Dire Strengths and Dead Weight** One of the most frequent reasons people struggle with emotional eating is because it offers a strong, albeit false sense of security. When you turn to food to cope with pain or stress, you may feel like you are taking care of the situation when you're really setting yourself up for failure. You may be saying to yourself, "I can't let myself get closer to God if I'm constantly eating and thinking about food." The truth is that feeling better and becoming closer to God won't happen while you're stuffed to the gills. The problem is that sometimes we think that being close to God is a matter of working hard on our spiritual lives and then receiving a pat on the back and a big blessing like the best party at church. But that's not how it works. We can't force our beliefs to be realized. A life of following Jesus is not a checklist where you check off a box and you are automatically blessed. Believing, trusting, believing, and trusting will not ultimately provide you with the kind of peace and fulfillment that you seek. That's not how it works. So much of the time, our struggle is not about feeling closer to God and becoming more like him. It's about our not experiencing those things at all. We're not sure what's going on or why. It all feels like a giant puzzle, and it doesn't feel very comforting. So it's natural to turn to food for comfort. Food feels good and calms our anxiety in a way that doesn't cause us to actually become closer to God. But comfort has a way of sucking us in and then dragging us down farther. The problem with comfort food is that it actually doesn't comfort you at all. It's the comfort you feel that leads to an even deeper kind of problem that keeps you trapped in a cycle of suffering and pain. The same way your stomach distends after eating too much, so does your heart when it takes comfort in the fact that you're too weak to go after something better, that you don't have what it takes to truly become the woman God created you to be. So too your mind. If you eat too much because it provides a feeling of comfort and relief, then in a lot of ways you are feeding the root of your true problem: a weak heart that is too quick to doubt its ability to make things right. One of the most common ways we feed the problem is through a false sense of security. I'll never forget driving down a back road in the deep South of Texas with my wife and a bunch of her sorority sisters in our trusty white Chevy and seeing a little white sign that read _Kilgore Chapel_. These were the sisters, young women in their early 20s, who met weekly for prayer and Bible study, where we would be encouraged by other women in the Bible and encouraged to pursue our dreams. There was a lot of prayer going on, so I have to say that God was really helping us out in this endeavor. Then one day as we were driving down that road, my wife saw a sign that said, "Booze N Go." I swear to you she became so hysterical laughing that she nearly choked and had to gasp for air, because it was too funny. There was a bar, a gas station, and a church all in one, and it literally had an orange roof! It was the most ridiculous thing I've ever seen in my life, and I laughed so hard that I'm convinced I could've fallen out of the car. I'm not sure who's the bigger idiot—me for laughing at such an absurd sight or God, who had a little fun with us all at the expense of His church. But when we came up for air, we realized that both of us were laughing so hard that tears were streaming down our faces, and we were really having a hard time catching our breath. Then I realized something about myself that surprised me. I realized that the only reason we weren't more offended by the _Kilgore Chapel_ thing was that we already knew it was stupid to be offended by a church sign. In a lot of ways, we were so accustomed to seeing a sign like this that we didn't realize how ridiculous it was. It was so obvious that it's so ridiculous that people can't help but laugh. The same is true with God. God is so obviously good, and He is also so obviously crazy that you can't help but fall into His joke. It's as obvious that He's on your side and wants you to succeed as the idea that you might drink booze while attending church. He wants us to laugh, so we can learn to laugh at ourselves, so we can see the ridiculousness of it all. ## **What Do I Do with My "Mental Doughnuts"?** But often the problem is not so easily fixed. We can do a hundred things for a while that make us feel better, but we can never truly be free of our own doubts. This is the beauty of Jesus and his ultimate love and mercy for us. It is because of his goodness that we even have a chance to be free. By the grace of God, we can work through these hurts, these habits, these hang-ups that are making us feel all wrong about ourselves. And that's exactly what I did when I started to get myself back together. I felt comfortable, even happy, eating less and drinking alcohol only rarely. God didn't leave me at the store so I could just go shopping; he didn't leave me at the market to buy bread; he left me there because he wanted to help me. He wanted to teach me that I was made for more than what I'd been doing, and he left me there for me to discover it on my own. And you know what? He did something that has helped me in my lifetime and helped many of the people I have counseled as well. You may have heard the expression, "If God's not a part of the plan, then there's something wrong." This is where the term "plan" comes from. If God is the plan, then He is involved in everything you do, every thought you think, every decision you make. Even things that don't seem to relate at all to Him can be in line with His will. You know what I mean? For example, my uncle owned a business that he sold before he was fully retired. When he announced he was selling it, he shared with me that if he hadn't, he would've been crushed. His entire life had been spent owning and running a hardware store in the town where he was born, in a town of about six thousand people. That's all he ever wanted to do in life, and to see him sell it so late in life was very difficult for him. He told me that he was in his late 60s, and he could have hung onto the store forever, but he sold it and moved on because he was tired of looking at that store as a reminder of his past. It was something that brought him a lot of pain and a whole lot of anguish. He had always been the guy that didn't need much money and didn't spend a lot of money, but he certainly enjoyed spending a lot of money. He was very successful, having done this business for forty years. He would tell me that it was not a good business to make a lot of money. His main goal was to be liked, and he felt very successful as a result. But once he sold that business, he didn't feel successful anymore. It had given him everything he needed and had enjoyed doing, but at the same time, he was miserable and deeply troubled. The business had been his passion and mission for most of his life, and when it was gone, it felt like he was losing his last connection to his life's work and his purpose. I shared a similar story with him. I was a teacher and a minister, a student of philosophy and my favorite theologian at the time, Søren Kierkegaard. My passion was and still is teaching the Bible, sharing God's love, and helping other people find Him. The only problem is that my particular passion has been a little more difficult for me to figure out. And I think I could say the same thing for you. Sometimes we get it, and sometimes we don't. For example, my wife got it. But some people do not have a clue that they are supposed to help others through the power of Christ. They're not supposed to help people; they're supposed to help the hurting. They're supposed to teach people about Jesus, and yet so many of us are more concerned about ourselves. We are in far more desperate need of the truth of what God has for us than we are of teaching people about Christ. If we want to be free of our struggles, then this is what we have to do. We have to admit that we are in desperate need of the truth of God, of who He is, and of who He is and what He has for us. And that's how the story of my uncle, Howard, and my life have really come together in the book you hold in your hands. And when we're all finally done here and you've gone off to start your life, the thing I want to tell you is that even if you're not sure what your passion in life is, you already have one. It's a very strange thing that everyone in this world has to have a particular reason to be here, and yet not one of us has to know what it is. Everyone is born with a spark of God's very nature within them.