A while back, I had to learn the difference between two states: broken and weak.

Broken is… shattered, in pieces, wounded, traumatized, fractured, crippled, separated, crushed.

Weak is… anemic, fragile, atrophied, unused, immature, unsteady.

When your leg is broken, you put a cast on it and you get crutches, because you can’t put weight on it. You don’t want to put weight on it because that’s painful, but what’s even more important is that you shouldn’t put weight on it, because that will delay healing and could even create more damage. So that’s why your doctor helps you out by putting a cast on it, to protect the injury.

After your fracture heals, that’s when you can say that your leg is weak. If you’ve had a cast on for a long time, then your leg muscles probably need some time to strengthen and even out. Now is the time to put weight on it! Now this is a good thing and helps you get back to normal life! If you don’t exercise those muscles again, then they will stay weak and possibly get weaker, and then other muscles have to work harder to make up the difference.

So it’s not good to mix the two up. If you treat a broken leg like a weakened ankle or vice versa, you will have more trouble on your hands than you started with.

I had to learn these differences because I was broken, and I kept falling into the trap of believing I was weak, and not recognizing that something was fundamentally broken. I kept trying to treat my inner being as weak, and I kept hearing messages from others that were based on assumptions that I was weak. The message was always, “You just need to exercise that and make it stronger.”

Early in my healing, I had no idea how to go easy on myself and give myself a break, and I had surrounded myself with people who had the same problem. No one in my circle knew what to do with a broken human, so generally the messages centered around trying harder, submitting more, or piling on more advice that I could already quote in my sleep but never follow.

After a little time and some scary days, I got wiser. I was starting to think too often and too vividly about ending my life. What was really scary was that it was totally out of my control sometimes. I might have a good day and feel thankful for my blessings, and lay down that night and immediately start thinking about the pills in the cabinet.

I needed to change directions. I cut people out of my life; I stopped confiding in certain individuals; I started talking to people who had experience with trauma and abuse.

I was slowly learning how to take care of myself, even if I still didn’t understand that I was broken. Things started to shift, and suicidal thoughts happened less often, but they still might come out of the blue from time to time, so I knew I still had to be careful.

Without recognizing it, I was treating myself in many ways like my soul is broken. I was living my life to avoid putting undue pressure on certain pain points. It took years before it clicked and I could believe it down in my heart.

I was broken in childhood, and I can’t pretend that I wasn’t, and I can’t treat myself like I wasn’t. It’s abundantly clear.
To believe anything else would be foolish and silly and denying the truth.

There are some parts of myself that just don’t work yet. Many parts have been healed, and I have more resources than ever, but some things may never fully heal. I’m not sure human life is long enough for that.

For example, I don’t have willpower. It’s just not there anymore – even though I used to have it in spades! I used to have a lot of self-control, but it was driven by both self-hatred and other-hatred. It wasn’t driven by love, goodness, or truth. That’s totally gone now, and what is left is a four-year-old ability to delay gratification!

Now, that doesn’t mean that my life is chaos. I’m heavily influenced by a sense of obligation to others (which, quite possibly, is partly maladaptive) that keeps me reasonably in check in many areas like work, finances, friendships, etc. But certain parts are hardly disciplined.

For many years of healing, I had been comfort eating every day as a survival mechanism. As sexual abuse survivors, we tend to hate ourselves pretty deeply, so even though I was gaining weight and there was no end in sight, no amount of vanity could stop me. I could not and would not make healthy choices for myself. You could have told me I was going to hell for overeating and I could not have done any different (except I might not like you very much).

I even griped to God about it: “WHEN am I going to be able to get this under control??? When are you going to help me??” At first, I would get really strict with myself and plummet into depression on day 2, hating my life which wasn’t worth living. Then later I would try a gentler method of a few reasonable rules, but I couldn’t stick it out for a whole day. I couldn’t even think straight to remember why I was creating rules in the first place! Why did it matter? Why did anything matter? And always, the specter of depression was around the corner. I was like a tree limb that was struck by lightning, hanging limp and ready to snap off of the trunk.

Finally, I gained enough weight that my doctor was threatening to put me on medication for heart-related risks. I am not a fan of maintenance medications, so that meant I would need to change my diet. I tried (and failed) to hold back tears in the doctor’s office and then went home to cry some more.

I could not change my diet for myself (remember: self-hatred), but I could and would change it so that my loved ones wouldn’t see me get sick from my own habits. My dad did that and it hurt to watch, and I didn’t want to do the same. I just couldn’t willingly be the reason for more sadness in this awful world.

Magically, by the grace of God, this was the time when I was also ready to live without food-comfort and without requiring anti-depressants. (No judgment here for those who do take them. I just really wanted to avoid them, if possible). I had done a lot of hard emotional work in the preceding years, and it was paying off.

After years of being broken, I was ready to put a little weight on that once-broken bone in my soul and it held. It wasn’t comfortable, but there wasn’t any shooting pain, either. The facture had healed and the muscles were ready to do some work.

I wasn’t able to set ambitious goals; I knew that was outside my abilities. I couldn’t say, “by this date I will lose this much,” because my anxiety would increase with half of a thought in that direction. If you have PTSD, then you know how little time you got for that…but I could say, “Today I’m going to eat to feed my body, not to silence my soul. I want to do this today because there are people who would be sad if I got sick.” I could do this without losing sight of why I was alive. Progress!

So I still have pretty much no willpower, but I’m not so broken as I was… I can think a little clearer and my feelings are leading me to make good food choices. I’m not fighting to control myself – no willpower involved – I am living out the values that now live in my heart.

I am more than half way to my goal weight now, and I don’t doubt that I will get there in good time. I’m not stressing about it. It’s interesting to me now, and I like how my body is looking and feeling.

If anyone tells you to try harder, think critically about whether that’s the solution or not. Look to God and other wise people for input. Just because someone has a Bible verse to prove their point doesn’t mean they are right. The Bible can be terribly misused and God can be woefully misrepresented. He will straighten that out with people when he comes back.

Don’t settle for white-knuckling your way through life, always struggling with the same thing, and thinking that’s what’s called “Christian.” It’s not. True freedom and love is living out your values because they are yours, deep down into your boots, and not because somebody told you they were important or correct. It’s true that following God is no cake-walk; sometimes it’s downright shitty and takes the long way around. But it is so much more than a willpower struggle, too – this is where the glory comes in.

In this case, I needed a miracle of healing on my behalf, and it wasn’t an overnight job. I needed as many miracles as there are stars in the sky. And God performed miracles daily, to rebuild both my personhood and my trust in him from the ground up. He led me to broken places and he helped me open up slowly to receive true comfort in all the firey, gaping chasms (read: fractures) in my soul. What’s awesome is that now, I’m not battling cravings every day and I’m not in the least worried that it won’t “stick”, even when I treat myself to a pumpkin spice chai tea latte! Eating well is a part of me now. I actually crave fresh spinach. *gasp* This change happened with God’s willpower, not mine.

A friend asked me how I got to that place where I didn’t eat for comfort anymore. I told him that I cried for four years first. True story 😘