Life this week’s been a bit chocca. I’m working to a deadline for the book: ‘A New Name’ and it should be out in the summer.
I’d really value your prayers as I put the finishing touches to my story. I hope it will help those affected by eating disorders and point people to Jesus.
In the meantime I thought I’d post a couple of quotes from Frederich Beuchner’s memoir, Telling Secrets. Here he talks about caring for his anorexic daughter and it’s one of the most insightful things I’ve read on caring for those with eating disorders.
There are many unhealthy dynamics that can arise between carer and sufferer, but Beuchner’s advice is very sound:
‘The only way I knew to be a father was to take care of her, as my father had been unable to take care of me, to move heaven and earth if necessary to make her well, and of course I couldn’t do that. I didn’t have either the wisdom or the power to make her well. None of us has the power to change other human beings like that, and it would be a terrible power if we did, the power to violate the humanity of others even for their own good….
If your daughter is struggling for life in a raging torrent, you do not save her by jumping into the torrent with her, which leads only to your both drowning together. Instead you keep your feet on the dry bank – you maintain as best you can your own inner peace, the best and strongest of who you are – and from that solid ground reach out a rescuing hand… A bleeding heart is of no help to anybody if it bleeds to death’.
Buechner F, Telling Secrets, (Harper San Francisco, 1991),p.23, 27