Beacon2Light

Jena Morrow is 32 years old and has battled eating disorders since her childhood. At the age of 18 she became anorexic and nearly died. Jena is a believer in Jesus Christ and volunteers her time to National Eating Disorder Awareness and has spoken to various groups including churches, youth groups and women’s groups on the topic.   There are two books that I would like to bring to your attention from Jena. The first is about her struggle with anorexia at the age of 18 and is entitled, Hollow: An Unpolished Tale , released in 2010 by Moody Publishers. Since then, Jena has penned a devotional to assist individuals with eating disorders and body image. It is called Hope for the Hollow: A Thirty-Day Inside-Out Makeover for Women Recovering from Eating Disorders. In the introduction to the devotional, Jena wrote:  “Eating disorders are sinister, tenacious diseases which thrive on secrecy, deception and shame. Their capacity for destruction is great but take h...

I am certain that there are people scratching their heads thinking, “What is a guy doing reading a book for and about ladies struggling with eating disorders?” To be honest, the reason I am reading and thus reviewing it is that I understood very little about this problem afflicting so many people. As a pastor, husband, father and friend, I wanted to know more about this area that impacts so many people, including, perhaps, someone I love or with whom I have contact. Like many, I assumed that anorexia and bulimia were the extent of eating disorders and that bulimia involved a person eating too much and then hanging his/her head over the toilet to purge it. Not surprisingly, I found out there is much more too it. Through this book, I learned how much I didn’t know. For instance, there aren’t just eating disorders but disordered eating. Whenever we think of food as more than fuel or nutrition for the body, it is given a place that it doesn’t deserve in our lives. This is a proble...