Would You Like Fries with That?

What do you want?

Has anyone ever asked you that question?

If you've ever gone to a restaurant in the mall food court, you've surely been asked the same question by a bored fast food employee with a mouth full of gum and an attitude. Usually the answer is as simple as, "Fries and a coke."

You should see me in a new restaurant. I nearly fly into a panic when I'm handed the menu because I want it all. In my heart I want to taste every new, good, delicious thing, so much so that it's a problem for me. Sometimes I take forever making up my mind or order quickly and experience a strange regret later that I didn't try the "special funky chicken." Most of the time it leads me to overeat. I think, "Just one more bite!" or "Of course, I'll have dessert."

There's nothing inherently wrong with enjoying good food. In fact, it's one of the delights of this life, but, for me, the unhealthy relationship I have with food has been a window into something else entirely.

A year or two ago I read a book called Women, Food, and God: An Unexpected Path to Almost Everything. It was so revolutionary to me. I marked it up like crazy with a purple highlighter and little pink flags are attached to several pages. In an interview with Oprah, the author, Geneen Roth, said:

I think we all have a hunger that's hard to name. A lot of people who come to my retreats have never named it before, or else they've named it in church, but they can't actually see the connection between what they're doing with food and this yearning. I call it "the flame" that they have: They yearn for big answers to live a big life.

So yeah, that's essentially the story. I have always had this longing for something good, something more --- and I've constantly resorted to something culinary to satisfy it. Sadly, it's a trap. I'm deceived because for a while: a day, an hour, a minute -- I feel better. It seems to work. Then it wears off, and I"m left feeling wretched physically, mentally, and emotionally. Then all I want to do is eat some more to fix it.

Let me also say that for other people it isn't food. Any kind of addiction has its roots in the same cycle. Think about it -- drugs, sex, shopping, hoarding, obsessive cleaning. . . See?

Wait. There is good news here, incredibly good news.  Geneen says, "Eventually we get so tired of trying to fix ourselves that we stop. We see that we've never been able to make ourselves good. Never been able to accomplish ourselves into being someone else. And so we stop trying." The message here is set down the self-help books and back away. Interestingly this has been the hardest part for me. It feels so wrong to stop worrying about being perfect and beating myself up when I can't make myself be enough.

I've thought a lot about why it's so hard. I think it's because being lost in a downward spiral makes me feel, in a twisted way,  empowered. Even if I'm failing, I still have this illusion of controlling things. It's up to me; I'm making things happen here.

The truth is much scarier.

The real issue here is the unmet longings of the heart.

Here's what Geneen says:

We don't want to eat hot fudge sundaes as much as we want our lives to be hot fudge sundaes. We want to come home to ourselves. We want to know wonder and delight and passion, and if instead we've given up on ourselves, if we've vacated our longings, if we've left possibility behind, we will feel an emptiness we can't name. We will feel as if something is missing because something is missing  --- the connection to the source of all sweetness, all love, all power, all peace, all joy, all stillness. Since we had it once --- we were born with it -- it can't help but haunt us. It's as if our cells remember that home is a jeweled palace but we've been living as beggars for so long that we are no longer certain if the palace was a dream. And if it was a dream, then at least we can eat the memory of it.
 

Friends, we have to look deep into our hearts and figure out what's missing, even though it is dreadfully scary. It isn't an easy thing. Believe me; I've been trying to do it. I've been asking myself the hard questions. Chiefly, what do I really want?

Everything. I want everything.

You know me -- always reading books. In the last week, I've read a new one. Here's the trailer for it. Check it out.



I watched that trailer months ago, and I wanted this book - desperately, so I put it on my Christmas list.  As I've already shared with you, I read another couple of books written by John Eldredge (and his wife Stasi) a few years ago, and I felt absolutely gobsmacked. They have a fresh perspective on spiritual things that really made me think in a new way. I've bought multiple copies of Captivating and Wild at Heart and given them away. I referred to one of their books in my previous post A Bird Pooped in My Mouth.

Anyway, this book is all about Jesus. I sped through the thing. I read it in two sittings, and I plan to read it again. It was water to someone dying of thirst. I grinned. I laughed. I kept thinking, "Jesus! I love this guy."

I do. I really do. I've also realized that all those things I desire are really only one thing -- Jesus. I want to know him more, not just the idea of him. I want to know him as he really is, something this book shamelessly promotes. It isn't the first book I've read about getting to know the real Jesus. The thing that made this one more substantial is that Eldredge didn't just talk about all the false images we have of Jesus, what he isn't. He spent every word on every page talking about who Jesus is.

So my personal struggle doesn't just end with the realization that I have to stop trying to be perfect because that, in itself, is not the answer. I have to stop trying to fix it myself because healing is Jesus' job. Tomorrow on the first day of a new calendar year, I'm not planning to start a new diet. Instead I'm going to renew the commitment I've made to know Jesus more, to ask him to heal me, and to allow him to make me more like he is every day. 

I don't just want to seem thinner or more "on my game" when other people look at me. I want to be transformed on the inside first. The rest will take care of itself.

Here's what Paul says in Ephesians chapter five:

Watch what God does, and then you do it, like children who learn proper behavior from their parents. Mostly what God does is love you. Keep company with him and learn a life of love. Observe how Christ loved us. His love was not cautious but extravagant. He didn't love in order to get something from us but to give everything of himself to us. Love like that. (Vs.1-2 The Message)
 

May 2013 be filled with healing and love for us all.