About three years ago, I was house sitting for a friend while she was on her honeymoon. Delighted to have some time alone away from my family, I packed a pile of novels and notebooks hoping to catch up on my reading and writing goals in the solitude of my friend’s house. But unfortunately, I could not focus. I was suffering from a severe eating disorder relapse at the time. After several days of exercising and not eating, I found myself abandoning my reading and writing goals to hungrily devour my friend’s pantry and refrigerator. The next thing I knew, I was alone on my friend’s bathroom floor sobbing next to a toilet full of my own vomit.
This was ten years after being hospitalized for the same behavior that ended my ballet career. I wondered, what was the point of was my life? How could God use me a mentally ill, self-starving, thirty- year-old living with her parents to better this world? Who relapses into an eating disorder ten years later? Especially after that disorder killed a lifelong dream and career? I felt so ashamed, weak, and small.
After frantically cleaning up my mess, taking pictures of the empty wrappers so I could buy back the food I had stolen from my friend, I sat down and prayed. It was in that moment of prayer that the Holy Spirit reminded me of this parable found in Matthew 13:31-32:
He told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his field. Though it is the smallest of all seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds come and perch in its branches.
Two things about this parable stood out to me: The mustard seed is the smallest of seeds, and it does not normally grow into a tree.
I was overwhelmed with hope. If God can take the “smallest of seeds” and turn them into a nutritious plant of mustard greens, he can certainly work through even the weakest of humans to create a good. And, if God can take the “smallest of seeds” and turn it into a tree, a thing that it does not normally become, how much more can he work through me for good, a human made in His image and likeness? In that moment I knew that no matter how small or weak I had become, there was still hope for a meaningful life as part of the Body of Christ.
I immediately picked up the phone and called an eating disorder treatment center. Two years later, I’m still in therapy, but God has surely turned my seed into a plant. And, while I’m certainly not a tree yet, probably just a small sprout beginning life, I’m proud to say that I have seen God work through me as a pre-school teacher, beginning writer, friend, and family member.
