hardest seasons and unearthed reasons

I know I say this every time, but it’s been a while and ever so much has happened since I last wrote here in July. When I first made this blog I declared that I wanted this to be a space where I could write about the glorious work of the Lord and be transparent about the state of my life and my heart, to be genuine. As I’ve come to see that my focus for this new year of life must be surrender, I’m returning to the heart of that hope: transparency. I don’t wanna give my story away only in fragments; I want to give the Lord all of me and let the world see that. … I know that’s a tall order for one blog entry, but I’m going to try. That’s all God desires from me, I’m learning… that I would be faithful to try.

Last semester (fall 2021) at Belmont, the first of my sophomore year, was the hardest of my life, a semester from hell – and I say that not as an expletive but as a reality: I let Satan get his hands on me and gain a whole lot of ground. I spiraled down-down-down into my eating disorder and self doubt, selling myself short of presence and (as hard as it can be to admit) sitting idly by as lies broke in to steal my joy. Even as the Lord brought sweet, personal friendships and deeply intentional connections close, the all-too-familiar voices of self-criticism, over-analysis, exhaustion, and insufficiency left me feeling unworthy and alone.

I wrestled theologically and personally, struggling to find my role and figure out how to accommodate teachings, surroundings, and patterns that disquieted my soul. I wanted to be the voice for the kingdom’s heart, but left myself in the immense pressure of the unrealistic responsibility of fixing everything and holding ideas together, holding people together, holding life together. I spent days praying and searching and rending myself open because I didn’t know if I was supposed to transfer or make a change or if it was just a season in which I wasn’t meant to flourish or prosper and that the discomfort and pain were things I’d have to deal with until it all was over.

I came home for the winter break a fraction of myself, and people took notice, checking on me with my family or wondering where the little sparks of light that made me me had gone. I weighed less than I ever had, felt more exhausted than ever, and held more confusion of heart and purpose than I knew. I let myself get lost in the lies inside of me and despite the fact that every task bore a signature of “Grace Catherine Beckham” I had slowly come to realize that I wasn’t allowing, accepting, or seeking to live a life saturated with grace, not for myself; I continued to draw bigger and bigger circles of grace but found myself standing outside of them all, unwelcome by every standard of my own.

By this point, you’re probably thinking about how bleak and heavy and sad this sounds, or wondering how this could possibly be true of the Grace Catherine you know and love. We were all thinking this too – me, my family, Stone – and I am not going to push that hard part away. That was the reality of the year that was coming to an end, and I believe in a God who uses, speaks worthiness over, and makes no waste of our pain.

But what about now? What happened? Where’s the big turning point story or the radical intervention? … There isn’t one, and there is. This current season of life has been marked by the revelation of God’s purpose and redemption and healing even as I wait for the realization of health and restoration to come. I am in my life’s own horizontal version of the already and the not yet. And that has come to me from what was undoubtedly one of my hardest seasons because God has granted me the grace of so many unearthed reasons.

When I say reasons, I mean a few things: 1) what’s behind how I and my ED got here, 2) what’s different that is moving me towards the right path, and 3) what purpose this deep struggle has in the scope of eternity. For each of these, I don’t have an end-all-be-all answer (because I am not God), but I do have an insight that has made all the difference.

REASON #1: I let myself lean into a long-held lie from the enemy that I couldn’t even name, and called that healthy.

This first reason is perhaps the most critical, and it is certainly by the providence of the Lord that I am even able to see it. It has taken weeks and weeks of therapy to weed through surface lies and unlock the parts of God’s truth that I haven’t been believing. What I have come to see is that the Enemy whispered to me the lie that “I can’t break; I am the glue for everything in my life.” This lie is sneaky, because the desire to hold things together and seek wholeness is good. But that’s the way the devil works, He takes our good desires and strong foundations and attacks them with half-truths and painful feedback loops.

This false belief that I have to be the glue that holds all things together has given more clarity to my life and struggles than I could have ever imagined. It’s like all of the hurt behind the hardship suddenly fell into focus. I am not meant to be the one that holds my family together. I am not supposed to be the agent that holds Belmont theology together. I am not intended to hold my body’s “idealized” appearance or my life together by turning to an eating disorder for control. I am not meant to be some perfect person that works so hard and stays so spiritually devoted that I “maintain worthiness” with the God who created me enough from the beginning. I am not designed to spend my days so surely serving and prioritizing others that I connote every choice for myself as selfish.

I have spent years of my life striving to keep it all together and never break, and when I signed onto this weight I lost my grip on the fact that Jesus is the glue, not me. It’s taking a while for me to cease striving, and I’m not going to do it perfectly, but I can see now that this burden isn’t mine and that I am no martyr. There’s One far stronger than me who holds all things together. My letting go is not others’ disappointment and it’s not failure; it’s coming home.

REASON #2: I realize that I am capable of surrender, and that I don’t have to be perfect at it to “let go, let God, and just be.”

Let me be up front: I have so so far to go in my healing journey, and while my choices regarding food, exercise, and caring for my body are improving, my body’s reality is not much changing. I am seeking resources and I have support; I am being cared for and I am deeply loved. I could use as many of your prayers as you’d be willing to give, because I know that the prayers of a righteous person are powerful and effective… I know all this and I believe it. So what’s changed? 

I can see now that the Lord doesn’t require perfection for me to surrender. I can let go and give Him control but still mess up at living that. Recovery is going to mean that I have some setback days, some not-so-gracious moments, and some real periods of struggle from the work of letting my life change again. So as I am coming out of a season in which I realized how easily I buy into the idea that even in all of my striving I am not enough, I see that I am capable of release, and that I don’t have to make some giant instantaneous leap to be healing. I can slow my breath down and take it slow with Him. The Lord delights to guide me while letting me set the pace. 

God has used my beautiful, blessing-from-above momma in every possible way through this journey, vesseling her and speaking to me through her every day. I’m forever grateful for the eyes He has given her to see me, truly see me, and for the words He brought to me through her that say: “Let go, let God, and just be.” That is what I want to spend my time working toward this semester, towards abiding in Him and rejoicing in the exquisite original He has made me to be.

REASON #3: I see now that what I would once call my God-sized (that is, too big to reach) dream is my calling + purpose, and I’m taking steps to pursue it.

Out of the most painful season of my life the Lord has brought incredibly more purpose than I could imagine. He’s taken what could be the death of a dream and turned it into an affirmation for one that is so much more lasting and powerful. 

Rewind a year, and when people would ask me what I wanted to do with my Faith and Social Justice // psych degree, I would tell them that the Lord has given me such a heart for kids and a passion about childhood trauma, so I could see myself doing nonprofit or parachurch ministry with children, using psychology to help them spiritually and bring healing to the pain of not receiving the love for which God has wired each of us. I might have added that my God-sized dream would be to start my own ministry and write books, but that I thought I could never really do that and that I wasn’t sure.

It’s crazy, because the harder this struggle with my eating disorder and body dysmorphia and perfectionism and seeking God’s true design has gotten, the more the Lord has affirmed that my “God-sized dream” is not just some pipe-dream; it’s my purpose. I want to spend my whole life doing things like this that I’m doing right now for me and you – sharing the work and Word of the Lord with my words and making space for my story and others like it. I want to travel and speak and write my own books and start a platform that may or may not become Infinite Grace Ministries. I want to create a ministry community that talks about, presses into, and makes accessible God’s vision for our bodies and His intentional design, opening up a place for women (and men) to seek the Lord as they work through their own relationships with food and their personhood and what standards of health they’ve been turning to and maybe how they’ve been hurting them. Ultimately, I want to make a space where people feel like the Lord is with them in their hurt and that it’s not the end of you or your faith to struggle with an eating disorder or with self-criticism or with false definitions of “healthy”; the Lord is meeting me at the end of my rope, and He will do the same for every person, for every one of you.

This is my first time formally sharing and writing all of this out, and I am ecstatic. I am making steps toward letting this dream become my reality. I changed my major to Christian Leadership, realizing I was trying to satisfy the pursuits of my heart’s purpose in the wrong place, for social justice just isn’t the discipline for me. I saw the Lord in conversation with sweet stranger-turned-friend Amy at Headquarters Coffee this morning and realized that He was calling me to come back here and write again. And ultimately I am finding that the best way I can prepare myself and my heart is to go through my daily life in His rhythm – giving myself grace, finding gratitude where I am, and accepting that whatever way I meet the God I love that day is good and it is enough. None of this is my doing, and that is one of the greatest testaments of Love.

So this is the wrap-up, the real, raw, recent me putting my life before you. This is my story…

My name is Grace Catherine, and I have been walking through a really tough eating disorder. This past semester was more difficult than I could have anticipated, and the Lord is slowly healing my heart from that. I have a wonderful family and boyfriend and circle of friends and prayer warriors that love me, and I am connected to resources around me that the Lord is so graciously providing. I am on the road to health and healing, but right now I’m just on my way. I am here, and I want to be true to that, and I know that telling all of this is not a disappointment to any of you; it is vulnerability, and it is opening myself to love, to being seen and known. I recognize that the Holy Spirit is within me and I am learning to care for this temple I’ve been given. The heart of Jesus is at work between you and me, revealing the Love and mercy and Light of the Father in the midst of this broken world and in our own broken hearts. I am learning to say no to the lies, and I am leaning into the things that I know are true – I am praying this for you too. God is good, all the time, and even when we can’t see it He’s working. Praise be to the One who does and is immeasurably more than we could ever ask or imagine…

With love and all of my trust,

Grace Catherine