Having an eating disorder as a 21 year old isn’t the best thing to happen to me…having an eating disorder the last couple of years of college wasn’t the best thing to happen to me…but having an eating disorder may be the one of the best things for my marriage.

Confused?!?!  Let me catch you up a bit. You see I started suffering from disorder eating (for me specifically anorexia and over exercising) mid way through college.  Thankfully through help and support from friends and family I entered an outpatient treatment program and made AMAZING strides in recovery before graduation (uhh did I really graduate over 8 years ago!! yikes 😉 ).  After graduation I was focused solely on my professional career and little else, though I would pray that the Lord would find an amazing man for me to marry some day.  I also knew and began to realize before I could love someone else I needed to love myself.

So honestly I didn’t try to date much those first couple of years after college, I worked on just being ok with myself and hopefully someday loving myself.  Praying each night that I’d come a bit closer to God, a bit more in love with Him, a bit more in love with me, and in turn be able to love someone else.  Well, God is a bit crazy and I found the man that I would soon marry at a professional networking event.  I met Daniel and it was like God had really been listening to my prayers (crazy right? ;)).  Daniel and I became friends more than anything.  We’d go to church together most Sundays, we’d go to the movies together, we were just friends but then I realized this friend was an amazing, Godly man.  And this amazing, Godly man wasn’t going anywhere and in fact I was in love with him and he was in love with me.

I remember the night we were laying around at his house watching a movie and I had decided ahead of time I needed to tell him ALL about my eating disorder.  Though I may say I am recovered any one with disordered eating thoughts knows they are never totally gone and I wanted to make sure Daniel knew I wasn’t as perfect as it may seem…honestly I wanted to give him the chance to back out of the whole relationship if he wasn’t ready for the level of craziness that was my life.

I was a nervous wreck…throughout the movie which I couldn’t focus on I kept thinking of how I’d bring it up.  The movie finished and with sweaty palms (ok and pits) I decided to just go for it.  I don’t know what I said exactly but I just started in…I let it all out…of course I cried…I told him all the scary things…I told him about how Ed (how we affectionately refer to ‘eating disorder’) talks to me…I told him about the terrible things that Ed makes you do when in the thralls of an eating disorder.  You know what?  He sat there, he hugged me, he wiped my tears and said he didn’t care.  He said that he loved me and not Ed and that he didn’t care if I was imperfect…he loved me, every part of me.

WOW! WOW! WOW!  God is sooo good!

Flash forward two-three years and we are now married with kids.  Eating disorders don’t end with marriage or kids and the rapid changes can actually make the thoughts come back fast and furious.  But this whole eating disorder has made our marriage so much stronger.  I trust Daniel with the deepest, darkest secrets.  I trust Daniel to help ME stay on track.  I lean on Daniel and God for support.  I lean on Daniel in times of weakness.  Come to think of it I think that if I were being totally honest…having an eating disorder has made our marriage stronger, more open, more rooted in God.  Having an eating disorder may seem like such a curse in the midst of the long, hard days and even after recovery some days are long but I thank God each day for my journey because without it I wouldn’t have the same strong, open, honest marriage that I have today.