In the lead up to the release of my new novel, Amazing Grace, some friends have been brave enough to share their confessions. Confessions of domestic violence, abuse, an eating disorder, and miscarriage are often stories of shame, fear, and secrets. We often feel like we are the only ones who silently suffer, the only ones who have shameful secrets, the only ones who shudder to speak.
These confessions tell of grace. Grace isn’t always easy to give and it’s not always easy to receive. Grace is free, but it’s not easy.
*Trigger Warning: This post contains references to eating disorders.
Guest Post by Amanda Viviers
There is something addictive about having a secret. It is like a part of you that no one knows about and the incessant need to keep it hidden creates the circle that encases its cycle.
Even the thought of writing this secret in computer, font sized ink right now, makes my knees quiver. The power of its confession still haunts me twenty-five years later.
It began in high school, the combination of a dance culture that thrived on body weight and competitions and a high school crush that seemed unattainable.
I secretly threw up most of my meals as a teenager.
Yes, it was terrible, but at the same time the attention I received as my weight became more manageable was the most insidious part of this pastime.
I don’t really remember how it began, but I definitely remember the clothes I started wearing as it became apparent that I was becoming a young woman.
There is this one specific memory, when I wore a jade green jumper to my year twelve camp and everyone commented how much weight I had lost.
Now with perspective and grace I realise that some of the comments were not necessarily positive ones, but they were laced with concern and care.
As a teenager, the thought of anyone knowing my confession of grace was like my world bottoming out.
I would have taken my life, before I allowed anyone to come into that part of it.
Long showers as I purged, secret toilet sessions after every meal, hiding food and making sure that my secret was never revealed.
It was not until I was in university, and I was overcome with the culture of my theatre arts academy, that I realised I had a serious problem.
I phoned a helpline and ended up on a counsellor’s couch and together we made plans to progress into a place of grace and recovery.
It was my surrender to the Creator of the Universe that brought my complete healing for me. Finding ways to reframe how I saw myself in the light of his glorious grace.
I still struggle today with my weight, but I haven’t deliberately purged my food in more than twenty-five years.
There is a part of me, that longs for release from the heaviness that my soul carries, the wounds that have scarred me from this season of hiddeness.
Some days I realise however that it is those broken places, those wounds that remind me how far I have come.
Every day I wait and find my peace in the midst of his grace.
How about you?
What is your confession of grace?
Amanda xx
*If this post has affected you please contact Lifeline on 13 11 14 or visit lifeline.org.au
