
When I was fifteen years old, I was a rebel. I hung out with the kids who liked to party a lot, and the other kids called us freaks. I was smoking cigarettes, drinking, and doing drugs. I hated school because none of the teachers were nice to me except one, my English teacher. She was the only one who cared about me. This teacher inspired me to write after she introduced the class to poetry. I loved her class, but all my classmate’s made fun of her behind her back. I didn’t like that at all.
I had been overweight as a child, and I was very self-conscious about it. All my family was thin and had dark hair, and then there was me: blonde and overweight. My brother used to tease me and say your adopted because you are fat and blonde. I would run to my mom and ask if I was adopted, and the answer was always no. I am sure my brother got into trouble for saying it.
Fast forward to the summer when I was fifteen, and I decided to go on a diet. I watched how much I ate and rode my bike and exercised. I lost weight, grew my hair longer and got contact lenses. My eye doctor had been wanting me to get hard contact lenses since I was in 8th grade because I had stigmatism and he said it would help my eyes not to get any worse than they already were.
When I went back to school in the fall people weren’t sure who I was. Some guessed, and some didn’t know me. I looked different, but I didn’t feel different. I still felt overweight. It was hard to be on a diet all the time, so one day I became bulimic. The reason why is because of an article I had read in a magazine about food. There was an interview with a restaurant critic, and they asked how he could review so many restaurants each day. His answer was if I eat too much I just simply purge. For those who don’t know what that is, it’s when you make yourself throw up after eating, and it is an eating disorder.
At first, I thought being bulimic was great. I thought I could eat whatever I wanted to and wouldn’t gain weight. But it wasn’t the case. That was because I would skip breakfast and lunch. I would starve myself all day at school then eat when I got home.
Being bulimic was like an addiction. I would eat then throw up meals at home. I never did it when I was away from home. It was a vicious cycle, and I couldn’t stop. At first, I didn’t even try to stop but later on in my eating disorder I really wished it would end. After I started praying to God at age seventeen, I asked Him to heal me of bulimia I begged and pleaded, and I didn’t stop praying. I felt so guilty because there were people starving to death in other countries and I was wasting food by eating and making myself throw up afterwards. I didn’t even know I had been healed December 8th in 1984 when I saw a vision.
During the time of my vision, I had been going to a technical college for cooking. The reason I chose cooking is because I love to cook. Another reason I chose it was because I thought I would always have a job because everyone needs to eat.
My vision happened as I was walking through a shopping mall. I glanced at a guy who worked at a photo shop who was behind the counter looking out the window and my eyes met his. All of the sudden I couldn’t see him anymore. All I could see was blue and a pair of eyes. I kept walking and didn’t really think about it at the time. The vision reminded me of a dream I had
When I was eighteen, I had a dream about being at a what reminded me of a high school or grade school office with yellow walls. There was a man there who I thought was a famous rock musician but couldn’t see his face. Suddenly in the dream he said to me, “you don’t like my music!” Then he shot me in the head, and everything turned black, then I everything turned gold, and I saw a pair of eyes. In my dream I died, and I saw what I believe were God’s eyes while I was dreaming. The eyes I saw in my vision looked just like my dream, but the color was blue.
It took me a while to realize I didn’t have bulimia anymore. One day about a week later I realized I wasn’t making myself throw up after I ate. I was also eating three meals a day and not snacking, and I stayed the same weight for years. Once I was older in my late fifties, I did put on some weight. I have had no desire to become bulimic again and never have since I was healed.
At the time I had been healed I had been working at a shopping mall at a frozen yogurt shop while going to cooking school and had noticed the man at the photo shop. I had noticed him before because I thought he was really handsome. I found out his name was Matthew. The name Matthew means gift of God. God had given me a gift because He healed me of bulimia.