Erin’s story

I held Erin tightly enough for her comfort, gentle enough not to crush her in my arms. Tears streamed down her face. “No boy is ever going to like me, Brad . . . Just look at me!” she sobbed. I did look. Her bones pushed against her pale skin like they were trying to escape from her body. Her hair was dying, and her face was tight and sallow. Once I found Erin sleeping during an all-night youth event, scrunched into a ball no bigger than the rolled up sleeping bags beside her. She was anorexic.

Erin wasn’t the only one doing the crying. Loving family and friends struggled intensely as well, praying fervently and trying to keep an eye on her diet and restroom visits. I remember her peers’ confusion: “Can’t Erin see she’s so skinny? Doesn’t she know we see her not eating?” Who can explain such a thing? The clinical data doesn’t even come close.

Erin was a very sensitive child. Part of her spiral began when a boy’s physical advances caused her to feel violated and dirty. As she got older, she unconsciously prevented that from happening again by making herself unattractive. She couldn’t control the world, but she could control what she ate and what that did to her. Or so she thought. At her lowest point, Erin had wasted away to the weight of a four-year-old child. Even with one-on-one medical attention during a long-term treatment plan in Winnipeg, death came far too near: some nights her care worker would creep to her bedside to check for a pulse.

By the time Erin began to recover, there was nothing left of her but a bony frame and a beating heart. She claimed (through more tears) that she was getting better, but her body had been plundered so badly by the disease that it would be many months before any physical improvement was obvious. In the meantime, everyone around her seemed suspicious, paranoid for her safety. How could we not be? But how could she heal in that kind of environment?

Soon afterward Erin told me that she was leaving our youth group. Try as they might, her peers couldn’t see her as Erin, only as the anorexic girl. She needed a place to be “just Erin” again. I blessed her to go wherever her healing took her. She eventually left Winkler, and even the church. Thankfully, she hasn’t entirely left God, and He certainly hasn’t left her.

I met with Erin today. She’s a beautiful young woman (and boys do like her). Even so, anorexia has cost Erin dearly. She explains that the hardest part of her ordeal is still unfolding. Every day reminds her of something else that she missed out on. At some points she was practically raised by the health care system; her late childhood and teen years are a blur; she is still catching up on basic life skills; she had her first period when she was eighteen. You get the idea.

“I don’t think you’re ever totally well,” Erin admits. “The anorexic voice is always there in the back of your head.” Her faith is a struggle too. In her mind, she grew up in church and got sick. Now that she’s left, she’s happier than ever – though she confesses she’ll be back eventually. Erin’s word to church folks? “It’s hard to get over an anorexic’s body, to look past it, to a girl who needs a hug or a phone call. She’s shrinking, but she’s still in there.”

Brad Huebert was youth pastor of Winkler (Man.) MB Church when this was written. He is now pastor of youth ministries at Dalhousie Community Church in Calgary.