Hannah Koerner, Author at The Captivating Woman

{I feel the need to preface this by saying that I in no way claim to understand all mental health issues. There are so many ways our minds can work against us, and I don’t claim to be the spokesperson for what life with minds that don’t love us the way they should looks like. I just also can’t keep hiding behind that fact when it means that my experience with them doesn’t get shared out of fear or worry of popular opinion}

When I was in college, I was diagnosed with Body Dysmorphic Disorder. Long story short, it’s the tendency to fixate on one flaw in my person and appearance and assume that not only is the flaw evident to everyone I meet, but it’s all that anyone can see when they look at me. As a teenager, it involved a lot of side glances into the mirror to see if my stomach was sticking out too far, if my arms looked too fat, if my nose stuck out too far, if my neck had rolls in photos, if my jawline or shoulders weren’t clearly defined in photos, if I was wearing shorts I worried my knees looked fat, or that my ankles were too big or too weirdly shaped, that my feet were fat in sandals, that my hands/fingers/nails were too short and stumpy, if my eyes were too green or too blue or too squinty, if my hair was too long/short/frizzy/curly/oily, that my voice was too low/high/breathy/squeaky, if I laughed too hard at someone’s joke or not hard enough, and about a thousand other things. All. Day. Long. For 10 years, I did this to myself over and over again, from the time I woke up until I fell asleep. It was exhausting, but it was my life and I convinced myself it was normal.

I was in really wonderful youth groups where I encouraged people to be real and vulnerable with their struggles, and I didn’t even know where to start. I’d actually have to admit that I couldn’t do it all on my own, and that there might be something wrong with me. I heard these really beautiful and polished speakers tell me to fake it until I made it. So I got incredibly good at faking it, but never quite figured out how to make it. I got so good at faking it, that literally no one except my college roommate had any idea that I was even insecure. I put on a heck of a show: I was involved in everything, intelligent, talented and focused. I needed to feel useful because in my mind that was the only way people would want me around, so I did everything I could handle at a time and then some. I was a people pleaser and never the squeaky wheel. I was the image of a girl with it all together, because I was terrified that people would be so uncomfortable or ashamed of me if they knew that I was secretly broken.

In college, I lived with the same girl for four years, and there were a lot of late night conversations where I was more vulnerable than I’d ever been in my life. A lot of the things I’d believed and fixated on in my own head found their way out of my mouth and didn’t sound quite so true when I was hearing myself say it aloud. She, and eventually several other friends, encouraged me to go talk to someone. But to go to a therapist meant that I was admitting that not only was I broken, I was broken to the point that my hyper-capability couldn’t fix it. It meant that I’d have to have some hard conversations with people I couldn’t bear to disappoint, it meant that I was one of those people with mental health issues. If I didn’t go, I could keep telling myself it wasn’t really that bad.

I fought it kicking and screaming for 18 months, determined that enough prayer and spiritual maturity would cure it for me. If I just spent more time in the word, prayed a little harder, opened up to people one on one, and made myself look as close to Proverbs 31 as I could, I could whittle it down to manageable enough levels and cope with it forever. It was fine. It was normal, and I’d make it work because I’m stubborn enough to make most things work on sheer will alone. And for a while, I was successful. I was getting better, I was more confident, I started talking to boys I liked rather than hide myself away because if I killed it before it started nobody could hurt me but me. And then I was in a situation where I had put myself out there and it did not go well, thrusting me fully back into my own head, making up answers for why it didn’t work. My tolerance for handling the harsh voice in my head had diminished and all of a sudden my own self-hatred and judgment was back at full force. I couldn’t handle it and still pretend that everything was fine, so I surrendered and made the appointment.

I met with her, determined to let it out slowly, and of course the dam of self-control burst and all I knew how to give rushed out in 57 minutes. She at some point mentioned something about a vulnerability hangover, where I would probably feel really raw and vulnerable after sharing so much, but that I shouldn’t let those feelings prevent me from returning. It sounded so manageable when she said it, and the reality of it was easily 10 times worse. I hid in my house from the world for 3 days, leaving only to go to class and work and then come back home.

But I went back the next week, and the next and the next for 6 months. And I learned that just because an errant thought about my body or my behavior entered my head, it didn’t mean that it was how the world saw me. I learned that refusing to talk about it only gave it more power and more room to grow, and that when I brought it into the light, it didn’t quite have the same grip on me it had had before. I learned that much of it stemmed from my inability to feel secure in the question, “But at the end of the day, when everything else is stripped away and gone, and it’s just me with all of my flaws and imperfections, am I enough?” I learned that beauty just is. It exists everywhere and when I seek it, I can find it. If I look for it in myself with the same fervor I used to look for flaws, I find it all over the place. I learned that I can’t really be gentle with other people until I know how to be gentle with myself. I learned that being gentle with myself just as I am when I want to be fixed and perfect is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do, and keep doing every day. I learned that there are people in my life who love me and who won’t run even though parts of my brain don’t make it easy to let me love me, but they can’t help me if I won’t let them in.

I learned and finally understood that God saw me with my laundry list of things I hated about myself and somehow still called me not only lovely, but perfect and blameless in His sight.

Some days, I’m great. I walk out of the house feeling beautiful and confident from a place that is still really new to me. And some days, my makeup just doesn’t work, or my nose feels too big or I feel so fat that I know that people are staring at me. I won’t pretend to be fixed or all better, much as I wish I could be. Some days, I wake up and feel like I’ve made the whole thing up in my head for attention and that I am just blowing normal insecurity out of proportion. And then, as only He can, the Lord reminds me yet again that I am His. That I am beautiful, intelligent, kind, strong and not meant to brave this alone. That until the day comes that I receive complete healing or I make it to heaven, I will have to make the conscious choice to rest in what God says about me and not believe the harsh voice in my head.

On days I succeed, I can see glimpses of how this will somehow all be worth it, how the journey of healing is difficult but is only another piece of the tapestry God is weaving. On days I fail, I’m reminded and overwhelmed that “my grace is sufficient for you, and my power is perfected in weakness” (2 Cor. 12:9) and “Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. I say to myself, ‘The Lord is my portion; therefore I will wait for him.’” (Lamentations 3: 22-24)

I’m reminded that I am never in this alone, and even when I let myself forget, I am beautiful. I am worthy. I am so very enough.

I love food.

I’m famous for taking a mixing bowl, you know the really big ones that you are supposed to use when making enough to feed a group at a picnic or potluck, and making the biggest salad you’ve ever seen with all kinds of random ingredients and cradling it like a newborn baby as I go to town.

When I was four years old, and my pre-school class was asked about our favorite foods, I answered “Shrimp Scampi and Crab Legs”. The rest of my class had some variation of pizza, hamburgers and hotdogs. My parents fed the foodie-beast in me from a very young age, and I have long since made it my own.

I will try any food once (with the exception being lamb – I adored the cartoon Lamb Chop as a child and just couldn’t wrap my mind around it, or various pet animals i.e. cat, dog, etc. more on moral grounds than anything else) and have had some really interesting experiences on adventures revolving around food.

I have a line on my bucket list that reads: “Go on a vacation revolving around hole-in-the-wall food places that are life-changing good”

I was a High School Foods teacher for a semester and watched 120 students each have some kind of revelation about their own ability to make good food. They were even amazed of the combination of foods that they weren’t expecting to taste good but ended up delighting them. It was messy, often frustrating, stretching and one of the coolest things I’ve ever done.

One of my very favorite quotes is from Hippocrates, “Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.” I majored in Clinical Nutrition in college, which is basically the field that says that diets can be created to help heal and manage disease by the choices you make at mealtimes, and it’s been incredible to see the extent to which food really can be medicine in a physiological sense but also the community it can create.

Some of the very best conversations I’ve ever had have been around a table with people, because food is the great equalizer. It’s hard to feel intimidated when the person sitting across from you gets pepper stuck between their teeth, or starts laughing as they are trying to swallow and chaos ensues. It’s hard to take yourself too seriously when you bite into a tomato and accidentally squirt the seeds everywhere, or try to eat rice with chopsticks and fail one bite while epically succeeding the next. Food gives you something to do when the conversation lulls, but it also creates a space for genuine conversation and vulnerability unlike any other medium I’ve found.

The Church in Acts understood this, I think. Acts 2:44-47 in the New Living Translation says, “… and all the believers met together in one place and shared everything they had. They sold their property and possessions and shared the money with those in need. They worshiped together at the Temple each day, met in homes for the Lord’s Supper, and shared their meals with great joy and generosity all the while praising God and enjoying the goodwill of all the people. And each day the Lord added to their fellowship those who were being saved.”

This was one of the most successful accounts of the early church. They grew because they saw and took opportunities to praise God in the everyday life. They were generous, cared for other people above themselves, and lived in community with each other – both at church and around the dinner table. If I get to make a choice about the way I want to love like Jesus, this is it in a nutshell.

I love food. I love the way Jesus uses something as simple as eating a meal in proximity with one another to grow communities, to forge lasting friendships, to meet a physical need, and to change lives. I love that making food for someone else makes the recipients feel valued and wanted, and that in sharing it with them you open the doors for Jesus to love and speak through you. I love that God makes a way to take something we already have to do to survive, and creates a way for us to literally bring life to ourselves and other people by doing it together.

I love meeting friends, both old and new, around a table and laughing while we are all a little bit ridiculous and a lot loved. Together, everything really is better – the food, the jokes, the experience, the life.

I am Enough

Better Together

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