The December That Changed My Life
On the eve of my birthday, it seemed fitting to share my testimony because December holds a special place in my heart. While I’ve often shared strands of my story here, I wanted to sketch it out again because the best gift I’ve ever received is the life I’ve been given in Jesus.
It was December 2000, and I was finishing my first semester of college. My eighteenth birthday was near and Christmas was just a few weeks away, but I had finals to take before I could return home for the holidays.
For years I had wrestled with an eating disorder, but was determined to overcome it in my own strength without having to announce my struggle. During the weeks leading up to the end of the semester, surrounding circumstances brought up the discussion of eating disorders, making it increasingly challenging to hide my eating disorder. As my roommates and I discussed our concerns over a friend who appeared to be battling an eating disorder, no one knew that I was struggling too. Keeping my secret buried inside eventually made me so uncomfortable that I couldn’t sleep the night before my first final of the semester.
As I tossed and turned in my dorm room bed unable to rest, the Lord drew me to Him. While I had grown up in church and believed in God as long as I could remember, wounds distorted my view of Him and I didn’t have an assurance of salvation. Though I had told my Christian roommates I was a Christian, I was confused if I was really saved or not.
Teenage me thought I had to earn God’s love and acceptance. Teenage me thought God was watching from Heaven, disappointed at every mistake I made. Teenage me thought being thin correlated to being lovable.
Years of striving and trying to be perfect, left a deep ache within.
Unsettled feelings nagged at me in my dorm room that sleepless December night, but the Lord was doing something far greater than teenage me understood. He was purposefully using the tension I felt to usher me into His healing hands. He was graciously inviting me to surrender my brokenness to Him.
My deep pain collided with the deep love of Jesus, and while I don’t remember if I verbally said anything, in my heart I surrendered to the Lord and placed my trust in Him.
The Lord guided me in the path forward with a clarity I hadn’t experienced before. I knew I needed to bring my struggle with an eating disorder into the light, and that I needed to take some time off school to process my story, and that I would transfer to a Christian school once I was ready to return to school.
And the details unfolded precisely that way.
I finished up the semester knowing I wouldn’t return to Greeley, Colorado after Christmas break, but my short time there served its purpose. Once I was home later that December, I made a public profession of my faith. Even though I wasn’t baptized through immersion until several years later in 2015, December of 2000 was the beginning of living my life surrendered to the Lord and discovering that He is my Good Father full of compassion and grace.
After countless years of striving for perfection, I accepted that I wasn’t perfect and that I needed a Savior to cleanse me of my sins and mend the broken pieces. Contrary to what I once thought, I began to understand that I couldn’t save myself by doing good works, but rather that salvation comes by placing my trust in the Perfect One who bled and died for me at Calvary. He graciously did the work that only He could do.
For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
ephesians 2:8-10
What a freeing discovery to know that my good works didn’t save me, but rather that they were a response to being a child of God saved by grace.
The months that followed December of 2000 were full of healing as God provided supportive family, counselors, a loving church, friendships at a Christian college, and so much more evidence of his grace upon grace. There were some bumps in the journey of working through my eating disorder, but layer by layer, I began to embrace my identity in Christ as a beloved daughter of the King.
Twenty-three years later, and it’s December again. The lights are twinkling, the house is cozy, my boys can’t wait for the much anticipated day to finally come, and the wonder of Jesus humbly coming to be the Savior of the world is the best part of all.
He came to be Light in the darkness.
He came to give us hope of a future with Him.
He came to heal our deepest wounds.
He came to set us eternally free.
He came to my rescue all those years ago, changing my life for eternity.
Rejoicing in Hope,
