Anorexia nearly killed my wife’

From MSNBC on January 26, 2008:

Anorexia nearly killed my wife

By Tom Cramer, as told to Brian Alexander

updated 12:55 p.m. CT, Sun., Jan. 20, 2008

Psychiatric wards are places where they take sharp objects and shoelaces from patients. My wife lived in one for two weeks, when doctors feared she was a danger to herself.

The day Meg was admitted, she was 83 pounds, down from a healthy 109 on her 5'1" frame just five months earlier. Driving home from the aerobics class she taught, she had become nauseated and faint and had chest pains. She went to the ER, where they sent her to the psychiatric ward. When I arrived, I was terrified — and relieved. Maybe, finally, doctors could help her in ways I hadn’t been able to. It was the beginning of Meg’s fight to overcome anorexia, and the start of my own to help the woman I love so much.

Perfect beginnings
After my first date with Meg during my freshmen year of college, I came home and told my roommate, “I could see myself marrying her one day.” He wrote those words in his journal, and five and a half years later, read them aloud to the guests at our wedding. Meg became my best friend, someone who laughed at my goofy jokes, knew a lot about the Steelers and was scary smart. After we had our sons, Mikey and Ryan, she floored me all over again as a mother. Our happiness was clearly visible: People would ask me, “What’s your secret?” and I would say, “When you find the right person, everything else is easy.”

But not everything was easy for Meg. Before we had kids, she worked in child advocacy in Washington, D.C., and loved her career — but when my job transfer forced us to move to North Carolina and then to Pittsburgh, where both our families were, Meg became a stay-at-home mom. Living just miles from our parents, she felt she was under constant scrutiny, pressured to be the perfect wife, mother, daughter and daughter-in-law. I began to understand that beneath my wife’s tough exterior, she was a pleaser.

This desire for perfection extended to Meg’s body. She’d always compared herself to other women, pointing out ones who were thinner. After the birth of our youngest, Ryan, she was determined to lose the last 20 pounds of baby weight. Through dieting and exercise, the pounds came off, and Meg started to wear sexy clothes and exude confidence. When she began teaching and taking daily aerobics classes and cutting out most food, though, even our then five-year-old noticed the difference. “My mom is the queen of salads!” he announced once to a waitress.

I wish I could say that love led me to know what to do. But instead I was cocky. Eating disorders didn’t happen to perfect couples like us. Although I knew she was very thin, I wasn’t able to see that she had a serious disease. I remember bragging to friends that my wife was a hot aerobics instructor.

Wanting to fix things
My arrogance also made me think that I could fix things. As an engineer, I identify an issue and find a solution. “I can handle this,” I told myself. There was, after all, a simple answer: Meg needed to eat more, and I thought I could persuade her to do that. I reasoned that Meg’s job was to get her prescribed calories and readjust her thinking; mine was to take care of the house and kids while she did that. I became superdad: I made dinner for the boys and started cleaning. Every toy was in place, and one dirty sock became a reason to do the laundry.

Since that time, I’ve learned that anorexia does not have an on/off switch. What Meg needed from me was adult interaction and emotional support, not clean clothes. Which is why, under my brilliant strategy, we went from a couple that rarely fought to one that argued all the time about food and the gym.

The more I pushed her to change, the more she pushed back. She tossed the sexy clothes and adopted a uniform of baggy pants and shirts to hide her wasting body from me. We rarely made love. She had so little energy that she’d fall in bed by eight, just after the kids went to sleep. Her allergies flared and her periods stopped. I found myself making excuses for Meg’s gaunt appearance, telling friends and family that she had the flu or another illness.

Our arguments escalated until one night we went out without the kids and I ordered a cheeseburger for her. She refused to touch it. I begged. Finally I said, “If you really love me, you will eat this!” She wouldn’t. I knew she still loved me, but I was devastated. The plate sat there between us, untouched.

To Meg that meal was probably like so many others, with me nagging and her not budging. But to me it marked a milestone. I finally realized that this wasn’t an eating problem. Meg was fighting me as she never had before, and the problem was more than food. The flawless world I’d convinced myself we lived in had spun out of control. We weren’t perfect. And Meg was very, very sick. Two weeks after my failed showdown at the restaurant, I got the call from Meg at the hospital. Doctors said she’d almost had heart failure and that she was in a state of extreme emotional distress.

My own anorexia experience
After Meg was hospitalized and we started weekly group therapy sessions, I went into overdrive to understand what was pushing my wife to shun food. Didn’t Meg see her ribs sticking out or the sad bit of muscle clinging to her butt? Wasn’t she smart enough to know she should just eat more? I wanted to be inside her head, in her skin, to grasp what was doing this to the woman I thought I knew so well.

In these therapy sessions Meg and others talked repeatedly about the feeling of control they got from anorexia. But what did that mean? How could your own mind tell you to starve yourself? How could you feel good about it? When I imagined missing just one meal, let alone most, there was no payoff, nothing that made it worthwhile. I decided that if I was going to truly understand those emotions — and truly help Meg — I needed to feel what she was feeling, so I decided to starve myself.

For more than a week, without telling anyone, I tried to simulate anorexia. In addition to my daily routine of running three miles, I severely limited my calories. I’d have juice and maybe a banana for breakfast and a small salad for dinner. Since Meg and I usually ate separately, she didn’t notice. But I was exhausted and irritable; my head ached constantly. I’d lie in bed at night and think, I am so hungry! How does she do it? How can the voice Meg hears be so powerful?

But by day three, I began hearing the voice too: “Come on, you can do it. Don’t give in. You’re better than that.” When I refused food, I had a sense of victory. The longer I resisted, the more powerful I felt. When Meg was admitted to the hospital, I thought that she had failed and allowed this to happen. Now I understood the seduction of the words in her head, how they could override the most basic human survival instincts. And I saw her as a hero — who had to be incredibly strong in her fight to recover.

I didn’t tell Meg about my experiment for almost a year, but my attitude changed immediately. No longer ashamed because I thought my wife was weak, I got over my need for us to be exalted as perfect. I stopped lying to friends and family that Meg had the flu. As I was more honest, support and encouragement flowed in — our friends didn’t distance themselves or disappear as I’d feared. I became the advocate Meg needed, able to coach others on why they should never mention Meg’s appearance or comment on her food choices. For example, if someone said, “A salad! That won’t be enough!” I would remember times that I’d used those very words, and then I’d explain that pressuring her wouldn’t help and might make things worse. Instead of trying to protect her by denying that there was a problem, I became a speed bump between my wife and the rest of the world.

Ready to get healthy
I had changed, but Meg was still not fully ready. She would make progress, only to face setbacks and lose weight. But then one day in January, after a difficult holiday season, I came home and found the bathroom scale lying in pieces in the driveway. Meg had thrown it out the window.

“What’s going on?” I asked, picking up parts of the scale from the concrete.
“I’m sick of us constantly arguing about this, of everything being about it!” she said. “I must really be sick if this has taken over our lives.”

This was the Meg I had married. She made a decision that day; she was ready to get healthy.

I still have a piece of the scale — it reads 74.5 pounds. It sits in my top drawer, a reminder of all we’ve been through. I’ll never let it go.

After that Meg and I made a deal. I promised that if she would trust me to be her eyes, I would never, ever lie to her about how she looked. Her own brain might deceive her, but she knows that I never will. At times this pledge has meant having to answer every man’s least favorite question: “Do I look fat?” Even though she never does, when a pair of pants or a skirt is not the most flattering, I gently tell her. It’s our agreement to this day and I am humbled by her trust in me.

Meg is back to a healthy size, though she still has setbacks sometimes. While my radar is always up, I told her I would never ask what she weighs, and I don’t. When I do notice a change, I say something like, “I see that you’re struggling and I’m here if you need anything.” We don’t discuss it or turn it into a battle, and she always gets herself back on track.

If you were to meet us today, you’d never know we’d lived through such a problem. We spend a lot of our weekends watching the boys play baseball or hockey. Sometimes I coach as Meg yells encouragement from the stands. Afterward we might all go out for a pizza and, yes, Meg may have a slice, though she still gets a salad, too. I once shouted, “There will be no more salads in this house!” — but now we can laugh about her favorite side order.

We don’t say we’re over anorexia, we say we live with it. Meg can easily spot someone with the disease, and while she’s happy not to be consumed by it any more, she still hears that little voice. Not long ago she told me, “I wonder how some women can keep it up, how they can stay skinny for so long when I couldn’t.”

After she said it, I simply looked at her. Imagine knowing that the person you love more than you ever thought you could love had to fight something so mind-altering. Having faced it myself, even for just a few days, I am left in awe of her bravery. The other day somebody asked me, “You’re crazy about your wife, aren’t you?” All I could say, before I teared up, was, “You have no idea.”

Preaching on forgiveness

I preached a sermon this last week on forgiveness, and I really wrestled with the issue of bitterness and the command to forgive as we have been forgiven. As I was preaching this, I felt the heaviness of the situation upon me. This sermon was exposing the darkness for what it really was. The stories I heard after the sermon confirmed this. One man told me about how his dad had cheated on him mom and altogether left the family. How can he forgive him?
This issue cripples people and I have to realize the intensly spiritual battle occuring in people's lives. Scripture says our battle is not against flesh and blood, but with powers and principalities. This has some big ramifications. I was preaching to some people who had spiritual oppression occuring in thier lives. They were crippled by feelings of unforgiveness.
My own family is dealing with this right now. How can my parents forgive my sister for being a lesbian? She has made some choices that are tearing my family apart.
Yet we pray, 'forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us."

Back to the autoshop

Several weeks ago an ice storm destroyed Tulsa. Part of that destruction was a mirror knocked off my car. Since that happened I was able to get my damage appraised for much more than it actually was, and then I was able to get my windshield fixed for free. I left my car at the autobody shop to get the mirror and windshield fixed, but for some reason the only thing that got fixed was my windshield. Somehow my mirror was not attached. So, I didn't pay for the repairs until they finished up the work. I had to go out of town the next week, but once I was back in town I set up an appointment to get my mirror fixed for them to finish their work. I was scheduled to go in two days, but as I was driving down the road I couldn't see a car coming up on my driver side, because of the missing mirror, and I ran into them in their lane. Of course, it was an Asbury member.

So, I returned to the shop to get my car appraised and to see if they could fix it when the mirror was supposed to be fixed, and the saddest thing happened. I was somehow remembered at the shop because it had been that soon. They greeted me by name and even made small talk with me like I worked there. Its never a good sign when the autobody shop knows you by name.

Dog Fight

When we were living in Dallas we would go to the dog park with our Jack Russell quite a bit. It was a nice way to meet people and let the dog play. The dog park is simply a open area with a fence. As you might guess, dog fights were somewhat common. One day there was a man there with a little lap dog of sorts and some bigger dogs came up to all aggressive like and he stepped in the middle and grabbed his dog out of the escalating tension. As he was doing this, all the other dogs were taking notice of the action and were rushing over. So as he is picking up his dog he is knocked down or he falls. It looks like something from the Discovery Channel when a big animal is taken down by a bunch of small animals. He stepped in the middle of this and in the end it came back to hurt him. Its just like the Proverb that warns us of the danger of stepping into the middle of conflict. Proverbs 26:17 Like one who seizes a dog by the ears is a passer-by who meddles in a quarrel not his own.

Faith Sharing

I remember leading a mission trip a few years ago to Mexico. One of the days we were trying to connect a neighborhood to a local church where we were having a VBS. To connect the neighborhood to the church, we would go out with translators and basically just try to talk to whoever we saw. In that neighborhood, there were lots of people without jobs just kind of hanging out in front of their little houses, or shacks. We would try to ask questions about them. I remember one high school student who was really trying to be intentional about sharing his faith, yet he was always awkward. He would ask questions that just made him look like a creep. “How are you today? Do you have children? Are they home? Is your husband home? By this time I was trying to back away because he was embarrassing himself.

From Sex God by Rob Bell, pg 18

In 1945, a group of British soldiers liberated a German concentration camp called Bergen-Belsen. One of them, Lieutenant Colonerl Mercin Willet Gonin DSO, wrote in his diary about what they encountered:

"I can give no adequate description of the Horror Camp in which my men and myself were to spend the next month of our lives. It was just a barren wilderness, as barren as a chicken run. Corpses lay everywhere, some in huge piles, sometimes they lay singly or in pairs where they had fallen. It took a little time to get used to seeing men, women, and children collapse as you walked by them...One knew that five hundred a day were dying and that five hundred a day were going on dying for weeks before anything we could do would have the slightest effect. It was, however, not east to watch a child chocking to death from diphtheria when you knew a tracheotomy and nursing would save it. One saw women drowning in their own vomit because they were too weak to turn over, men eating worms as they clutched a half loaf of bread purely because they had to eat worms to live and now could scarcely tell the difference. Piles of corpses, naked and obscene, with a woman to weak to stand propping herself against them as she cooked the food we had given her over an open fire; men and women crouching down just anywhere in the open relieving themselves....a dysentery tank in which the remains of a child floated.


It was shortly after the British Red Cross arrived, though it may have no connection, that a very large quantity of lipstick arrived. This was not at all what we wanted, we were screaming for hundreds and thousands of other things and I don't know who asked for lipstick. I wish so much that I could discover who did it, it was the action of genius, sheer unadulterated brilliance. I believe nothing did more for these internees than the lipstick. Women lay in bed with no sheets and no nightie but with scarlet red lips, you saw them wandering about with nothing but a blanket over their shoulders, but with scarlet red lips. I saw a woman dead on the postmortem table and clutched in her hands was a piece of lipstick. At last someone had something to make them individuals again, they were someone, no longer merely the number tattooed on the arm. At last the could take an interest in their appearance that lipstick started to give them back their humanity."

Prostitute not going to church

From The Jesus I Never Knew by Philip Yancy

A friend of mine works with the down and out in Chicago. A prostitute came to him in wretched straits, homeless, her health failing, unable to buy food for her two year old daughter. Her eyes awash with tears, she confessed that she had been renting out her daughter- two years old!- to men interested in kinky sex, in order to support her own drug habit. My friend could hardly bear hearing the sordid details of her story. He sat in silence not knowing what to say. At last he asked if she had ever thoughts of going to a church for help. "I will never forget the look of pure astonishment that crossed her face," he later told me. "Church!" she cried. "Why would I ever go there? They'd just make me feel even worse that I already do!"

Big Nasty

Went hunting in Texas this last weekend. I have grown up hunting among the scarce deer population of southern Missouri my entire life. Deer hunting in Missouri included a few things: cold temperatures, camping (in the cold), beer, sitting in a racketing tree stand for a few hours without seeing a thing before finally getting down to go look for the deer, and then finally heading back to camp cold, tired, and depressed because you hadn't seen anything.

However, hunting in Texas is a very different experience. First, I climbed in my stand and sat in my warm deer blind, which is very different than a tree stand. A tree stand is made of random pieces of lumber nailed to a tree that will somehow support human weight. These stands are very cold and very scary. A deer blind on the other hand is positioned in the open next to a deer feeder, which almost guarantees at least seeing a deer. The deer blind has four walls that stop the wind and windows that can open and close to get a shot. You can balance your gun and just wait for the deer to come. If you get down to walk around it is because you missed and scared all the deer away thus nullifying the guarantee of the deer blind. In addition, you sit on an office chair and not cold hard lumber.

This morning the feeder did not go off, but the deer still came. I had to wait about an hour or so before I spotted two does. I watched them about a hundred yards off to the east grazing by a big cedar tree. They would move in and out of the cedars but stayed pretty far off. I looked at them for about twenty minutes through my scope thinking about whether or not I actually wanted to take the shot. I didn't want to settle for a doe, but I was not seeing anything else. I waited too long and the two does finally disappeared for good into the cedars.

I waited another long 20 minutes before a small buck appeared by the feeder looking for food. He walked into the pin surrounding the feeder and grazed in the grass and the corn. I watched him for a while as well. I could see that he wasn't legal because there was not a 12 inch span between his antlers, but I did want a buck and here was a little four or six pointer. I had my safety off, but I still didn't take the shot. He walked off to the west, and as soon as he was out of view behind a cedar, the big nasty showed up.

I had seen this deer before. I had even taken a shot at him, but missed because I was too excited about getting a big deer. He had at least ten points, and walked very slowly across the field. I could feel my pulse quicken and my breath get much shallower. He suddenly stopped and I said to myself that I was not going to let this one pass. I slowly pulled the trigger, learning from my last shot that if I was excited I could yank it too hard and pull the gun off target. The rifle sounded the shot and the deer dropped without a fight. It was the best shot I have ever taken. It only left a small hole in the shoulder, but did not ruin any meat. It was the biggest deer of my life, and the best shot. I have it all to owe to patience in not taking the two little does.

Athletic,? well kind of

I don't much to write about today, it was just another Wednesday. It was Wednesday, except that I got to play over two hours of basketball for work. Sometimes, ministry is a great profession because I get to do stuff like this.

The college students are still home, and so Todd and I put off work for a few hours to play some ball. It had been a long, long time since I played basketball. I remember one time running to the Dedman Center at SMU and then shooting baskets for a little while before running home. But it has been a long time since I actually played a game.

I learned that which I had forgotten, but had learned many, many times. I am not a good basketball player. I still hold myself to be somewhat athletic, after all I did compete on scholarship for a Division I cross country and track team. But when it comes to basketball I am all limbs. I can't seem to run fast in short spurts. I have no lateral quickness. I can't jump. I can hardly shoot. My hand-eye coordination is lacking. In the end, I only play on the one thing I have more than most people- grit.

That one crucial element has been my friend through much of my athletic endeavorer's. In track, I ran the 800m. Some people describe this event as mid-distance. What they are really meaning to say is it is not a distance run (so 800m runners don't have excessive endurance); nor is it a sprint (so 800m runners don't have excessive speed). What are they left with then? Strength? Hardly. 800m runners depend almost exclusively on heart. The race is short and intense. It is really a series of tough decisions. When I was racing, I was always a little afraid of the 800 because of the fact that I would have to make some really hard decision. But the 800 strategy was simply that at 300m I would have to decide where I would settle in the pack. At 400m I would have to decide to not fall back for the next 200m, which really means maintain a pace that seems impossible for anther lap. At 600m I would have to decide to get up on my toes and go! At 750m, I would have to decide to push past the numbness all over my body and the lactic acid that had by this time crept into my mouth. Even my gums hurt at the end of my race!

But the good thing coming out of this that has helped me most of the times is learning that I can make that tough decision when it comes to it. Whether that is going into a hospital room, standing up to preach a sermon, or even playing basketball with college guys.

Kenyans burned to death in church

From BBC on Jan 1, 2008:

Thirty Kenyans including many children have been burned to death in a church, after seeking refuge from the mounting violence over last week's elections.

A mob attacked and set fire to the church in the western town of Eldoret where hundreds of people were hiding, say police and eyewitness reports.

Dozens more are reported to have been taken to hospital with severe burns.

It comes as EU election monitors said the presidential poll "fell short of international standards".

In an interim report, chief EU monitor Alexander Graf Lambsdorff said the tallying process "lacked credibility".

Mr Lambsdorff said an independent inquiry was needed to resolve the dispute over the election and called on the Electoral Commission of Kenya to co-operate fully.

The observers say an audit of all the voting returns is vital, and called for results from every polling station to be published in newspapers and on the internet.

Four Kenyan election commissioners have also expressed unease at the result, but the government denied any irregularities.

Fresh killings

About 400 people were said to be taking refuge in the Kenya Assemblies of God church when the attack took place at about 1000 (0700 GMT).

A pastor from the church, Jackson Nyanga told the BBC that many of the people were beaten before the building was set on fire.

"After torching the church, children died - around 25 in number - four elderly people. And our men and our people who tried to confront them were injured," he said.

Most of the victims were members of the same Kikuyu ethnic group as the newly re-elected President Mwai Kibaki.

Eldoret, in the Rift Valley, has witnessed some of the worst violence since Sunday's controversial poll and has a history of inter-ethnic tension.

Correspondents say that over the past few days hundreds of Kikuyus in the Eldoret area have been taking shelter in churches and around the town's police station.

Eldoret resident Bernard Magamu told the BBC News website that many houses and businesses have been torched, and that roads in and around the town have been closed.

"People are still fearful. It's hard. People are really scared," said Mr Magamu, adding that local hospitals were struggling to cope with the high number of casualties.

The Kenyan Red Cross said that at least 70,000 people have been displaced in the Rift Valley area as a result of the unrest, describing it as "a national disaster".

At least 160 people were killed across Kenya after the election result was announced on Sunday, according to the Red Cross, though the numbers are expected to rise after continued violence on Monday.

Mr Kibaki's challenger, Raila Odinga, backed by the Luo community, said that if fresh killings were taken into account, the total would likely be about 250 or "slightly more".

UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown has again urged Kenya's political leaders to talk, and said: "The violence must be brought to an end."

Doubts expressed

EU observers said the country's election was flawed.

"They were marred by a lack of transparency in the processing and tallying of presidential results, which raises concerns about the accuracy of the final results," the EU team said in a statement.

According to the EU, in at least two constituencies - Molo and Kieni - the results that were announced did not reflect the number of votes cast.

EU observers say they heard the voting figures being announced in Molo itself, but when the same results were announced again in Nairobi, the number of votes for Mr Kibaki was significantly higher - by 25,000.

Four of the 22 Kenyan election commissioners have also expressed doubts about the veracity of the figures giving President Kibaki victory by 200,000 votes.

But Finance Minister Amos Kimunya denied his party, the ruling PNU, or the government had been involved in rigging the poll.

He told the BBC: "I have no evidence that they were rigged. Anyone who has any information that they were rigged in one constituency or the other, or overall, let them subject it through the legal process."

Mr Kibaki was declared the winner on Sunday after a controversial three-day counting process.

His challenger, Mr Odinga, said he was robbed of victory by alleged fraud.