My whole life, my kindness has been mistaken for weakness. It’s made me prey to the bloodhounds of opportunity. I wonder if you have ever felt the same.

I met Jesus when I was three. He knew I’d need him soon after. I am so thankful I met him at an early age. The love and devotion I had for him was real and I am certain, like Jeremiah, he called me in my mother’s womb. As a child, I knew that I knew that I knew that I was his. And then, everything I knew, fell apart. 

As a child of trauma, I learned at an early age that the world was unsafe and scary. I learned that the trauma that happens to you as a child, fragments your understanding and worldview. I wasn’t a smart kid, but I was intuitive. As the youngest child, I learned early on that the greatest weapons I had were my observation skills and my mind. I understood the world around me through emotions and the ability to read people well. Trauma made me wise beyond my years and in the face of neglect, I learned to cope in broken ways. 

I discovered escapism when I was a kid. I learned that the lack of safety I felt could be filled with the placebo of my imagination. My mind was a weapon, and I could create. It was my favorite ability and coping mechanism. The moment I learned to read was the beginning of freedom for me. I began to write stories and come up with wonderlands of joy and peace and safety like I never knew. I wrote my first poems at six and my first book at ten. Writing and using my creativity resulted in freedom and safety like I’d never known. Creativity gave me wings.

My other method of escape, however, clipped the wings of freedom and tied a yoke of slavery around my ankle, like a pair of iron shoes bolted to the refrigerator door. A child hostage. Imprisoned to a war fought within my body and at the altar of my mind that I had learned to worship. This escape was also a pleasure which made the slavery malevolent in a way a child could never understand.

Food became medicine, foe, and dare I say it, savior.

I can’t remember the first time I ever ate something that made me feel better, but I know the habit began when I was a kid. To cope, I stuffed, and stuffed and stuffed. As I grew in age, so did my addiction and by the time I hit twelve, I was anorexic and avoiding all food to get out of the overweight body my escapism created. 

It’s textbook psychology. Disordered eating to self-soothe and protect. Some would say that the armor [fat] that I built was a coping strategy to protect myself from ever being hurt in the way I was hurt, as a child. I’d agree with those “some.” 

Upon leaving high school, I discovered that anorexia wasn’t cutting it [pun intended] and turned to binging and overeating, all the while struggling with an addiction to self-harm and several suicide attempts. Armed with my broken relationship with food, the hiding grew stronger, and the weight continued to mount as I turned to be launched into a world that never loved me. Halfway to 500lbs, the healing was nowhere in sight. 

If you’re reading this, you know that I’ve mentioned the “armor” before.

Fat is the armor of the wounded soul.

Read that again.

As a fat girl I hid in my weight. If I’m fat, I won’t be seen. If I’m fat, I can be invisible. If I’m fat, no one else can hurt me. If I’m fat, no one will want me, and I can stay hidden forever. If I’m fat, I don’t have to feel. Irony of ironies, the escapism never led to freedom. It only led to greater slavery. The armor is a double edge sword too. Because if I’m fat, no man will love me. If I’m fat, I stay lonely. If I’m fat, I remain invisible. If I’m fat, no one will care. It’s a catch 22, to wear this armor. 

The last two years have been insane when it comes to this armor I wear. I’ve shared that I once weighed 500lbs and even though I don’t weigh that now, I still feel that weight. Despite triple digit weight loss, I’m still a fat girl. I have joy and peace in my body because we’ve endured so much. I am loved and loveable by the grace of God, so I am not bashing my skin. Nevertheless, the reality is that I still carry excess pounds, loose skin and my body is nowhere near the realistic and healthy goals I’ve set, but the road less traveled is the one I’ve begun trekking and the last two years have been the hardest ones yet because as I’ve only learned recently…

There’s a crack in the armor. 

I went to the drug store last week. I picked up what I needed and got back in my car and in an uncharacteristic moment, I rolled down my windows and sat in my car. I was distracted with something and before I knew it, there was a man standing at my passenger window. Arm’s length from my person (the car is small). My car was off, the windows were down, and my car was unlocked. I was very vulnerable.

He called me “baby.” 

It’s The strangest thing to be called “baby” by a man who I do not know. I am the baby. Of my family. It’s a joke I even make when I want to get out of something, “I’m just a baby!” (Thank you TikTok). I don’t think I’ll be using that phrase anymore. 

He said, “hey baby, I see you’re single.” (No wedding ring on my finger, alone in my car). “I just got out of prison, I have nowhere to stay. Can I go home with you? I’ll… (insert the nastiest and most disrespectfully perverted acts that would make any Church girl blush here.)

Absolutely dumbfounded by his audaciously salacious comments, I immediately told myself to keep my cool. Having worked in shelters for those experiencing homelessness, I’ve learned the beauty of staying calm in situations such as these. I’ve been yelled at and cussed at, been intimidated by men, stalked by men and sexually harassed by men and have had to keep my cool. I quickly assessed how insanely vulnerable I was, so I responded in a calm manner. I told him not to disrespect me that way and that he was too close to me and that he needed to step back. He did and then he regurgitated his previous comments and once I again I asserted myself and told him, “I am a woman of God. Do not speak to me that way.” He told me he knew God; in fact, he was his best friend.

He asked for help, and I gave him info for a shelter, because that’s what good girls do. They help people. He leaned into my car window, scanned my car, and the seat next to me and said some other perverted things before I once again told him to stop. He then uttered false things about God, sex, and purity before he walked away from me, having promised to in short, rock my world sexually had I let him. 

As he walked away, I quickly turned my car on, locked the doors, rolled the windows up and drove away. I was shook. Seriously, shook. 

I was so angry; I couldn’t even see straight. I was crying because I was so angry. (Ladies, I know you know). How dare he? Who does he think he is!? Who the hell gives him the right to sexually harass me like that!?! He coulda got in my car! He coulda hurt me! What the hell is his problem!?! Why me, God!? Why did that happen?! And oh my gosh… 

It’s my fault! 

Yep. I said it. I felt like it was my fault.

Going back to the last two years. I’ve written about this before, but for the last almost two years (Dec.) I have been dealing with a stalker. That’s probably not the right word. He’s more of a harasser. If you’ve ever been there, you know what that does to your sense of safety and freedom. I was taught to be vigilant of my surroundings (thank you jiujutsu). Yet, over the last two years I’ve been extra hyper vigilant. Always scanning my surroundings because I never want to be faced to face with the stalker again. I have been extra when it comes to safety and this day, I was not.

I was angry at myself because I always park my car rear first. A tactic I learned to keep me safer in the event of an emergency. I always get in, turn the car on, lock the doors, make sure the windows are up and I never linger in my car. I carry pepper spray that my friend gave me and makes me carry, and I even have a rape whistle handy, always. Yet this one day. This one regular ol Wednesday, I left everything behind, and I lived like a free woman, and I didn’t have anything with me, and I managed to do all the safety precautions wrong. I was to blame. 

Now, I know you’re all yelling at me that it wasn’t my fault. And yes, I know. It wasn’t my fault. It’s pathetic that we must do all of that in the first place, stalker or no stalker, that’s some pathetic truth. 

Yet, after much prayer and many loving conversations with the best friends and pastors a girl could ask for, I am certain that it wasn’t my fault. But, it has revealed that the armor I have invested my life into, has a crack. In fact, it’s better to say, the armor has been breached and the whole dam is pouring out. 

The “ah-ha” came on Saturday as I was chatting with a friend. This realization that my armor was cracked, beyond that, it was broken. The façade was destroyed. I was not safe. I am not safe. All my years of hiding and mounting the armor that was supposed to protect me was futile and completely useless because this side of heaven there will always be someone who wants to prey on my kindness and compassion. There will always be someone who happens to like fat girls.

There will always be someone who wants to make me their punchline, fetish, or prey. 

How’s that for reality.

The bigger “ah-ha” came once I was done chatting with my friend and I realized that the armor itself, the whole armor, has been my way of saving myself when I am incapable of doing so. When I was self-harming, I was trying to atone for my own junk. I wanted to be free of the pain of the sin committed against me. I wanted freedom. It was a terrible understanding of God. I was trying to sacrifice myself and my arms for a divine deliverance I fuzzily knew but could not comprehend. I praise God that He rescued me from that addiction and this month is actually my sober birthday month and Lord willing I get to celebrate fourteen years free of self-harm on the 30^th. I have tasted freedom, and it was only through the atoning work of Christ. Yet somehow, while one area of my life was redeemed, I struggled in the other one.  

While I was healing from self-harm, I was unknowingly building a shield of protection for myself that I thought would save me or keep me from pain. I was trying once again, to be my own savior. I realized that the fat or armor I had amassed was just me running from the ferocity of a loving Father who paid for all my sin (Isaiah 53; Romans 5:8; Gal 1:4; 1 Tim 1:15; Titus 3:5; Colossians 1:13) and who covers and protects me in a way I cannot. I am not my own protector. I am not capable of ever atoning for my own rebellion and sin against a good, holy, and righteous Lord. All the while I have been building the armor, I have been lying to myself thinking I was protecting myself. Yet, this crack has revealed that I never could do what only Jesus can do.

I’ve been fighting the fight against my weight my whole life. Looking at it, obsessed with it, worried about it, idolizing it, worshipping it, (yes I said that), and yet, adding to it because of fear. Idolatry is always about fear. We idolize little gods of our making because we fear the only true and real God who we cannot put in a box. My eyes have betrayed my heart and the sweet little three-year-old who met Jesus in church one day. My wounds have lied to my mind, telling it that I could imagine a safer world than the King of Kings. I have made my sin bigger than God. I have kept my focus on my doubts and fears instead of gazing solely upon the face of the King of Kings who alone demolishes idols.

O friends, I have sinned against the Lord, and it took sexual harassment to open my eyes. Well, as you can imagine, I spent some days processing, mourning, and praising Jesus for true repentance. He reminded me of that child who experienced horrendous trauma and He restored to me the joy of my salvation. I was wrong. The armor was wrong. The sexual harassment was wrong. But, my Lord, my Savior, King Jesus, was and always is, right. I am so thankful.

Something the man said stuck with me. As he was finishing his dirty spiel, he told me that if I thought what he wanted to do to me was wrong, that I was wrong. He said, “that’s been there since the garden” and that it was right. I thought it odd that he attempted to convince a church girl to let him do gross things to her by way of arguing about the Garden of Eden.

It’s funny though, he was right. The evil one was in the garden corrupting the truth of the Lord even then (Genesis 3). He attacked the truth of scripture which brought doubt into the heart of Eve and her husband and there I was, with my doubt and my sin and my misunderstanding of my Father and Savior, the same way. Regardless of the sin, it still led to separation from the Lord. And days later, there I was, staring at a ruptured dam with the contents of my worship at my feet. He was right, it’s been there since the garden.

I cannot tell you how freeing and how beautiful it feels to surrender unto the Lord what is His and can only be done by Him. It’s wise, yes, to carry pepper spray and be vigilant. Especially in the work I do. I won’t stop being cautious. But I now recognize that I have the freedom and safety that my Lord goes before me, and He alone is the best protection I could have. He has freed me from the domain of darkness and saved me from my own evil. I am not alone nor abandoned. That is the divine deliverance this little baby has always dreamed of.

I wonder if you carry armor like this. I wonder if you have allowed your past, your sins, your baggage to far outweigh the redemptive love only Jesus can give. I wonder how many of you live with shame, guilt and regret. I wonder if you’ll give Him a chance. I wonder if you’ve ever tasted and seen how good He is. Or if you’ve wandered away from him, if you’d be willing to turn back to Him. I wonder if you’ve ever experienced freedom like this. Scripture tells us, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” -1 John 1:9. He does this because of Himself, not because of anything we do. I wonder if you hear Him calling you.

And so, what’s to become of the little fat girl fighting her armor and wrestling to honor the Lord in her earthly body? I will continue to fight. I will continue to work hard. I will continue to surrender and to lean on my Master, King, and Savior, (JESUS), as I navigate a cruel and sometimes ugly world. I will rise because of my Lord. I will die trying if that’s what it takes. I will continue to share the journey with you because the faith walk is life or death. It is slaying dragons and living to write about it. The armor has been broken, and there is beauty from these ashes. I will never attain perfection. I rejoice in that truth, and I am thankful for the perfect redemption attained only by King Jesus.

My friends, there are no perfect people here, only broken ones, made whole in Christ.

More on that later…