All I Wanted was to be the image of God. Not such a tall order when you learn, even as a kid, that that's who God made you to be. See Gen. 1:26, 27 . The catch was that I was relying on my own definition of what it meant to be God's image—my own human definition. And with that definition as my bar, I never felt measured up.
I felt like I needed to be the best everything—the best daughter, friend, student, and on and on. But since "best" seemed so unreachable, my every step toward perfection ended up being accompanied by intense, cruel condemnation. My harsh criticisms of myself and my perceived failings.
Things came to a head several years after college. I'd faced rejection in a career I thought I'd been called by God to do. And on the heels of that, a relationship I was in ended abruptly. Although I picked up the pieces quickly—moving cross-country and starting a new job—the self-condemnation only intensified. I tried to pray, but my prayers felt completely ineffective. And after a while, it seemed like the only way I could numb my ear to all these accusations was to give in to bulimia—to resume the cycles of binging and purging that I'd struggled with during high school and college. So I did—for several years.
