WHY ARE THE FAT STILL RIDICULED TODAY?

Months ago, I cannot remember when exactly, the Lord put it on my heart that making fun of fat people was just about the only thing left that was still accepted in our society.  Making fun of ANYONE that is different than yourself is ungodly and wrong.  I think everyone knows that.  But certain things that were once widely accepted are now taboo in today’s society.  No longer can you make fun of gays, people of color, the handicapped, etc.  (And why would you want to?!)  Even those with addictions to drugs, alcohol, sex, shopping, work are on the taboo list.  So you say you’re an addict?  No problem!  The medical community now says it’s “not your fault” because those are “diseases.”  BUT wait a second!  If you say you’re addicted to food?  Well, screw you for eating too much and not exercising!  Ya, that’s it in a nutshell.  But the bigger question is WHY?  FAT-BASHING or FAT-SHAMING are still okay?  HOW IS THAT SO?

 

Many years ago, I worked for a company that employed Psychiatric doctors and nurses.  After that, I worked in a non-profit center that helped people with mental illnesses.  Needless to say, I learned a lot about Psychiatry and people needing the help of Psychiatrists because I had to read patient charts all day.  I quickly learned that addiction is a coping mechanism for stress.  Sometimes it’s referred to as “self-medicating.”  When something traumatic happens to a person, it causes an immense amount of stress on the human mind and body.  If you are not able to get past or overcome that stress, then the person will do whatever it takes to alleviate the stress and make themselves feel better.  This where alcohol, drugs, etc. come in.  An addiction comes about from something that “feels good” and the person repeats the behavior every time they feel stress.  If the stress is on-going in their lives, the person’s need to self-medicate can become a full-blown addiction.  I learned that if or until the person overcomes the stress, it is nearly impossible to break the addiction.  This is why therapy is often needed.  Because often a person won’t even know WHY they are addicted.  Once they “face their demons” so to speak, the addiction can be broken easier.  Case in point: Tom Arnold.  He came out years ago and said that during the time he was addicted to drugs and alcohol, he didn’t really know why.  It was during therapy that he started to remember the sexual abuse he suffered as a child.   He has also been overweight.  Is it too much of a stretch to think that food was also part of his addiction?  And if you accept that, then making fun of him being fat would, in fact, be making fun of his sexual abuse.

 

Okay, so the reason I wrote this article is because I have fought being overweight all my life.  As I am writing this, I am fat.  I have spent probably 20 years of my life actively ON a diet.  Trust me when I say that it is a horrible way to live, and I wouldn’t wish it upon anyone.  I was of normal weight until puberty, age 11 or 12.  That was also the same time in my life I started Junior High School, and the bullying began in my life.  I didn’t find out until I was 40 years old that I had Asperger’s Syndrome, so during this time I was “weird” to the other kids and didn’t have many friends.  I was also verbally bullied at home by my mother and then by my little sister who just copied my mother’s language and behavior.  The doctors told my mother that there was nothing wrong me and that I just had an attitude problem (they didn’t know about Asperger’s back then.)  My mother sticks by that story to this day. It’s her go-to excuse explanation as to why she treated me so bad.  The doctor’s said it was okay.  A few years ago she even said to my face, “you made me treat you that way.”  Yup she was the victim, not me.  I was quite literally shocked when she said that.  She immediately played “victim” as if I did something to her.  I was 42 years old and didn’t think she could hurt me anymore and yet, she still found something to say that crushed my soul.  And I cried like a baby that day.  Her inability to admit what she did, own up to it and apologize to me, which is all I wanted, was heart-wrenching and the reason why I cannot have a relationship with her ever again.  That is the very last day I ever spoke to my mother.  She and my sister treated me terrible but only outsiders saw it.  Other family members were so used to it, they thought it was “normal”.  A friend of mine once saw my sister and I talking and after my sister left she said, “why does she treat you so mean?”  My eyes immediately welled up with tears and I said, “you saw that?!  No one has ever seen that before.”  It was the defining moment when I realized I was not crazy… I was not the bad guy.  The awful truth is that my mother and sister do not like me, treat me like garbage,  and they blame me for it.  Is it any wonder, then, why I have self-medicated with food all my life?

 

It’s no surprise that growing up, we didn’t have any Christianity in our home.  We celebrated Christmas and Easter, and my family told people that we were Christian.  But we were NOT Christians.  My mother lied to make herself look good.  She hated God and even frowned upon us going to church with friends.  It’s no wonder that she found Catholicism when I was a teen.  Catholicism fits her own screwed up view of Christianity.  She had all these books she read about the saints and about Catholicism in general, yet I never saw her reading an actual Bible.  But I digress…  It was during all this strife at school AND at home, that I self-medicated with food.  My mother was also overweight so we had lots of sweets in the house, and we had the run of the kitchen.  We ate whatever we wanted, whenever we wanted.  And when the kitchen was bare because it was almost grocery shopping day, I remember eating uncooked pasta out of the box and eating uncooked corn meal out of the bag.  That certainly sounds like an addiction to me!  Then, I lost 60 pounds during the summer between 10th and 11th grade.  That was my very first diet.  I have been gaining and losing weight ever since.  There was a point during my 20s that I was normal weight but I drank alcohol…. a lot of it.  Ya, I was substituting alcohol for food.  And when I stopped drinking?  You guessed it…I gained weight again.

 

Matthew 6:15 KJV – But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.

 

Now, I didn’t start out to make this a bash-my-mom blog.  I have told the Lord that I FORGIVE my mother and sister.  I even told the Lord I forgave my father for going along with them and not sticking up for me.  I gave up carrying around the baggage of the hatred I felt for them.  I FORGAVE.  But the words “forgive and forget” and NOT IN THE BIBLE.  Forgetting what someone did to you and forgiving are very different.  I cannot forget because neither of them have admitted what they did nor apologized for it.  I HAVE to forgive them… FOR MYSELF.  But I cannot forget and move past it because they would still continue to treat me the same as they always have.  Each time in my life when I have “let it go”, I “forgot” and went on as if nothing happened, and it resulted in me being treated horrible again.  My spirit just can’t take it anymore.

 

Getting back to the topic at hand;  WHY then is it still okay to be mean to fat people?  WHY do I still see troll-posts on Facebook telling a fat girl she is “unhealthy”, “obese”, “UGLY?”  WHY?  WHY are life-long skinny people telling fat people to do….anything?  A life-long skinny person couldn’t possibly understand the challenges we face… what we go through.  Would those same people just tell a drug addict to stop taking drugs!  “Oh it’s so simple… just stop taking drugs!”   “Oh it’s so simple… just stop eating bon-bons and go exercise!”  Wow!  I should just STOP because it’s soooooo easy!  Why didn’t I think of that?!  And some of the same people addicted to alcohol, shopping, gambling, etc. are telling fat people to STOP.  The hypocrisy is never-ending.

 

John 13:34-35 KJV- “ A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another;  as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.  By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.”

 

In retrospect, I see that if my family had simply had JESUS in our home, my childhood would have been much happier.  My mother would have been understanding, caring, loving and in turn, my sister would have learned that from her.  We would have been a loving family.  JESUS really IS the answer for everything.

 

If you judge others, without knowing everything they have been through, and I mean EVERYTHING, then you are WRONG.  That is why the Bible says not to judge others.

 

Luke 6:37 – “Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven.”

 

1 Corinthians 4:5 NIV – “Therefore judge nothing before the appointed time; wait until the Lord comes. He will bring to light what is hidden in darkness and will expose the motives of the heart. At that time each will receive their praise from God.”

 

If My Sins Are Paid For, Then Why Not Just Sin All I Want?

I have been having an extremely difficult time lately with something.  One member of our family stood up for another family member’s evil, sinful ways by saying that her sins ‘have been PAID for.’   End of story.  Nothing further to discuss.   After I picked my jaw up off the floor, this got me to thinking…  if our sins are paid for, then why not just sin all we want?  God may not like it but Jesus ALREADY paid for them, right?   When I became born-again, I was saved.  I have eternal life through Christ Jesus and I will be in Heaven one day.  That’s it and that’s all.  Regardless of what I do from now until the time of my mortal death, I WILL be in Heaven.  That is all true.

The family member who stood up for evil, did nothing to condemn it, now SHARES in this sin as well.  That same person claims to understand this, but how could you understand it and yet still go along with it because now YOU TOO are GUILTY and will be held responsible of the same sin!  Why…. WHY… would you claim to understand that and yet not speak up to what you have seen and heard?  I am actually MORE worried about the person covering up the sin than the person committing it.

“Do not hate your brother in your heart. Rebuke your neighbor frankly so you will not share in his guilt.” ~LEVITICUS 19:17 (NIV)

“If anyone sins because they do not speak up when they hear a public charge to testify regarding something they have seen or learned about, they will be held responsible.”  ~LEVITICUS 5:1  (NIV)

Now, I know we ALL sin.  But those of us with a true intimate relationship with the Lord, who LOVE the Lord and honestly WANT to live up to his expectations of us, wouldn’t purposefully go about sinning.  It’s just not in our born-again nature to do that.

The family member that actually did the sinning, commits evil acts so often, that if you asked me to name just a couple nice things she has done to help others, I could honestly not tell you even one.  Her evil ways are born out of extreme selfishness and everything she does has a self-serving basis.  She claims to love the Lord and that the things she does is only because she wants to be ‘happy’, and the Lord wants her to be happy, right?  (She has actually said this while engaged in an affair with another man, while married to her second husband.)  What she cannot grasp is that if you do things out of sheer selfishness… if you do things that hurt others… you can and never will be ‘happy’ and will never know ‘peace’.  That completely goes against spiritual law.  You will not receive peace and happiness from sin… you cannot receive something good by doing something evil.

The Lord helped me understand the true problem with this woman.  She is born-again.  She claims to love the Lord.  But she is ‘on the fence.’  She can be good or she can be evil but she CANNOT BE BOTH.  Until she CHOOSES A SIDE, she will NEVER have peace and NEVER be happy.

Here’s how the Lord explained it to me:

GOOD:  If you are engaged in a loving and intimate relationship with the Lord, then He is all you need to find peace and happiness.  If you are looking anywhere but to the Lord for help in being happy, you will fail.  Only through the Lord will you succeed.

EVIL:  And if you are not born-again and do not know the Lord, then you are on the other side of the fence.  Evil will be dominant in your life and those who seek to keep you in the dark will probably offer you tokens of happiness to keep you there.  The devil will bring you wealth or whatever else you desire to keep you away from the Lord.  He will make you believe that you have ALL you need to be happy and therefore, you need nothing else.  You will never seek the Lord because you don’t feel you need Him.  These forms of happiness might make your life on Earth easier but you will never know eternal life.  The devil’s job is to deceive and he is really good at it.

Those who live according to the sinful nature have their minds set on what that nature desires;  but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires.  The mind of sinful man is death, but the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace;  the sinful mind is hostile to God.  It does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so.  Those controlled by the sinful nature cannot please God.”  ROMANS 8:5-8

SO…. WHICH SIDE ARE YOU ON?

Communication, Children and Evil Ex-Spouses

Well, something came up with my husband’s x-wife and through it, the Lord has put it in my heart to write a new post!

The situation that came up is a repeat of something I still cannot understand fully.  My husband’s X-wife is one of those people who often do and say things that are just plain wrong, and many times downright evil.  In my humble opinion, I would classify most as ‘evil acts.’  That is the honest truth.  She does and says things that most people do not agree with.  BUT, no one –and I mean no one– in her life ever tells her that her actions are wrong.  People either go along with whatever evil plans she has, or just nod politely, listening to her but never saying anything.

The people in her life that don’t speak up and tell her she is acting in an evil manner are clearly those who fall in the category of poor and/or fearful communicators.  I’m sure that some are exactly like she is and do their own evil things, so of course they would agree with her.  But I know MANY really good people, some who claim to be Christian, that never speak out when she acts in an evil manner.  I realize I wrote about this Fear of Communication in my last post.  If you missed it, check it out here before reading any further.  The Fear of Communication is a big one these days, so I believe the Lord has put it on my heart, yet again, because it is really important!

So going back to my husband’s X…  The only explanation I have for how a person can get away for so long with not one single person telling them the TRUTH, must be that she, whether consciously or unconsciously, has surrounded herself with people that wouldn’t.  I am a truth-teller ALWAYS and it’s been my experience that the vast majority of people don’t want truth.  They might SAY they want truth, but only if it doesn’t hurt their feelings or go against what they really want or [insert many other ridiculous reasons here].  So in the end, regardless of their hyperbole, it ends up being that they really don’t want to hear truth.

It is only recently that my husband has even dared to start speaking truth with his X-wife.  After reading Andrew Wommack’s January 2012 newsletter where he firmly states that “You do not have the right to reject the Truth for another person”, and that if you do not speak up, you too are guilty of the sin (me paraphrasing), he has started to come around and understand that the Lord WANTS us to call people out when they are acting wrong.  My husband has always ‘feared’ his X-wife, even when they were married, because of what she ‘might’ do.  Her angry outbursts he has seen affect his children negatively, and he tried to avoid it at all cost.  Now long after the divorce, he is still afraid that she will take things out on the kids and fears saying anything to her.  I’ve been trying to teach him that if he communicates properly with her, he need NOT ‘fear’ what she will do.  If he presents her with the truth and she takes it out on the kids, then it’s time to get fully custody of ALL the children and she can answer to God for her evil actions.  He has spent a few years still ‘fearing’ this idea at all.  He wants to play ‘nice’ and ‘pretend’ to get along with her by just not speaking up.  But when she’s not feeding the children properly or caring for them, it’s time to speak up and/or take the children!  If you do not, then you are letting the demon of fear RULE YOU and I KNOW God would not agree with that!

About 4 months ago, we had to switch out the 14 year who lived with us for the 10 year old who lived with his mom.  He has been having trouble for awhile.  He’s been caught cursing, writing nasty things on the walls of his bedroom, getting into trouble at school, and the list goes on.  He wanted to support a friend of his being bullied at school and took a ‘shiv’ to school that he made.  Well, of course he was caught and the school was going to expel him.  We intervened and quickly had to switch out the boys.  This upset the 14 year who did NOT want to live with his mother, but with the 10 year old in trouble, we had no choice.  I mean, he had one foot in the door to Juvenile Detention, and next stop is jail!  The X-wife will not give us custody of both boys because she worries about having to pay child support to us.  She doesn’t want whats best for her children, she see only dollar signs.  Saying she is selfish and only self-serving is actually too nice a definition.  Seriously.  But since coming to live with us, the 10 year old has profoundly changed.  He is a different child completely.  He is happy, well-adjusted, hardly ever does anything wrong, and is a complete joy to be with.  It is CLEAR to us, the extended family and even the officials at this new school, that he NEEDED out of his mother’s home.  She and the step-dad have caused this boy damage that we are still working to reverse every day.  His emotional damage runs deep.  There is so much more I could go into to provide further evidence of the mother’s lack of caring for her children, but I will stop so as not to shock you with details, that will make you want to hurt her as much as I do sometimes.  (I try to be Christian always, but with some people it is so difficult…)

We took the 10 year old, who just turned 11, to the doctor for a check-up.  In the 4+ months since his last visit, he grew a full 1″ and gained 25 pounds.  This all happened while he’s been with us.  He is getting proper nutrition and we know that is the reason for the growth spurt.  The X-wife is all-consumed with the children being ‘fat’ (probably because she is fat herself) and we do not believe she was feeding him properly.  In the past 2 years, I cannot count the number of times the kids would come to our house, either STILL hungry after eating at her house or having not been fed at all by their mother!  Apparently, she’s been limiting their portions, not giving them enough or not bothering to feed them.  (I secretly believe that she’s too busy spending her money on herself and her needs to keep proper groceries in the house for the children.  Based on the behavior the 10 year showed when he came to live with us, this makes sense.  He would not want to eat cereal or drink milk so he could ‘save’ it for school days.  I had to tell him that if we run out, we WILL get more right away and he didn’t have so ‘save’ anything.  Some things like this he said really broke my heart!)

So my husband did something, on his own, that I never would think he could do.  He sent an email to his X telling her of how much the 10 year old has grown and that he didn’t think she was feeding him enough.  She sent back an email attacking him, as per her usual behavior, and kept calling the 10 year old ‘fat’ in the email.  My husband emailed back a very short and to the point email basically telling her that the boy is NOT fat, he is getting proper nutrition now which is what caused the growth spurt, and told her all she cares about is money, she doesn’t care how HER actions affect others, and that he will no longer keep silent when he sees something wrong!  WOW!   I was so PROUD of him I almost burst!  Finally, after 15+ years of knowing this woman, he was finally seeing her evil ways and speaking out against them.  I know that the Lord was proud of him too!

She sent a huge, long email to not only my husband but also to his mother.  All of us agreed, this email was her ‘pity party’.  Sentences upon sentences, over and over and over again, about she ‘tried’ to do this and ‘tried’ to do that but nothing is good enough for us.   The ACTUAL TRUTH is that if she has tried ANYTHING for more than one day, she would have had success.  We work with the boy every day, and even the simple act of praying with him before bedtime, means EVERYTHING in the world to him.  If she cared… if she ‘tried’… she would have had the wonderful boy that we have now.  A secondary email she sent after the big one was absent pity, since she saw that tactic wouldn’t work on my husband any longer, and was replaced with anger and pointing out how ‘wrong’ he was.  She even attacked me while speaking of herself and the step-dad glowingly.  She has let her demons completely rule her.  She REJECTED THE TRUTH my husband shared with her and refuses to accept any of it.

But there’s a big difference… My husband gave her the truth about how she has hurt the children, that she is all consumed with money, and her actions affect others.  She flat-out rejected this truth and will apparently be continuing on with her evil ways.  However, this time, my husband does not ‘share in her sin’ and that makes all the difference to the Lord.  I am so proud of him!

Iniquities, Forgiveness and Punishment…

I’ve wanted to blog about iniquities for some time. I’ve seen them in my family members and, unfortunately, I recognize them in myself having been handed down from my parents. The Bible is very clear that iniquities (sins) are passed down to your children, going even in the third and fourth generations.

“Keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children’s children, unto the third and to the fourth generation.” (EXODUS 34:7)

My mother’s father was a very mean man, according to her and her siblings. It was as though he blamed the children for the reason he had to go off to work every morning. He didn’t act as though he wanted the children around. My mother says that he came home from the war a changed man. He was in Normandy on D-Day, although the beach was firmly secured by the time he arrived, I’m certain he witnessed enough to impact him greatly. However, I don’t agree that his treatment of family was related to being ‘changed by the war’. I believe that was an iniquity my grandfather received from his parents. Your views of children come DIRECTLY from your parents and how they treated you.

Both my parents are prone to quick anger, and I strive to keep that in check in myself. It is clear I have that iniquity from them. My mother never bonded with me. I was an Asperger child and didn’t like to be held much. My mother took that as an insult, as if a 1 or 2 year could insult anyone! And of course, Asperger’s was not officially accepted until the 1990s so no one knew when I was kid. The doctors told my mother I was healthy and just had a discipline problem. She then proceeded to treat me just like her father had treated her… as if I were a bad kid. Everything I did, whether good or bad, I got yelled at or worse, ignored. She still denies that to this day. She has never apologized once for anything she’s done wrong.. ever. Not to anyone in the family. My sister has even said that before. And I have tried to talk with my mother on several occasions about it. Instead of listening to what I say, she turns the entire conversation around so that she is the victim. She says, ‘how dare you say these things to me!’ and how I ‘hurt her by saying those things.’ She never actually addresses what I said, she just avoids, plays the victim, and then I am the bad guy. She then pulls my father into it and looks at him and says, ‘did you hear what she said to me?!’ Now Dad is caught between us and ends up backing up my mother, who should have never pulled him into it to begin with. I am sad to say that I have had to eliminate both of them from my life altogether. I cannot get past the hurt and the fact that they refuse to listen. I have forgiven them as the Lord wants me to. I still miss my father a lot, but I can no longer let them into my life to continue to hurt me over and over again. I have forgiven them, but I will never forget.

So the subject of iniquities now brings me to punishment. Even if you ask for forgiveness from God, you will still be punished. You are still guilty as stated in Exodus 34:7. Much like how children screw up and whether intentional or not, we still punish them. God works in that way too! This is even a common theme in the Bible. Let’s take Jonah as an example. He defied God by not going to Ninevah and then later found himself stuck in the stomach of a huge fish! He finally realizes the error of his ways but still had to spend 3 days in that fish, until he was turned white from the stomach acid and very, extremely fishy-stinky! Then that nasty fish vomited him up on shore. Now, God forgave him as soon as he realized he was wrong, but He did not rescue him from the fish! Jonah’s punishment, I believe, was to be stuck in that nasty fish and then vomited up later. A pretty bad punishment, in my opinion, for disobeying God! But the point is very clear. God forgives but the punishment still stands.

I am having some trouble on finishing up this blog! But I will end by saying that you CAN ask God for forgiveness of your sins, bear in mind that you will still have to pay for them. But repentance is important! Be sure to pray that the iniquities you inherited from family also be forgiven! Pray to have your children forgiven from them as well. I believe that God can remove the iniquities from your heart, but you do have to look to him to do it!