I sent an update to the people around me who have been brought in to pray for my Alex. If you have been praying then you also deserve to know too. Thank you for your prayers. 🙏❤️

Hi ladies! Thank you so much for your prayers and support for me and my family. Truly this has been the hardest year for me as a mother. It was about last year at this time that my dear, sweet, easy-to-raise daughter, Alex started to change drastically. We thought that perhaps it was the stress of the college application process.

We hoped she’ll be better after this process was over but it didn’t. Instead her behaviors got more bizarre and disturbing. We discovered that she would hit herself when angry, would stay in her dark room or basement bathroom for hours, and her drawings were very dark and demonic when I’d sneak into her room to snoop. She barely wanted to be with us and stopped even having dinner with us. Few weeks before dropping her off to college, we even discovered that she was purging her food.

Sending her off to college so faraway in this disturbing mindset was only the will and power of God as the Holy Spirit reassured me that she will be delivered just like the SyroPhoenician woman’s daughter was delivered without her mom’s presence, but by Jesus’s word (Mark 7). And for a brief joyous moment, I thought it happened when we saw our former Alex back to herself by mid-fall semester.

However during the thanksgiving break we saw disturbing amounts of food gone at nights. She was only here for a week and so we just didn’t know what to do or think. She was much more social and engaging with us, and we just wanted to cherish this time rather than deal with something bizarre and dangerous happening within her. But during the monthlong winter break, we saw the extent of her eating disorder.

Upon our confrontation with her, she became very hostile towards us with more self-hitting and eating disorder behaviors happening right in front of us now. She no longer hid anything anymore. It was so painful to watch these things. Before she left, we had her sign waivers with the college medical center so she can receive their supervision and I can be involved. This was our firm demand on her returning back to college. Experienced ED specialists wanted her to stay home and get treatment at home, saying it is very difficult to find accountability and help away. Upon more prayers, I had God’s peace to release her yet again. Yet my heart was broken to pieces. Alex left for college very mad at us and didn’t even say goodbye to me. It was so difficult and painful just like the times of dropping her off and the parent weekend.

The good news is that in a very short time, we found her a very good support system at her college. There are good people watching over her at Indiana University now. The university has an excellent support center for eating disorders. She’s been assigned a dietitian and a case manager that I can speak freely with. There’s a nurse that I think will weigh her weekly so she’s not losing more weight.

After searching high and low for an eating disorder therapist at Indiana and being told of a long wait, a local therapist opened her schedule for Alex last week! It was another struggle to get Alex to sign more waivers far away from home. Satan sent in much reinforcement to disturb my heart and mind as we were waiting for her to submit the forms. Finally she did this Monday night. Praise the Lord!!

Alex starts with the ED therapist next Monday. We looked her up on LinkedIn and she is openly a Christian! She graduated from Oral Roberts University, has many years of ED work experience, plus she is part of the IU eating disorder staff team. Which means she already meets regularly with Alex’s dietitian, case manager and medical nurse! On top of that she takes our health insurance. Amazing…only God!!

As I am breathing a sigh of relief now that she is surrounded by good professional support in college; I am looking back to see God’s faithfulness in my darkest valleys of motherhood. I am so touched by His care for me. I also have experienced Him in a personal way that I am his daughter and that he cares deeply for my well-being too. Perhaps for someone like me who learned early not to be a burden on my parents or others, this time I had no choice but to lean on God and the body of Christ very much. He made sure that there were many good, godly people surrounding me through this long year of intense battles. Thank you so much for stepping in when he called you to help me stand firm in my faith and fight for my family. Your prayers, encouragement and support in the past year was tremendous. Please keep on praying for us until Alex has complete deliverance and recovery.

As for Howard, it’s interesting to see how he’s dealing with all of this pain without God. There’s currently a positive spiritual psychology happening – sort of like “what you think or put out into the universe will come back to you.” It reminds me of Norman Peale’s classic self-help book that blends Christianity with positive thinking for positive outcomes. Negative emotions, talk and grief are basically discouraged from being expressed. It is hard for me to bring up any negative reports with him because he’ll get mad, perhaps fearing that it’ll become a reality? Our faith and belief in Jesus, and the Bible are a mystery and foolishness to him. So for nonbelievers, they find teachers to help figure out what to do with their pain and uncontrollable factors. Hopefully soon he will find our Jesus, the ultimate real source of help on this earth and our salvation for all eternity.

Evan is doing all right. He is learning how to handle school work in the high school, and that he must work ahead for projects and tests. He started wrestling at school, and the coaches, team leaders and peers seem very good and positive for him. I’m so thankful for this good outlet for him. Hopefully soon he will have a better relationship with Alex too. She hasn’t been very kind to him. Once she’s in a better state of mind, I think he’ll open up quickly to her lead if she is nice. It’s his big sister after all.

Thank you for reading my update on Alex. Thank you again for your prayers and support. God is good and faithful. When Satan comes to shift one’s faith; God is so faithful to make a way of escape so we can endure the violent shifting with our faith intact. My faith is intact! 🙂 Praise the Lord. I thank you for allowing me to cry when I needed to lament, and to be weak without your rejection. That means a lot. Hopefully my next update on Alex will be even more victorious. 🙏God bless you abundantly!

Some facts I’ve learned about ED:
-20% of college women in USA have eating disorders; 5-10% of college men have ED too.
-Colleges are required by the federal government to have eating disorder support for their students. (Alex’s college has an excellent support center for ED. God knew this and sent her there.)
-ED has the highest mortality rate for mental illnesses.
-EDs have skyrocketed in the USA since the pandemic, especially in teen females. Currently, there aren’t enough ED therapists and treatment centers to help. Waitlists are long.
-Having joined ED parent support groups on Facebook and having learned a lot about current treatments for ED sufferers, it is common to go in and out of treatment centers and see therapists with no better outcomes for many years. It reminds me of the women with the issue of blood who spent all her money on doctors for 12 years and wasn’t any better. It truly breaks my heart to see their great suffering. Much prayers are needed for them, asking Jesus to come and set them free.