For there is no fear in love - and weight loss

1 John 4:18 says there is no fear in love, for perfect love casts out fear. But he who fears has not been made perfect in love.

I spent forty-one years of my life riddled with fear. My journey out of that abyss has been a long and treacherous one. I keep stumbling and falling backwards, but I’m slowly moving forward. Yesterday I discovered that something as trivial as weight loss can have remnants of fear attached to it. Not one experience I have had with weight loss (since I was ten) had a positive spin to it. Every time I struggled to lose weight or maintain weight lost, it was done out of fear that I would disappoint somebody else’s goals. That they would stop loving me or be disappointed in me because I was fat.

Yesterday my counselor brought this to my attention. She suggested that I haven’t been able to lose the weight because, for the first time in my life, I feel loved without that condition! And I cried in my car for fifteen minutes. Out of relief that I hadn’t lost my will and my drive. Out of anger for being stuck in that fearful mindset. Out of pain. Because I now know that I have allowed myself to be held prisoner to other people’s standards. Never had I ever lost weight out of obedience to God and out of pure respect for my temple.

I’m guessing it won’t be easier, but this is one more layer for me. The fear layer is being peeled back because the lie has been uncovered. God loves me. My sweet husband loves me. My babies love me. Two hundred pounds or one hundred twenty-five. I need to come up with a different excuse to be disobedient and disrespectful to my health. Or I need to lean into God’s love, fill those areas of fear with it, and let Him guide me through it.