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If They Only Knew (Song for Polly)

If They Only Knew (Song for Polly)

These are the lyrics to a song I wrote after the passing of Polly Williams. If you've seen Lauren Greenfield's HBO documentary, Thin, you may remember Polly as the patient who was asked to leave after the team deemed her "a bad seed." This bothers me, to this day. Polly was not a bad seed. She was not a bad person. She was sick, confused, disillusioned, and she needed further help -- period.

After leaving Florida's Renfrew Center involuntarily, Polly relapsed for some time and then seemed to get her life back on track. I suspect that those around her believed she was doing well, and maybe they forgot to check in. Maybe they got a little lazy about it. Maybe they were tired of it all, and just hoped she had finally gotten over her silly little eating disorder.

And maybe we all need to be a little more diligent about checking in with one another, keeping one another on track. This song is something of a reminder.


IF THEY ONLY KNEW (Song for Polly)
Walks past the storefront window
Sees her reflection in the glass
She doesn’t really know that girl
Might have met her in the past

Seems to have it all together
Must just sail right through life
Probably someone’s mother
Someone’s lover, someone’s wife

(chorus)But oh, if they only knew
The confusion and the lies
If they could see the struggle
That she snuggles with at night
If they could see behind the smile
To where the worries lie
They’d nevermore believe her
When she says “I’m doing fine”

Goes to church on Sunday
They’d notice if she didn’t show
She’s a familiar face
A name that everybody knows

She teaches little children
How to love and serve their Lord
And all that know her love her
But there’s a shadow they ignore

(chorus)Because oh, if they only knew
How she cries herself to sleep
If they could see her weariness
And the secrets that she keeps
If they could look beyond her mask
To the tenderness inside
They’d dig a little deeper
When she says “I’m doing fine”

(bridge)And when the sun sets in the evening
And when her telephone stops ringing
She’s needing something to believe in
And wishing somebody would call
Oh, anyone at all

And oh, if they only knew
All the questions in her heart
If they could know the emptiness
Of how they echo in the dark
If they could see her hidden tears
And hear her silent, stifled cry
They’d never let her get away
She’d never go another day
They simply wouldn’t let her say“I’m doing fine”

Polly Williams (1974-2008)

To My Beautiful Girlfriends (Read: ALL of you!) -- posted on Facebook in 02/09

Yesterday marked a little milestone in my short little life. In support of a great lady out in Tennessee who is making a difference in the war against twisted cultural ideals of beauty and self-image, I posted a picture of a nude-faced Jena. The woman, Constance, has challenged herself to go sans makeup for one month (and yes, she picked the shortest month of the year, but it's also eating disorder awareness month, so we won't hold that against her, will we?). Well, a few days ago, Constance was getting a little tired of posting "scary pictures" of herself on Facebook, so I offered to do the same, as a gesture of support and encouragement. She said she would appreciate that, so I uploaded the nude-faced pic and tagged her in it as proof of my (notably admirable) loyalty. But she took it a step further and challenged me to make the pic my PROFILE pic for a day. Now THAT, I gotta say, I wasn't so enthusiastic about. Of course, all anyone has to do is challenge me or dare me, and I'm stirred. Hence the "naked" profile pic of Jena.

I wasn't prepared for the response I got from so many of you. My inbox was full throughout the day. Some of you shared things with me that I would never have expected, and I want you to know how much I appreciate your honesty. It made me feel pretty warm to realize that you felt comfortable enough (or, at least, compelled) to respond as you did. But it also made me realize just how far-reaching the damage of our western beauty myths has extended. I was shocked to learn how many of my (beautiful!) friends are at war with their own reflections. (Please note: I have tagged many more people here than just those who sent me messages, so don't try to figure out who responded. You'll never know, and that's how it should be!)

Last night around midnight, figuring I had fulfilled my duty, I changed my profile picture. I was all too happy to do so. Then I woke up this morning to more messages from you, and I felt convicted to put the naked-faced shot back up for another day. I had NO IDEA such a teeny little act of "protest" would spur such a reaction. Things are all a-buzz in my little corner of the Facebook world. I never thought disturbing the peace would be so fulfilling.

Enjoy your day, my pretties. You are God's masterpiece (Ephesians 2:10)...
Jena

Wishin' and Prayin'

I'm not an especially assertive person. A few of you have sent me Facebook messages telling me that I seem so much bolder than you remember me in middle school, high school, college, prison, wherever we saw one another last. (Okay, not prison. Just making sure you pay attention.) I appreciate your messages, but as I read them they cause me to giggle through my coffee, because I'm only bold in my "virtual" world. My friend has a magnet on her fridge that says "I wish I were the person my dog thinks I am." I think I need one that says, "I wish I were the person my Facebook friends think I've become."

But wishing only gets us so far. I could wish for a lot of things. I used to make quite a habit of wishing. I wish I could go back in time. I wish I had finished school. I wish I had eyes like my friend Bonnie's, hair like my friend Kris' and a body like Ellen Pompeo's. I wish I were less neurotic, and didn't care so much about things that don't matter. I wish I could be a stay-at-home mom, I wish I could get a multi-book contract, I wish I were more proficient on piano. I wish, I wish, I wish. Wishing gets singularly dull after a while. I wish I could stop wishing.

Wish granted! I've decided to trade wishing for hoping. The key, of course, is to know the difference. You have to sort out the changeable from the unchangeable. Reciting the serenity prayer helps, if you can get through it without feeling like Stuart Smalley. If you can do that, then you might be able to eventually trade the hoping for praying and mingle the prayer with action.

My son Jaden's kindergarten teacher last year taught the kids an invaluable little mantra: "'Ya git whatcha git and you don't throw a fit." Maybe that's a magnet I need on my fridge. It's true, after all; we "git" what we "git." What we're responsible for is what we do with what we "git." And all the wishing in the world won't change that.

I think I'm starting to get it. It has taken 32 years, but I'm starting to understand. And who knows? If I continue to listen to the wisdom of kindergarten teachers, I may just become the person my Facebook friends think I am.

Busted! (Or, to use a churchy term, convicted!)

Have you ever sensed God speaking to you in such a way that you knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that it was His voice? More specifically, have you ever sensed the conviction of His spirit so profoundly - and so precisely - that you felt compelled to fall to your knees, right where you stood? Yeah, me too. This morning, in fact.

So I'm in church early this morning for sound check and practice, and I'm hearing my own voice in my monitor, singing words like "Take my heart and form it / Take my mind, transform it" and suddenly a mental image flashes into my brain: my prom picture. How spiritual, right? Chris had posted it on his profile yesterday, and we laughed and reminisced about it, and then I added it to my own photos, along with some disparaging comments about my pasty skin and fat face. I didn't think about, you understand. I just did it. It was an automatic, almost unconscious, response. Luke 6:45 tells us that "out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks" (or the fingers type, as it were). I guess I might have a little darkness in my heart, to put it mildly.

As I often like to do with conviction, I shook it off and re-focused myself on the music. During the second service, I heard my voice in the monitor again, singing back to me, "I'm captured by Your holy calling / Set me apart / I know You're drawing me to Yourself / Lead me, Lord, I pray." Such a beautiful song. I've sung it more times in my Christian life than I can count, and yet each time it means something different to me. And this morning, try as I did to shake off that nagging sense of conviction, I felt that God was reminding me that if I am to be truly "set apart" for Him, and if I really want Him to "lead me, Lord, I pray", I must make some changes, both in my heart and between my ears. No more dissing myself in photos, or in storefront windows, or in the mirror. It's JUST not cool with Him. Whether it bothers me or not, HE doesn't like it one bit. Ouch.

And I still wasn't off the hook. I looked out at all those beautiful teenagers in the first three rows, just fifteen feet in front of me, and watched them as Eric sang, "Who are the treasured and the prized / Who is the apple of God's eye / Who is" and then they sang along with me, "We are, we are, we are!" Their sweet little faces made me cry. These are kids I love very much. These are girls I want to teach to love themselves and respect themselves and see themselves as God sees them. In fact, should I ever go back to school, it would be with the goal and the hope of equipping myself to work in such a capacity. But it looks like I may have far more work to do than can be done in the classroom. Heart work. Work that no one else can do for me. Work that hurts, like re-setting a bone that's been broken for thirty years. Am I up for it?

I don't know, honestly. But if I want to help other women to build healthy self images, I had better be. Otherwise, I might as well stand before them and say, "Hi there, Pot. It's me kettle. Yeah, you're black."So, what to do? Well, for starters, I plan to sit on my hands if I have to each time someone posts a photo of me that I don't like, to keep myself from typing out of the overflow of my goopy, sludgy heart. You can call me out on that if I screw up. And, I'll continue to sing my songs of praise to the One who is far more forgiving toward me than I ever have been. I should try being a bit more like Him.

The Beauty of Brokenness

I love Mosaics. I love to look at each tiny little piece of broken tile, and try to see it first as separate from the whole, as a fraction of the thing it once was. Did it used to have a life of its own, maybe as a vase or a plate, before it met its shattering fate and went on to become a vital component of a work of art? How did it break? Was it dropped, mishandled, intentionally destroyed for a larger purpose? I love that the pieces haven't been thrown away or wasted, but that the artist saw their remaining (or maybe enduring) value, and picked them up and said, "I can use you."

Mosaics are cool, because they are a neat little visual allegory of the way God works. Human beings, it seems, are even more prone to breaking than ceramic or clay. When I think of all the people who have most touched my life, whose words and deeds and legacies have helped to form and shape me, I am taken by the realization of something they all seem to have in common: they are, or were, decidedly imperfect, "broken on the wheels of living," as Brennan Manning has said. They are works in progress, turning their messes into messages and their tests into testimonies. Some of them are, indeed, a bit rough around the edges, and I suspect that their creator and mine is okay with that.

People who have been through a bit of fire, who have lived and learned, who have shed some lifeblood and come out the better for it, are effortlessly inspirational. They don't have to try too hard to be pithy or poignant or witty or wise, because the fact that they are still here speaks volumes before they ever have to say a word. They have a wide-eyed wonder at having endured, having been spared, that is contagious.They are the recovered addicts, the tenderhearted former bullies, the learning-disabled scholars, the wounded healers. Their lives speak, encouraging others to press on, to trust in the restorative hand and heart of God.

I remember an early concert given by the late Rich Mullins, the well-known Christian songwriter, wherein he reached for his guitar to play an acoustic ballad, and as he began to play, he started laughing and admitted, "This guitar is terminally out of tune, but I tend to think things are boring if they're really fine." The audience chuckled, because part of the appeal of Rich was that he was, in fact, quite rough around the edges. He didn't stop to tune the guitar; he started the song over again, still with the same out-of-tune instrument.

I like his style; Rich could appreciate the brokenness in both people and things, because he himself was admittedly broken. And maybe he was right; maybe pristine equals dull, and flawed equals interesting. And if that's the case, if all of us who are flawed and imperfect are more interesting and valuable for our brokenness, then maybe we can learn to embrace our shattered lives as a new kind of creation, like a mosaic. Maybe we can learn to be just a little bit more grateful for where we are, in light of where we were. Maybe we can remember that in our weakness, God's strength is made perfect. And maybe, just maybe, broken will become the new beautiful.

Food For Thought: Post Numero Uno!

Welcome, friends, to my pink, girly, new blog. Think of this little forum as our clubhouse, with our little pink sign posted on the tree trunk: Girlz Only! (Okay, but actually, I'm totally cool with guys poppin' in, too... as long as they're not too manly to read a pink blog.)



I want this to be a safe, supportive place of encouragement for any of us who are on this journey toward wholeness, who desire to break out of the Golden Cage (little nod to Hilde Bruch) of disordered eating and body loathing, and embrace the truth of God's Word regarding our bodies, ourselves.



PLEASE NOTE: This is NOT a pro-ana or pro-mia blog; your comments will be moderated, and anything deemed to be triggering or discouraging will be removed. Cool? Thanks!



So, here's the deal: I wrote this book, entitled "Hollow." As of this posting, it is currently in committee with a publishing house (yeah, I'll keep y'all posted on that), and I am working on a recovery devotional to accompany it upon its release. I didn't write the book to be a show-off or to help other women learn eating disorder tricks (it seems like a lot of other ED memoirs were written just for that purpose, doesn't it?). I wrote it because I feel someone needs to step up and tell the truth about this stuff -- deglamorize it, strip away the frills, lose the phony-baloney tidy endings, and get real about what eating disorders really are: evil lies, sticky traps, and life-destroyers.



I went to this writer's conference recently, where I got to meet my rockstar literary agent and pal around with some super cool Christian writers and speakers. Way cool; loved every minute. Anyway, my friend Millie, an author whom my agent also represents, enjoyed taking me by the arm and introducing me to folks, and saying, "Tell them, Jena; tell them about your book!" And I'll be real -- at first, I didn't want to. Other folks were there promoting these deeply moving spiritual works, uplifting Christian fiction, life-giving devotionals. I had this secret notion lurking in my mind that a book about my experience with a three-decades-long eating disorder was frivolous, unnecessary, maybe even a little self-important. I had NO IDEA how wrong I was.



On multiple occasions, during that conference, when I would shake someone's hand and (at Millie's prompting) say, "I've written a memoir about my struggle with an eating disorder," the person would say something along the lines of "Oh, honey -- we have to talk!" It seems I've touched on something of a hot button within the community of Christian women. I was able to have lunch with three women at the conference who themselves are or had been sufferers, and because I am still alive, I was able to encourage them (and they, me). And I gotta say, I think that's kinda cool.



So my agent, herself also aware of the relevance of my story (which is certainly not unique or rare, not even in the church), has encouraged me to put up a blog dealing specifically with these issues of anorexia and bulimia (or, really, any other variety of "food weirdness", as I call it) and/or struggles with body image. I was tentative at first, because these little groups can go sour rather easily, and become not-so-positive. So, this will be something of a challenge; if we can't do it, can't keep the climate recovery-focused and edifying, the blog goes dark. Got it? Good. :-) *spit shake*

I'll be posting random thoughts and encouragement regularly, and probably rambling on a bit here and there about my day. (I do that. You'll get used to it.) I'll probably clue you all in on what God is teaching me through His word, because that sort of thing gets me pretty jazzed these days.

Oh, and one more thing: for Petey's sake, PUH-LEEZE leave me lots of comments and feedback. I really dig it, and it will make my agent happy. 'Kay? Coolio.

So, there we have it: post number one, posted. Welcome to the clubhouse! Next time, bring a friend! :-) More to come, my pretties...

Blessings!
Jena