it's hard. it's a struggle. i'm in pain.

so yesterday was ama-zing (well, some parts)! i love my fellow youth group members to death. :) we didn't really do that much for work day, just cleaned out one closet. we were done in maybe one and a half hours? then we sat around and talked, ate pizza, watched funny and not-so-funny videos, talked some more...you get the picture.

then came time for our actual service to start. we did something i haven't seen since church camp a few months ago: the prayer chair. in other words, we all sit down in chairs and there's one single chair at the front. whoever wants to goes up there and tells what their struggles are and what they need prayer for. then the rest of us go up, lay hands on them, and pray over them. i'm not gonna lie, it's extremely difficult. but it's absolutely worth it. i did it several nights at camp, and i was so close to doing it last night (for ana). but guess what? the second i got up there, my youth pastor asked me to go sit back down, and told us it was time to leave. my thoughts?

"no! i refuse to get down! if i don't do this now, i never will! i've been working up courage all night! please, i'm begging you!"

but of course, i went and sat down. my friend with ana/mia just happened to be sitting next to me, and she gave me a sympathetic look. i found out later that she was gonna go right after me. :'( man, how i wish that could've happened. i can see it in her eyes that she needs it. so can a few other people, apparently, because she was asked several times if she was ok (she lied).

and then i couldn't go to sleep when i got home. i tried and tried for maybe 30 minutes, but i eventually gave up and just got on facebook (bad habit!). and of course, my friend was on. we talked for a little bit, and she told me she finally can make herself throw-up. let's just say i cried a little bit upon hearing that. i asked her to please not try again and she said something along the lines of "are you trying to convince me not to?" i finally just gave up and told her that i was crying, but i'd rather hear truth that makes me cry than lies so i won't. she told me "ok, i'm going to try it. probably not tonight, maybe tomorrow." which made me cry even harder, knowing that i can't help her. but at least i have the truth.

so after maybe 11:30 i tried to go back to bed. i ended up crying (shocker) and pacing around my room thinking this:

"God, why did you do this!? she's SUFFERING! i'm SUFFERING! nothing good can possibly come out of this! i hate this mess, i hate what i've become, i hate my life right now! (no i'm not suicidal) why won't you change her? make her strong, make her see how beautiful she is! i can't be her rock, i'm not strong enough. i can't heal her, i'm not powerful enough. i can't be her everything, i'm not enough. God, TAKE IT!"

at one point i reached the spot where i almost committed suicide but heard God's voice and knelt down and cried and cried and cried. i didn't hear His voice again.

i did fall asleep though, maybe around midnight...? it wasn't fun, i'll tell you that. didn't get much of a good sleep either.

xoxo,

isis

i am happy. really.

i woke up this morning to my friend furiously spamming my wall because i didn't immediately take some pictures down that she thought were "ugly".  needless to say, i wasn't too happy. she did apologize though, and she took the comments down. so now everything's just peachy with her. :) other than that, a pretty normal day. she didn't even try to throw up today, though she didn't eat much in the first place.

oh! tomorrow is "work day" at my youth group. i'm actually kinda looking forward to it. i enjoy having something to do, especially if it means helping someone else out.

so yeah, not much else. boring day, i know. but my post will be up on operation beautiful tomorrow, which i'm excited about. :D

now, back to what i should really be doing: my book report. dun, dun, DUN!

xoxo,

Isis

My Hippocratic Oath

So guess what this week is? Yep, that's right, it's "Change the Way You See, Not the Way You Look" week. (If you didn't guess that, it's all right, we forgive you.) See, this week is the week that Operation Beautiful's first-ever-brand-new book comes out! This is a website that I've followed for a while now, you should check it out. ;)

If you'll look at my previous (two) blog posts, you'll see that they both contain something about my best friend and her eating disorders. It's become such a huge part of both of our lives that it's hard to not write about. If you don't know already, she has both anorexia and bulimia, at least from what I can tell. She tries really hard to eat as little as possible or not at all, and when she has to eat, she tries to "get rid of it", or throw it up. I can see the strain it has on her. And the worst thing is, I'm the only one that knows. Not a great position to be in. So I'm the cheerleader for now, telling her that she's beautiful (which I absolutely believe) and strong enough to fight it. And I'm not going to lie, it is hard a lot of the time. I'm constantly terrified for her. I mean, what if she dies? That would be completely and utterly my fault for not telling anyone (and if I believe it's going to get to that point, I will in a second). I've gone to bed crying just thinking about it. We're both emotional messes.

At the same time, I'm sort of being a hypocrite because, well, I'm not exactly the most confident girl in the world either. I've spent a long time hating myself, or just believing that I'm not good enough. For example, every time a guy likes me, I think it's a cruel joke because I'm not as pretty as the other girls or the funniest or the smartest or... It's a never ending cycle. I ended up thinking that my pale skin was pasty and vampire-esque, while I know now that it's like porcelain. I used to hate the psoriasis that plagued my upper arms, but I now realize it's not so bad. My forest green eyes are envious, but not to me: I wanted sky blue instead. I could spend hours giving you lists of everything I hated about myself.

But you know what? I overcame it. I learned (yes, learned) to love myself the way I was made. God made me perfectly and in His image. Who am I to insult the Creator? I can only hope that my friend can learn to see it the way I do. If there's anything I can do to help her, I'll do it in a heartbeat. That's my Hippocratic Oath.

xoxo,

Isis