10 Years in the Desert?

I missed a personal milestone the other day.  On Monday, January 10, 2011 I completed 10 years of sobriety from my eating disorder (Anorexia).  You see, on January 10, 2001 I admitted myself to Presbyterian Hospital of Dallas' Psychiatric Unit into their eating disorder program.  I completed 2.5 weeks inpatient and another 2.5 weeks outpatient.  I was diagnosed with tachycardia, an enlarged aorta, and mitral valve prolapse...all of which reversed itself as I got healthier.  I watched as my personal freedoms of walking, talking and visiting with family/friends stripped away as my focus became taking care of me.  Over the last several years some people have wondered why I do not celebrate my discharge date as my sobriety date.  To be honest, I can vividly remember January 10, 2001.  I can tell you what my parents and I did prior to me walking through the double doors onto the psych unit.  I remember hearing that my sister came up to the hospital only to be told she couldn't see me because I was under 72 hour seclusion from the outside world.  I can tell you how I cried for hours, how another patient held my hand while I had my blood drawn and how in the middle of the night God spoke so vividly to my lost and broken heart.  How He showed me what my world would look like if I didn't turn my life around.  On January 10, 2001 God gave me a choice... I chose LIFE!  

So here I am 10 years later, and so much of life has happened... the good, the bad, and the ugly.  All of which I am so grateful to have been able to walk through alongside the Lord.  For He has never left me, even in those darkest days of recovery, even in moments when my heart was broken and handed back to me by man, on those days where I struggled to make sense of unexpected loss, and especially on those days where I struggled through and army crawled my way to the finish line of graduate school.  I now spend a lot of my time preparing for my licensure exam that is a mere 4 weeks away and I cannot wait to see how God is going to use me as a counselor.  I thank Him profusely for those days at Presby and for the months and years that have followed where I am gently reminded that I am a broken soul only redeemed by the love of Christ.  I praise Him for I do not have to walk life alone.

I've seen how God has used this time to draw me closer to Him, and how I've fallen deeper in love with Him than ever before.  I look forward to how the next several years will turn out and look forward to sharing it with the world as He sees fit.  

"I waited patiently for the Lord; he turned to me and heard my cry." ~ Psalm 40:1