Emotional Emptiness

Sometimes people struggle with food because they eat too much of the wrong kinds of foods, and they consume more calories than their bodies need. The physics of dieting are pretty straightforward.

While this is as true for me as for the next person, some things make the prospect of losing weight a little more complicated for me. Somewhere behind all of the numbers, a less measurable force is at work within me. It’s emptiness or lack.

As I trace my fingers back across the timeline of my life, I remember times when spiritual and emotional emptiness left me vulnerable. This emotional emptiness stemmed from coming home from school one day and being told, “Your daddy’s gone.” Many life struggles since then have left me feeling vulnerable and empty as well.

Emptiness demands to be filled. And when I couldn’t figure out how to fill what my heart was lacking, my stomach was more than willing to offer a few suggestions. Food became a comfort I could turn on and off like a faucet. It was easy. It was filling. It was available. It became a pattern. And somehow, each time my heart felt a little empty, my stomach picked up on the cues and suggested I feed it instead.

Many times my overstuffed stomach could be traced back to an empty place in my heart, and that, in turn, could be traced back to my thought life. It’s so easy to park our minds in bad spots. To dwell and rehash and wish things were different. But to think on hard things keeps us in hard spots and only serves to deepen feelings of emotional emptiness. This is where pity parties are held, and we all know pity parties demand an abundance of high-calorie delights, eaten and eaten some more. But pity parties are a cruel way to entertain, for they leave behind a deeper emptiness than that with which we started.

At some point, I came to realize overeating was adding to my hurt, not soothing it. We have the choice to either let those past hurts continue to haunt and damage us or to allow forgiveness to pave the way for the new life and lasting changes we desire.

I can’t go back and change the things that happened to me in the past. But I can forgive. I can refuse to let my abusers and accusers hurt me more by sending me on emotional eating binges. So, one by one, I’ve gone to those memories and said, “Yes, this is a circumstance of my life, but it doesn’t define who I am.”

And I can forgive myself with the same statement. Satan says, “Your past mistakes are horrible!” And I reply, “Yes, these mistakes are things I wish I could change, but they don’t define who I am.”

Rather than dwelling on wounds that leave us feeling emotionally empty, we can learn to look for whatever is true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent, and praiseworthy in life (Philippians 4:8). When I park my mind and heart on thoughts that refresh me instead of ones that depress me, I am filled. Like the psalmist reminds us, “Taste and see that the LORD is good” (Psalm 34:8).