd. How sad. How enlightening.