Prayer as A Longing of the Soul
Black and white image of a person in prayer holding beads with a veil draped over their head.
By. Katherine Hobbs
Content Warning: Eating Disorders
I stood with my head buried deep in the pantry, scavenging for anything that I could eat without preparation. I shoved handfuls of baking chocolate into my mouth, dipped my fingers into jars of minced garlic, and washed it down with a can of condensed milk. I fell to the floor and prayed, “Please make me anorexic, please G-d, please, I can’t do this, please.”
I had eaten my last bit of food nineteen hours earlier. Since then, I sat through eight hours of honors classes, attended a track practice where I sloshed through four miles with a pounding heart, and cycled through hot and cold tremors for three hours of dance classes. At 2 AM, I found myself lying on the floor with my hands trembling and sticky, praying the prayer I recited nightly. “Please, G-d, please.”
Two years later, I perched on the table in my pediatrician’s office, holding in my core and pulsing my legs. My doctor came into the room, holding a stack of brochures and a referral form with the words “Cambridge Eating Disorder Center” scrawled across the top. Underneath, she wrote: “pt eval anorexia nervosa.” Finally.
For the following years, I lived in inpatient psychiatric units, stepping down to residential eating disorder rehabilitation centers when I was stable enough. These usually only lasted a couple of weeks before the psychiatrists deemed me needing a higher level of care. Each time I discharged, I prayed the same prayer, “Please make me anorexic, please G-d, please, I can’t do this, please.” Each time I was re-admitted within weeks.
After I graduated high school, I moved down the length of the East Coast to live with my best friend, the man who would become my husband. The day I moved into our little home, he promised me that he had the patience to keep up with my mood cycles, my relapses, and my anger. A couple of months later, I started working with my therapist, who would teach me that suicidal isn’t a feeling and that starving myself couldn’t heal the trauma.
With their patient support, I survived. With each delayed urge, each week out of the hospital, and each panic attack I sat through, my prayer began to change. “Please, G-d, let this pass, please give me the strength, I can’t do this, please.”
It has been seven years since I moved to Florida, since I met my therapist, and since I’ve been Baker Acted. My prayer continues to evolve. Nowadays, it sounds something like, “Please, G-d remind me of the times you’ve carried me though, help me sit through this moment, with your help, I can do this, please.”
I did not develop anorexia at thirteen because I prayed for it. I was already deep in my disorder by the time I started asking for one. Likewise, I did not recover because my prayer changed. If it were that simple, the doors of faith-based recovery centers would have closed decades ago.
I believe that my prayers are formed around my deepest desires: to be sick or to be well.
As I prayed for sickness, I told my mind, spirit, and body what I expected. I evoked G-d to make it so. When my prayers changed, so did my mindset. Sacred, yet fleeting, moments of confidence rose from somewhere deeper within me than I knew existed. These moments came at dinner when my body ached to be hungry, but I ate. They lived in dreams where I would eat a plate of food without urges to expel the meal. As I prayed for more of these moments, they arrived, tiptoeing in and dulling the almost electrical impulses to move and count and pray for illness.
For seven years, I have prayed for small moments of relief, and they have come.
Photo of Katherine wearing a close mouthed smile, shoulder length brown hair, a hat and a black tshirt.
Katherine began writing as a teenager and has contributed poetry, fiction, and journalism to publications, including Exclamation! Magazine, Jacksonville Magazine, EU Jacksonville, and Autism Patenting Magazine, among others. She currently works as a reporter for NPR parter station WJCT. You can access her portfolio online on my website at https://www.katherineghobbs.com/ and follow her on IG: @one.wild.and.precious.life and on Twitter: KatherineGHobbs