What a blessing it was to grow up in a home where we were taught to turn to God for all our needs! I loved to read the Bible and to learn about how people relied on God in the face of great challenges. I knew from the teachings of Christ Jesus that healing is a natural result of understanding God. And seeing the healings in our home throughout the years instilled a great confidence in me that anyone sincerely seeking to understand God would find that such an understanding had a healing effect—and that this effect could be very far-reaching.
While I was in the seventh grade, I became obsessive about not eating food. As time went on I ate less and less, rationing out specific portions for my meals. When my parents tried to get me to eat more, I would put up a fight. Over a period of three or four months, I became completely self-absorbed; I made no new friends at school, and I even began to think about death. As I got weaker and weaker, I realized that I needed some help. One day, feeling very lost, I went to my mother. Up to this time I had rejected both encouragement and affection. Now I was only too glad to have my mother take me in her arms and assure me that everything was OK.
In that one moment I felt God's care enveloping me and could see that the self-absorbing denial I had been consumed by was no part of man's true identity as God's spiritual image. This was a turning point. From then on I began to eat normally The dizzy spells stopped, and the darkness in thought gave way to light and joy. I felt as though I had awakened from a long sleep, and I was now beginning to discover the good at hand. I made new friends and quickly regained much of the weight I had lost. Fear of food and fear of being out of control were gradually overcome through an understanding of my innate constancy as God's eternal reflection. Never has there been a recurrence of this situation.
