For The Hopeless One On Easter
A year ago, I opened some mail from my insurance company with my 5-month old’s diagnoses. Under “cleft palate” and “feeding difficulties” was a new one, “failure to thrive” (FTT). I literally wept when I saw those words. At that moment I felt like I had failed as a Registered Dietitian and even worse, a Mom.
No one knew why Adeline wasn’t gaining weight. I had hired feeding therapists, we went to gastrointestinal doctors, saw pediatric Registered Dietitian’s and no one understood. I was doing everything “right.” I was on the phone with my pediatrician daily to check in on how Adeline’s feedings were going and how her weight was as I was checking them at home. It was all hour by hour. It was hard to think about anything else.
If you’ve ever had a baby who struggled to gain weight, then you know this feeling all too well. Being a Registered Dietitian, I saw the writing on the walls and at one point I had to ask our pediatrician, “At what point will we need to be admitted for tube feedings?”
He told me “Honestly that’s up to you, if you were a first-time mom without the education you have, I would have admitted you a long time ago.” He encouraged me, gave me hope that I was doing a good job, but I still felt so much pressure and so much hopelessness. It was so much: so much that I stepped away from work responsibilities because I was committed to us not getting admitted, to getting her out of FTT, and getting her healthy enough for surgery to fix her cleft palate that would be later that year.
It wasn’t just one thing that kept us out of the hospital and helped us figure out how she needed to gain weight but many, many conversations with people, friends of friends, pediatric RD friends, Facebook cleft mom groups, and many, many prayers. I can’t believe we avoided that admission to start tube feedings because so many have a different story from us. God didn’t have to spare us the hospital admission, but I’m so glad He did.
Now I look at my girl a year later–healthy, and strong– and I’m so thankful for His goodness.
How does this all relate to the story of Easter? It’s simple really. He didn’t have to give us His risen son, but He did. He could have just given us Jesus’s life on earth and some rules to live by, but instead He gave us the resurrection; He brought Him back to life.
He did because it made a statement of the God that He is.
Every Easter I hear this quote: “The Saturday between Good Friday and Easter is a reminder that the silence of God does not equal the absence of God.”
Last year on Easter weekend was a very dark moment for me: feeling so hopeless and exhausted, wondering where God was. Why wasn’t He showing up for us? Why wasn’t he bringing us out of this Egypt that we were in?
This blog doesn’t have a lot to do with food or your body, but the reality is that God wants to be a part of your relationship with food and your body.
Friend, I don’t know what you’re going through this Easter. But if there is anything I know it’s that if you are as desperate as I felt a year ago then I want to tell you, there is more to the story. I read this quote by Ann Voskamp a year ago on Good Friday and it reminded me of the hope of the resurrection. “Only the Cross says that there is a Way through, but it won’t look the way we’d thought, but in every one of His ways, He’s working in a thousand other ways. Trust all of His ways.”
This means that there is hope in your struggling relationship with food, exercise or your body.
There is hope if you are currently hospitalized, or know someone who is hospitalized, from an eating disorder.
There is hope if you’ve tried all the diets, drank all the shakes, teas, supplements, and still hate your body.
There is hope if every day you’re waking up with dread: thinking about your diet, your next workout, your body, your health.
We can have hope because we know the end of the story. We know what happens on Sunday. And what happens on Sunday can be applied to every area of our lives, even our relationship with food, exercise, and our bodies.
Need more?
Food Freedom Bible Study is now available for individuals and Registered Dietitians who want to earn CEU’s. It’s a simple, online, gospel-centered program for breaking the bondage of food, exercise and body image issues.
Nicole resides in the East Bay Area where she works in private practice as a Registered Dietitian Nutritionist. She is a Mom of two and serves alongside her beloved husband in their local church. Most recently she's devoted her time to cleft and craniofacial awareness, education and interventions when her second daughter was unexpectedly diagnosed with a cleft palate at one week old. She completed both her bachelor's degree and her dietetic internship at California State University, Chico, where she was also a NCAA cross country and track athlete. Through those experiences, God prompted her to help people of all shapes and sizes discover health, body peace and acceptance through the unconditional love of Jesus. Nicole most enjoys spending time around a table and eating delicious food with the people she loves.
