A little note before I share…
This post is a little longer than what I’ve been sharing lately because it documents a journey more than four decades in the making.
But this story is about more than food. It is about sanctification—the lifelong transformation through which God patiently forms us, renews our minds, and teaches us to walk more fully in the freedom Christ has already given us.
I came to know and love Jesus as a little girl. And yet, for decades, I continued to struggle deeply in this area of my life.
Especially in college, I remember leaving church week after week inspired and determined to change, only to find myself caught in the same struggle again.
I didn’t yet understand sanctification as a process. I had no framework for understanding why a struggle could persist for so long in the life of someone who genuinely loved God and wanted to obey Him. So as the years became decades, I often wondered, What is wrong with me?
That is one reason I’m sharing my story.
I love the words of Psalm 107:2 (NIV):
“Let the redeemed of the Lord tell their story.”
I share mine because God is still a God of redemption—and His redeeming work is not reserved for people with tidy stories or quick transformations.
If you’ve ever wondered why your own journey is taking so long, I hope mine reminds you that a long process is not evidence that God has abandoned His work in you.
And a long process does not mean:
🚫 “I am beyond repair.”
“I am beyond hope.”
“I am used up.”
God is still at work in you. Your story isn’t finished, so hold on to hope. 😊
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✨ THE LONG ROAD ✨
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😮💨 Whew.
I’ve been pursuing freedom in my relationship with food for a little bit. 😅
When I first began—and even decades later—I thought freedom was a destination.
Something you arrived at.
✅ An achievement you finally conquered, checked off the list, and moved on from.
But here I am more than 40 years later, and one of the most important things I’ve learned is this:
👣 Freedom isn’t just a destination. It’s a lifelong journey.
Christ truly sets us free—and throughout our lives, we learn to walk in that freedom more fully and experience its fruit in increasing measure.
Like so much of life in Christ, freedom carries an “already and a not yet”: Christ has set us free, and by His grace, we are learning to increasingly walk in that freedom—to work out in our lives what Christ has already accomplished for us and what God continues to work within us.
—Philippians 2:12–13
Understanding that changes how we interpret the journey.
Sometimes what makes a journey so hard is expecting it to be something it isn’t.
When we don’t understand what growth and freedom can actually look like, we can interpret the difficulty of the road as evidence that something has gone terribly wrong.
Sometimes it helps to see the process—not just the outcome.
Here are some of the biggest mile markers from my own journey—not as a formula or a timeline you have to repeat, but as a picture of what freedom and formation—being shaped more and more into the image of Christ—can look like over time.
Your struggle may look different from mine, but perhaps you’ll recognize some familiar mile markers—and see more clearly the work God is doing in your own life.
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✨ EARLY ’70s ✨
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Before my struggle with food began, I had already received the greatest gift possible: Jesus Christ—and in Him, a new identity and a foundation of faith.
I grew up with a mom and dad who loved Christ and sincerely sought to follow and serve Him. They didn’t have to be perfect for God to use their example powerfully in my life. I’m deeply grateful for the foundation they gave me.
Through their influence, I came to know Jesus as a little girl and received God’s gift of grace.
I didn’t understand everything then, but something eternal had happened.
Before I ever learned how to walk in freedom, I belonged to Him.
➡️ Freedom Mile Marker: Identity
Freedom in Christ doesn’t begin with our performance.
It begins with our identity in Christ.
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✨ SUMMER OF 1985 ✨
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After gaining more than 15 pounds during my sophomore year of high school, I set out to lose it that summer and joined Weight Watchers.
🎬 And with that, I officially entered the world of dieting. 😅
I wasn’t thinking about my relationship with food or asking what might be happening underneath it. I just wanted to lose the weight and feel at home in my body again.
In my mind, the problem was straightforward:
Follow the plan.
Lose the weight.
Check the box.
Move on.
I had no idea then that the struggle went deeper—or that losing weight and finding freedom would turn out to be two very different things.
I approached that first plan with real hope.
I would later learn that methods are needed—but they have to address the problem at the level where it actually lives.
My struggle wasn’t only about what I ate or how much I ate. It reached into my thoughts, my beliefs, and my relationship with food.
I didn’t understand that yet, so for years my search followed a familiar pattern:
📋 Find a new plan.
✨ Feel hopeful.
💪 Try harder.
😫 Fall short.
😔 Feel discouraged.
🔁 Begin again.
I wasn’t lacking desire. I desperately wanted to change.
I simply didn’t yet understand that what I needed would go much deeper than another eating plan.
➡️ Freedom Mile Marker: The Search
Sometimes the search for freedom begins long before we understand what freedom will actually require.
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✨ 1987 ✨
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By my senior year of high school, my struggle with food had intensified.
One memory from that year is still vivid.
There was a pan of bars sitting in our kitchen, and I felt tormented by them.
I didn’t want to eat them, but I remember this thought running through my mind:
“You will never be free.”
That was the lie.
⛓️Bondage can make a lie sound like a settled verdict. It can make a struggle that has lasted a long time feel like it will last forever.
But the lie doesn’t get the final word.
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✨ 1988 ✨
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During my first semester of college at Oral Roberts University, I was sitting in chapel listening to a message when one sentence seemed to rise above everything else:
“You can be free.”
That sentence grabbed hold of me.
Nothing changed overnight.
But hope entered.
➡️ Freedom Mile Marker: Hope
Not every mile marker is a change in behavior.
Truth challenges the lie—and hope enters.
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✨ 1993 ✨
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For years, I kept cycling through the same pattern:
1️⃣ Try harder.
2️⃣ Fall short.
3️⃣ Feel defeated.
🔁 Try again.
Then, in 1993, desperate for change, I opened my Bible to the concordance in the back and began looking up every reference I could find about freedom. (LOL—the pre-internet way of searching Scripture. 😅)
I wrote them down.
Personalized them.
For example, Romans 6:18 (NIV) describes a change in whom we serve:
“You have been set free from sin and have become slaves of righteousness.”
I personalized that truth:
“I have been set free from sin and have become a slave of righteousness.”
Then I began meditating on those Scriptures—returning to them again and again and asking God to help me truly believe what He had said.
After a couple of weeks, something shifted.
Truth moved from my head to my heart.
I finally understood—and believed at a heart level—that in Christ, I had already been set free.
Now I had to learn how to walk in what was already true.
➡️ Freedom Mile Marker: Truth Received
This was one of the most defining mile markers of my life.
My outward patterns didn’t instantly change, and the struggle wasn’t over. But something had changed at the core: I knew in my heart that, in Christ, I had been set free.
The freedom was real.
Its integration would take years.
From there, the journey became learning to bring my thoughts, choices, and behavior into alignment with what I had come to believe.
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✨ 2011 ✨
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Years later, my friend Lara and I sat on my back porch while our kids caught lightning bugs in mason jars.
That night, we got painfully honest about our struggles with food.
The sneaking.
The shame.
The frustration.
The longing for peace.
And we made a decision:
We were going to find peace with food, whatever it took.
We began removing diet rules and testing everything by one question:
Does this give peace?
Not control.
Not punishment.
Not perfection.
➡️ Peace. 🕊️
And by peace, I don’t mean the temporary relief of giving in to whatever is in front of you.
I mean peace in the moment and peace after the fact.
The kind of choice you can live with when the craving has passed and you’re looking back on it clearly.
➡️ Freedom Mile Marker: Alignment
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✨ 2014 ✨
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By 2014, Lara and I were experiencing real peace with food—and we were beginning to notice something else.
The peace principles we were learning weren’t staying confined to food.
They were starting to transfer into other areas of our lives too.
That was exciting because we began to see that this wasn’t just about eating differently. God was renewing our minds about food, peace, freedom, and the choices we made. It felt like He was giving us a new operating system—a different way to think, choose, and walk.
We were also deep into writing our Peace with Food book.
That Christmas, I was walking through Walmart past all the holiday baking displays.
Cookie dough mix.
Sprinkles.
Pecans.
Christmas candy and treats.
In years past, that kind of aisle could feel almost tormenting.
But this time I walked past it and realized something:
No pull.
No panic.
No torment.
No hook.
It felt amazing.
Years earlier, I had come to know in my heart that I was free. Now I could see the transformation: truth was changing my thoughts, my choices, and what held power over me.
What began as revelation was becoming evidence.
➡️ Freedom Mile Marker: Evidence
Sometimes you realize freedom has been growing when the thing that once had so much power over you is standing right in front of you—and it doesn’t own you anymore.
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✨ 2015 ✨
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In 2015, Lara and I published Peace with Food.
What had begun as a private pursuit of freedom became something we could share with other people.
➡️ Freedom Mile Marker: Fruit
There is something beautiful about transformation—watching what God has formed in you eventually become something that can help someone else.
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✨ 2016–2024 ✨
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Then came another lesson.
M e n o p a u s e
Hormonal changes can alter the terrain in ways you didn’t expect. For me, menopause narrowed my margin and exposed places where I’d previously been able to be less intentional without feeling an immediate cost.
What had once seemed workable no longer worked.
At times, it even felt like regression.
But what I had learned hadn’t failed me.
I needed to build on it.
➡️ Freedom Mile Marker: Deepening
Transformation keeps going. Sometimes a change in our bodies or circumstances asks us to carry what we’ve learned into new terrain.
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✨ 2024–PRESENT ✨
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Over the last couple of years, another piece has come into focus for me:
Peace with Food wasn’t the end of the journey. It was an on-ramp to stewardship—learning to care wisely for my body, my energy, my habits, my assignment, and the race God has given me to run. 🏃♀️
I’m still working on that and learning that stewardship doesn’t always require heroic effort.
🍎 Often, it begins with LOW-HANGING FRUIT: the next simple, faithful choice within reach. Small seeds, faithfully planted, can bear fruit over time.
And I’m still learning. I know I’ll be growing in this freedom for the rest of my life.
➡️ Freedom Mile Marker: Stewardship
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✨ THE BIGGEST LESSON ✨
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After more than four decades of pursuing freedom in my relationship with food, here is one of the biggest things I’ve learned:
Freedom is often…
p r o g r e s s i v e
Layer by layer.
Truth by truth.
Season by season.
Mile marker by mile marker.
Whether your struggle is food, fear, control, anger, shame, people-pleasing, comparison, or something else, I wish I had understood the process of sanctification much earlier.
When we don’t understand how God forms us, we can easily misinterpret the journey. We may think that because the struggle hasn’t disappeared—or another layer has surfaced—we must be back at the beginning.
Or worse, that we’ll never really change.
But Scripture gives us a different picture: as we continue to turn to the Lord, He transforms us more and more into Christ’s image, one degree of glory to another (2 Corinthians 3:18).
That is real transformation.
Real freedom.
And yet, still a process.
So if you are pursuing Christ and longing for freedom, keep abiding in Him—and take heart. The journey may be longer than you expected, but God is not wasting the process.
Jesus reminds us:
“If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit.”
—John 15:5 (NIV)
Keep walking with Him.
Keep yielding.
Keep letting truth do its work.
The fruit may not appear all at once or on the timetable you expected, but abiding in Christ is never fruitless. If you remain in Him, fruit will come—in His time, in His way, and often layer by layer.
Freedom is not only something Christ has given us. It is something we learn, by His grace, to increasingly walk in.
And that is a journey worth continuing—one faithful step, one deeper layer, one mile marker at a time.
“It is for freedom that Christ has set us free.”
—Galatians 5:1 (NIV)
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