Snippets of a much longer narrative
Trigger warning: body image, eating disorder
Early May, 2022
My apartment in Tokyo was several decades old, located in a dusty neighborhood several decades older. Until my final year in Tokyo, the stained glass window by the stairwell was peeling, and the dark brown paint of the narrow corridor that led to our apartments was chipped. All around the apartment complex were other mostly monochromatic homes, and the bright light of vending machines selling canned coffee, bottles of water, and (of all things) kitchen dish sponges was the only light breaking through.
A six minutes’ walk away if you didn’t get held up at the multi-minute stoplight was the Shibasaki train station, which was—is—according to my friend the only train station on that particular train line that hadn’t been remodeled. During the quietest nights, if I listened hard, I could hear the hiss of the train pulling into the station, but that was only if everything else was silent.
I loved that quiet old neighborhood. The best part of the apartment and its surrounding area, however, was the river that flowed behind it. During the drier seasons, the river flowed slightly narrower and more unassuming, but during the rainier seasons, if you could overlook the abundance of mud on the banks, you’d see the river as a wonder, strong and beautiful, the perfect depth for wading in.
Along the banks of the river were cherry blossom trees, pruned carefully to shine the brightest during their one-week peak in March/April, when hundreds of people would gather to collect photos and memories of the blossoms. I never saw it during my COVID-affected three-and-a-half years in Japan, but supposedly, in years past, gardeners strung lights along the cherry blossom trees to light them up at night, casting an illusion of a fairytale along an otherwise unnoteworthy little river.
Along that river, I wrestled day and often night against the eating disorder that was creeping back into my life, slow and steady, its light-as-a-feather fingers noosing around my throat.
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December 8th, 2018
It was almost midnight. That month, I’d kicked up my nightly run from seven miles a night to eight. That night, however, in order to preserve my muscles, I was going for a simple five-mile tempo run, but I’d made sure to eat less throughout the day in order to make up for it.
The Sonoran nights had dropped far below freezing, but after the first mile, I shed my jacket, partially because my body temperature was rising along with my exercise and partially because I knew heating the body utilized a significant number of calories. The body must work harder to heat itself when it has no shield between itself and the cold.
I ran past P’s house, past M’s house, past I’s house, past J and B’s house. They were all asleep in their beds, probably, and I felt some kind of delicious melancholy in the solitude of knowing I was one of the few still awake on the orphanage campus.
Lately, I’d been getting angry with myself for feeling hungry. More often than not, my stomach didn’t ask for much food; skipping meals was hardly a conscious decision any longer, and the pangs of hunger had become so normal that my brain didn’t always register them. Therefore, on the rare occasions when my stomach did decide to throw a tentrum, I was mad, too. Hadn’t I trained myself to be above that?
My phone lit up; someone must’ve messaged me. I ran past J’s house, glancing down at my phone. It was just an email, nothing I needed to—
Searing pain shot up my leg as I tumbled, and I let out a slight yelp as I went.
A slender rock had temporarily slid under my kneecap, dislodging it for the moment and sending pain all the way up and down my whole body. I hissed through my teeth and cradled my knee. Deep breaths. Deep breaths. I bit my lip and trembled head to toe, cursing myself for the stupidity of paying attention to my phone while I was running. I knew better than this. I knew better!!
Slowly, slowly, so as not to jar my knee, I sat so that my knee was hugged up against my chest (looking back, that probably wasn’t helping my condition at all). J’s house was right by me—I could go in and ask for ice. Sure, it was almost midnight, but I’d just—albeit temporarily—dislocated my knee, and given that J was a nurse, I was pretty sure she would be sympathetic to my cause.
But then, the tears began to squeeze through my eyelashes, no matter how hard I was trying to keep them at bay, and I knew I couldn’t go in and ask J for help. And it went beyond the embarrassment of falling, the desire not to awaken J so late.
“Rachel, you ______ idiot. Go up to the house and ask for some ______ ice.” Caustic self-talk typically shocked me into action, but it didn’t work this time. I couldn’t ask for help because this was something I could fix—and if I couldn’t, then it was something I should have been able to fix.
I was sitting, wounded, in the middle of the campus road on some uncomfortable rocks, paralyzed mainly not by my injury but by my own pride.
Having decided that I wouldn’t ask J for help, and so it didn’t matter, anyways, I finally allowed the tears to shake me. They started in my shoulders first, and then a great sob dislodged itself in my lungs just like the stone that dislodged my knee, and I started to weep, not just for my knee but for M, my dear friend who just left the mission; for the child, K, whom I failed because she was dismissed from the orphanage, anyways; for the promise I made my anorexic sibling ten years ago when I promised I would never, ever, ever, ever develop an eating disorder.
I tilted my face up to the perfectly starry Sonoran sky and tried to find something there that would help me.
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Later in December 2018
During the weeks following my injury, during which even taking a step involved a great deal of pain, I reevaluated my life decisions.
In a recent phone call with my organization’s missions counselor, I had been informed that if I did not improve my relationship with food, then my removal from the missions field would be considered (by whom, I wasn’t quite sure). Nestled in my bed at the end of a workday, I messaged my friend, I think God let me injure my knee so He could get my attention.
Over the past few weeks, as my knee ached and groaned about the injury, I had begrudgingly allowed a couple hundred extra calories or so to slip into my diet, and because I could not purge them through exercise, the nutrients stayed there. My body was beginning to learn that it did not have to fight to save every bit of food that entered my belly. I still wasn’t getting my period—I had finally recognized what a dangerous sign it is for an entire body system to stop functioning—but my sleep had improved marginally, and I wasn’t quite so bone-weary every day. I still had a long ways to go, but recovery was budding.
With the slowly-returning health came the return of other gifts I had long forsaken in the name of “losing weight.” I had not been cognizant of the fact that my eating disorder was costing me relationships, but as my body exited survival mode and tentatively took a step through the doorway of health, I realized, my gosh, I can actually concentrate on what people are saying to me. I had not known that sacrificing nutrition was a synonym for sacrificing presence. Now that my mind was neither whirling with calorie-counting nor having to slog through the fog of complete exhaustion, I could pay attention to the people around me. Conversations became more engaging. Laughter became more genuine. Nearly a year after the injury, I dared to eat an extra half-slice of coconut cream pie at a social gathering, surrounded by friends—and I didn’t run for miles afterwards.
My knee mostly healed (to this day, it still has the occasional sting of pain), and I began to exercise again, this time for the sake of honoring and strengthening my body rather than losing weight. I still wasn’t completely healthy—looking back, I see that I wasn’t eating quite enough and was exercising just a bit too much—but in comparison with the life I had lived before, the person I became and the body I inhabited were miraculous.
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Late 2020
“God, how can I worship You with my body?”
The pane of the skylight in my Tokyo apartment roof pinged with the quiet music of the rain. Hunched over my prayer journal, I wrestled. “I think I finally know what eating to Your glory means, for me, at least. Maybe it meant something different to the early church, but to me, it means making sure I am eating and exercising in balance so that my body is empowered to live the life that spends itself for You.”
But all the Japanese women around me are so skinny, and I want to be like them.
“I’m 5’10”. I’m naturally larger framed. If I starve myself and run too much, then I’m took weak to be present with the people You’ve placed in my life and entrusted into my care. I know what it is to be so physically malnutritioned that my spiritual life turns skeletal, too. I don’t want to go back there!”
But my tummy sticks out in that new dress I bought, and I know it wouldn’t have, a couple years ago.
“You’ve gifted me with this fully healthy body—well, aside from the asthma, I mean. I can run and dance and speak and crouch down and stand up and lift things. Some people can’t do that. I should be grateful for the strength I have instead of wishing I were shaped differently!”
But the first thing people see when they look at a person is their body, and here in Japan, being skinny means so much.
“Help me to see that eating the next bite is an act of trust and worship!”
Desperate to find a way of exercising that would help me keep my body healthy without counting calories, I discovered a Tokyo ballet school online. Not only was ballet an activity where I would have no precise measurement of calories burned, I thought that, perhaps, it would be a way of celebrating my body through beautiful movement. I enrolled in the class, holding hope in my hands.
I entered the class with some concern that, because ballet dancers usually maintain a certain level of often-unhealthy thinness, my body image struggles would be exacerbated. I prayed throughout many classes that my mind would be able to focus on the beauty of dancing rather than the competition of body-checking. God answered those prayers mightily. Rather than becoming motivation for losing weight due to the thin bodies that surrounded me, ballet class became motivation for staying healthy so that my brain would be healthy enough to concentrate on what I was learning. I nearly immediately recognized a direct correlation between how much I was eating and how well I was able to perform in class. For me, eating enough was absolutely crucial to being able to keep up with dance classes.
I began to count the blessings I had gained along with some healthy body weight. Learning ballet. Going out to eat with friends. Running a half-marathon. Being mentally present in the English classes I was teaching. Possessing enough brain strength to continue learning Japanese. Most of all, worshiping God with heart, soul, mind, and body—each of these things became a reason for me to keep pushing through eating disorder recovery. How could I ever dream of giving them up?
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Back to Early May, 2022
“You lost weight. You’re becoming beautiful!”
Shortly after a month-long battle against COVID-19, I met up with a friend I hadn’t seen in a few weeks. I was painfully aware of the fact that my illness had cost me some body weight. Even with a mask on, the loss was noticeable. I was desperately trying not to enjoy it, not to depend on it again. But at my friend’s words, something within me broke, and I teetered over the edge of relapse.
I’m becoming beautiful? How could my friend say that to me, especially because she knew my relationship with food had not always been a healthy one? I could not root her words out of my mind. They were on replay nearly every hour of every day. After several of my students’ mothers commented on my weight loss, too, I took another step towards the precipice. I’m becoming beautiful? I’m becoming beautiful!
A well-meaning friend brought me bananas and granola bars at work. “Make sure you eat lunch,” she told me. “You’re looking a bit thin.”
Those words felt familiar and welcome. Like coming home.
A week later, during the middle of ballet class, my muscles told me they couldn’t handle it anymore. Whether because I was in denial or because my brain was not receiving enough nutrition to think properly—or perhaps both—I attributed my lack of energy to COVID recovery. Embarrassed, I ducked my head and slinked to the back of the classroom. I had informed my teacher prior to the class that my bout with the illness would perhaps render me weaker than before, but still, I hated giving up like that.
While the rest of the class practiced the petit allegro combination, my teacher found me. “I think you have low blood sugar,” he informed me before returning his attention to the rest of the class.
Stunned into silence, I sat there, something finally falling into place in my brain. Low blood sugar. Well, he’d know—he’d seen countless dancers in his dancing career. Low blood sugar. Two of the other dancers in the room had also gotten COVID, and they seemed to be recovering fine. Low blood sugar. My gosh, was I starving myself again??
On the train ride back home, I evaluated my amount of eating and exercise and was dismayed to realize that my eating disorder had crept back into my life, first using the excuse of illness (I truly had lost some appetite during the worst parts of being sick) and next using the excuse of still being unable to settle back into a healthy life rhythm since the illness.
But I was becoming beautiful.
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The following week
Once again, I spent my Friday night in the ballet studio, only this time, I was even less able to dance than I had been the week before. Last week, I’d made it all the way through barre exercises and partially through the center combinations. This week, I gripped the ballet barre until my knuckles were pure white fought to keep my balance during frappes, a movement that is normally easy for me.
Just focus. Just focus. You’ll be fine. I reached down at the end of the frappes from the right side and took a swig from my water bottle. I could feel that familiar brain fog, the kind that once ruled my mind for years as the eating disorder feasted on my energy. Muscles aching, I attempted to refocus on what my teacher was saying, but I couldn’t latch onto the Japanese words. I was too exhausted, too preoccupied.
I can’t do this. The thought circled in my brain as we waited for my teacher to begin the exercise again, this time on the left side. I’m too tired. I’m too dizzy. If I try to dance in the center like this, I’ll lose my balance and look like a fool. My pride had to make its voice known, though, too, fighting back against my desire to quit halfway through class. You can push through. Just try. Give it a minute.
My friend on the other side of the barre caught my eye. Are you okay? she mouthed to me.
I shrugged, averted my eyes, pushed through. My vision was blurry. I was making mistakes I hadn’t made in two years. I couldn’t even begin to understand my teacher’s Japanese instructions. Heart sinking with each mistake I made as we completed our frappes on the left side, I knew I couldn’t last through the rigorous center combinations, which were always difficult even when I was feeling healthy. When the time for taking a break and stretching came, I whispered to my friend, “I need to leave,” and packed up my things.
I made it all the way out to the benches outside the ballet studio before my tears finally caught up with me. Seated on a park bench, ensconced in the light of the streetlamps and lines of cars, surrounded by the nighttime noises of Tokyo’s hustle and bustle, my lungs let forth a great, wracking sob.
Am I really okay with this? Am I really going to give up ballet, something I love so much, just because I want to be smaller? Am I really going to throw my life away?
In the distance, I heard the trains come and go, people living their normal Friday night lives as though my life wasn’t breaking apart in my hands in that very moment. People were passing by me, some with eyes glued to their phones, others with urgency in their strides to catch their trains, but for the first time in my life, I didn’t care what the strangers thought of me. I tilted my head up to the sky, to the Savior I had learned was always there with His gentle eyes, and whispered to Him, “I’m not going to go back.” The stars were canceled out by the city lights, but I still found God’s Presence there with me. “Please help me.” On the train ride home, I pulled out my phone and texted the same plea to one of my best friends.
I did not return to ballet class that night, nor the following week. I wasn’t strong enough. Instead, I walked the riverbank of the Nogawa behind my apartment, conversing aloud with God and getting stared at because of it. My shoes wore out that gravel path, and the trees listened to my prayers, seeming to whisper their own at times.
Two weeks after that fateful night, when I returned to class and the teacher pulled me aside to inquire about my health, I answered honestly, “I’m not 100% better, but I’m better, and I’m going to try my best.” I made it through the class.
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May 2023
Recovery looks like pale skin returning to its natural glow. Recovery feels like all the extra energy you never knew you were missing rushing back into your steps. Recovery tastes like a big sushi dinner with your friends without feeling guilty for days afterwards.
My then-fiance, now-husband and I had been engaged for nearly a week. We were seated with two older Japanese friends at the restaurant table, and my fiance and I were anticipating a move back to America the following day. I picked up my chopsticks and dipped my tuna sushi into my soy sauce, genuinely excited for its flavor, especially the burst of wasabi I had stirred into the sauce.
“[Japanese friend’s name] worked really hard the months before her wedding to lose weight,” one of our older friends told me out of the blue.
This was something I had already been contemplating since my fiance and I had first begun talking about marriage. I shrugged and smiled. “I have friends who tried to lose weight before their weddings,” I answered. “They ate so little that on the days of their weddings, they were exhausted and couldn’t enjoy the day. I don’t plan to lose weight before the wedding.”
I didn’t explain it then, but I also didn’t want to lose weight for the wedding for another reason: I didn’t want to forever look at my wedding photos and wish that I were the same size as I had been on that special day. I wanted my wedding dress to fit me for a long time instead of only during a wedding-inspired diet. I was already at a healthy weight; why try to change that just for the sake of fitting society’s expectations for the way a bride ought to look?
God bless him, my fiance changed the subject, and we began to discuss ministry in Japan or something else completely unrelated. My older friend’s observation and question remained in my mind, however, but in a different way than it might have done several years ago. Instead of thinking, maybe he has a point and I ought to try to lose weight for the wedding, I thought, I can’t believe some brides add extra pressure to themselves to lose weight during a season that is already so stressful with all the planning and arrangements that have to be done!
In that moment, I realized my mindset had entirely shifted. A comment that would have once triggered me into setting down my chopsticks actually served to reinvigorate my commitment to a truly healthy lifestyle, one that valued strength and energy and relationship above weight loss.
Such a perspective shift would have been unthinkable even one year prior.
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Eating enough is worship.
I recall meals I attempted to eat on my own during those difficult years; in particular, I remember trying to eat a small bowl of oatmeal, choking down two or three bites, and then bursting into tears and scraping the rest of it in the trash can, knowing I would feel guilty if I ate it and that I would feel guilty if I didn’t. To act against eating disorder-induced fear and choose to partake in a meal is an act of trust in God. The next time I ate oatmeal, I finished the whole bowl, whispering, “I give my lifestyle to You. I choose to supply my body with what it needs to live a life of love and engagement for You. I tear down my idol of food and exercise and return You to Your proper place in my heart.”
Eating enough is love for others.
For several months, I believed I suffered from significant hearing loss and even went to a specialist to get my ears checked out because I was constantly asking people to repeat what they were saying. I still don’t have the best hearing ever, I admit, but as I began to recover, the shocking truth dawned on me: much of what I had suspected was hearing loss was actually my brain attempting—and failing—to fully engage in conversation and comprehend the words other people were speaking. My body was too starved to function in conversation! “I give my body to You. I choose to fight against malnutrition so that I can be present with these beloved people around me. I will not allow my eating disorder to rob me of the gift of sharing life with Your people.”
Eating enough is communion.
I had, for years, habitually declined dinner invitations because I knew that people would eventually notice if I wasn’t eating enough. And to be honest, when one of my favorite foods was presented to me, I wasn’t always “strong enough” to decline. I had decided that it was better to avoid social situations and remove the possibility of eating altogether. I missed wedding showers, friends gatherings, and restaurant invitations in the name of “self-control”—which was, of course, really self being controlled by fear. “I give my social fears to You. I have decided to accept the social invitations offered to me, knowing that enjoying a potentially calorically dense meal from time to time will not harm my body. I understand that food is a facilitator of friendship, and that rejecting invitations doesn’t only starve me of nutrition, it starves me of connection, too.”
Eating is, above all, of and for the Lord.
I look at all the good things I needlessly sacrificed on the altar of my eating disorder and all the gifts I regained when I decided to worship at that temple no longer. My body has become not my enemy but my precious vessel through which I experience what I love in this life, by and for the grace of a God who was gracious enough to stop me in my self-destruction and gently lead me beside still waters to a better way. Psalm 37:23-24 RSV declares, “The steps of a man are from the LORD, and he establishes him in whose way he delights; though he fall, he shall not be cast headlong, for the LORD is the stay of his hand.”
In my situation, though, we might say more accurately, “though she fall and potentially be cast headlong on some Sonoran desert rocks to the point of injuring her knee and being forced to quit an unhealthy running habit as a result, the LORD is the stay of her hand.”
LORD, I thank You and praise Your goodness.
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I am extremely open to feedback on this piece, and I don’t just mean talking about my experiences (though that’s welcome, too). I struggled a lot with piecing together this narrative. There was a lot of time to cover, and choosing what to say coherently and cohesively was difficult. Let me know if you’ve got ideas!
Oooh I loved the ending. This carried me along. I particularly liked getting a glimpse into how insidious the starvation mindset was—how it crept in unobserved.
And it makes sense too that it would resurface in Japan based on how small everyone is there. The one time I was in danger of an eating disorder (praise God I didn’t actually develop one) was when I was running competitive cross country in early high school, and I started noticing that many of the best female runners basically hadn’t gone through puberty because their bodies were so overworked. It seemed that was the price to pay for elite athletic performance. Later, one of my friends did develop curves, and her performance plummeted.
But at some point, I guess you’ve got to make the calculus—is it better to sacrifice your health, conversation, social life, and basically everything in return for whatever your regimen is giving you? I think you showed that point of decision well.
I loved the format of this piece. I savored every revelation. 😘