We stumbled upon it while we were flipping channels last week.  She was in her forties, she was in denial and she was dying.  It’s a disease called anorexia. 

It was frightening to watch as they had video taped her at home.  It didn’t look like her thin, skeleton legs should be able to support her body as she stood and walked around.  Her clothes draped off her tiny frame.  All the while, she talked about how ”fat” she was.  She was completely unable to see the reality of what was happening to her.  When she looked in the mirror, her mind somehow distorted the truth and it became a lie.  Later on the show, Dr. Phil even brought on another anorexic patient and as the women sat side by side, they each commented on how the other one was SO thin….still completely blind to the devastating affects the disease was having on their own body.

How can that be?  How can the mind be so easily deceived?  Is it from years of listening to the inner voice say “I’m fat, I’m fat, I’m fat”?  Does the overwhelming desire to become thin finally overide all sensibility?  What would it take for someone to finally see the truth?

Truth isn’t always an easy thing to see….especially when it is a truth that reveals an area in which I need to change.  Why is that?  Why is it easier for me to point out areas in which others need to improve…but hard for me to diagnose my own short-falls.

In Sunday school we were talking about prayer and how God changes us through prayer.  I began to think about my prayer life (or lack of) and how it has been suffering lately and for some reason the picture came to my mind of how I’ve been “starving” my prayer life to the point that I might even be “spiritually anorexic”.  I could see myself looking in the mirror and seeing a fat, healthy Christian.  And then I could envision Jesus looking at me and seeing this thin, bony child of His who was in desperate need of some attention……wondering what it would take for her to see that she needed a healthy dose of prayer.  Not the five minute, on the run, out the door prayer….but the “in my closet”, on my knees type prayer.

(I thought about writing that last paragraph in the third person.  It would be easier to generalize that we might all be starving our prayer life and what we might do to remedy it.  But you might not be there at all….and I can’t hide behind that.) 

I also realize that the Lord talks to me in pictures like that and when He does, I need to listen.  I see these comparisons….and I realize the Lord is trying to shed some light for me….trying to hold up the mirror so I can see a little better.  I may not always be in tune, but I think the message may be that I don’t have to live where I am starving myself.  Wow…even as I write that it is hard to say.  Could I really be starving myself?  Has God provided this abundant life through prayer that I have chosen to neglect?  Or have I allowed myself to be satisfied with just a portion, when He wants to give me so much more?

I know without a doubt that He is inviting me to have a “second helping”.  There is no need to rush from His table.  There is no need to settle for a crumb when He has prepared a banquet.  And there is no need to wonder if I’m invited when He is already waiting for me.