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Becca Parrish: I Saved Jesus a Seat at the Table · Why I Believe

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Hello and welcome back to Why I Believe.
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I'm your host, Michelle von Ruden, and today I have Becca Parrish with me.
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How are you doing, Becca?
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I'm doing wonderful.
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I'm so happy to be here today.
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it's great to have you.
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Can you tell us a little bit about yourself?
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Sure.
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So my name is Becca Parish.
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I'm a newlywed, so I'm getting used to that um that last name.
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It's really exciting.
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I I thank you.
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Um I uh married my best friend, my best friend of seven years.
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Now he's incredible.
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Um the Lord really blessed me with him.
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He I guess I'm my best friend of seven years.
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He's great.
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He is my rock.
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and
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I can't I just can't say enough good things about him.
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But I'm a multi-passionate woman.
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I'm a dance instructor, a gymnastics instructor, a fitness instructor, an insurance agent, and a pageant queen, um which is really exciting.
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I have three beautiful cats.
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If you hear one rustling around in the background, that is my boy cat Dewey.
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Um he's very active this morning.
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Um and I have been a believer since I was eight years old.
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I've grown up in the church.
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Um, I accepted Jesus into my heart when I was eight.
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but that is not truly where my testimony really begins.
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I just when I was eight years old, I believed I knew that the Lord Jesus Christ um came to earth as a human to save us from our sins, um, that he died on a cross taking that
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punishment away from us.
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I knew that at eight years old, I knew I wanted a relationship with him, so I accepted him in my heart.
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Um, but my testimony really, really goes.
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Um far, far beyond that.
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Yeah, you've had a lot of things happen in your short life.
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And I say short because you're bella you're a young woman, right?
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So um, yeah, let's dive in.
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So, you know, you kind of briefly talked about um, you know, you're a pageant queen, you're currently Miss Wisconsin Petite.
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Correct, yes.
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And I mentioned that because I think it plays into your story that we're gonna get ready to dive into.
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So at 14
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You started struggling and hard and you were battling anorexia.
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Can you tell us about that and what that looked like for you?
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Yeah, so I grew up a dancer my entire life.
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And I don't want to say that dance played the biggest role in that.
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Um, but when I was 14 years old, I fell victim to an eating disorder.
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And falling victim to an eating disorder is falling victim to the enemy.
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He broke into my world um in order to cause a rift between me and my relationship with God.
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That's I wholeheartedly believe that.
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And not to, you know, this is subtle foreshadowing what's to come in this story, but it really ended up bringing me closer to the Lord.
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But when I was 14 years old, I was a freshman in high school.
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I was very excited about high school and but I knew I didn't quite fit in socially.
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I had a lot of of odd relationships with people, and I really like fell in love with fitness and healthy foods and
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And then all of a sudden people started making comments about the foods I was eating in school.
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And someone was like, you should be a nutritionist because you always eat so healthy.
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And I was like, that's my personality now.
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My personality is health and fitness and and good nutrition.
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And so then it quickly became a spiral.
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It became, I can't eat certain foods.
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They're not healthy.
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They're gonna mess up with that reputation, my like brand, whatever you wanna.
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referred to it as.
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And so I quickly spiraled into what's known as orthorexia, which is not talked about as much, but it means that you have a fear of unhealthy foods, foods that you deem to be
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unhealthy, and you want to just eat healthy all the time.
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and truthfully life is more about balance.
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But I fell into orthorexia and that was also a very quick downhill spiral into this OCD mindset.
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I could never eat above a certain calorie limit.
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Um, if I ever did, I had over exercise to make up for lost um calories.
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Like it was an OCD.
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It became a true addiction.
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And when I went over that calorie limit, I had physical withdrawals.
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I had cold sweats.
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I like felt like bugs were crawling in my skin.
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Like what you imagine most addicts going through during withdrawal, I experienced during that eating disorder.
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And
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What began as I just need to eat healthy, healthy, healthy became how far can I push myself to not eat at all?
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And I um not I'm not throwing numbers around because I'd never know who's gonna listen to this and I never want to trigger somebody.
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But my eating disorder lasted a year and a half.
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And in that time, not only did I lose weight, I lost my hair, I lost my ability to control my own body temperature.
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I l whatever friends I did have at the time, I lost them.
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I lost most of my relationship with Christ because I I if I even was in church, which I wasn't very often, because I was so sick, I could barely get up, I could barely think.
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I if I was in church, I wasn't able to focus, I wasn't able to pray, because all that was going on in my mind was food, food, exercise, exercise.
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And this went on for a year and a half.
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Um finally, I'm gonna cut to the chase, but
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Finally, right there at the end of that year and a half, I had my come to Jesus moment.
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I had I was fainting.
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Like anytime I put anything in my body, I would faint because my body didn't know how to receive food.
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I wasn't sleeping, and come to find out, that's because my body knew if I fell asleep, I wouldn't wake up.
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I lost all feeling in my fingers and my toes, which was
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hard because first time I experienced loss of feeling was when I was backstage about to go on stage to perform Wallets of the Snowflakes and the Nutcracker.
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And I was in point shoes and I couldn't feel my feet and I couldn't feel my hands.
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And I was like, I don't know how I'm gonna do this.
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And that was the
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during all of this still?
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So you're s
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through this and I was running cross country.
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And not eating.
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And I was not eating.
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And I when I tell you I pushed my body to a a its breaking point, I pushed it to its breaking point.
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which it
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know this was happening?
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Like did your parents and coaches and instructors catch on to this?
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I mean, I would think somebody would have to notice something's going on with you.
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They did.
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My my parents were the first to notice and I didn't know that they had noticed until one day there was a package delivered to our house and my mom opened it and it was sitting on
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the counter.
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And I don't even know if she knows I even knew this took place, even to this moment, but I found the book that was in this package on the kitchen counter one day and it was titled
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something on the lines of What is Orthorexia?
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And that's when I the first time I ever heard that term, because my mom had picked up on the fact that I had now limited myself to healthy only foods.
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Um, so she knew longer than I give her credit for knowing how long this was going on.
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and she was the first person to kind of start to be like, something's not right, you're not fueling your body, you're not doing the things that you need to do um to take care of
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yourself.
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And so they started putting.
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like stipulations on me.
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Um you have to eat, you know, so many cal to prove that you can eat so many calories before we'll let you run in your next cross-country race.
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Or um my cross-country coach, I think he noticed, but he never said anything.
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um He was the best coach I ever had.
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m But he never said anything about my eating disorder, at least not to me.
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um But he was really encouraging
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In aspects of you're a really hard worker.
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You are really intelligent and focusing on encouraging me in ways that weren't revolved around my looks, that weren't revolved that weren't around running specifically.
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It was more to boost my self-esteem.
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And then my dance instructor, she noticed from the moment I went back to dance after summer break because I had lost a significant amount of weight over the summer.
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between my freshman and sophomore years.
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And I remember her pulling my mom into the classroom at the end of that first day of dance.
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And she just straight up asked me, she goes, are you anorexic?
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And I remember being in absolute denial.
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I was like, I was like, but I I knew, I knew that I hadn't been eating.
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Like I it wasn't a secret to me.
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But I remember being like, no, no, I'm fine.
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Everything's fine.
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I've just, I've really been focusing on my health.
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And um she actually pulled me out of a dance that like that year.
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She actually pulled me out of an entire dance in the nutcracker.
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And so that was like a another being like, Oh, wait, maybe what I'm doing is not a good idea because now I don't get to do the dances that I love.
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Yeah.
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Okay, so let's go back.
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So you were getting ready to go on stage for the Nutcracker as a snowflake, and you can't feel your hands or your toes.
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Correct.
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So at this point I had been fake recovery.
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And I say that because it was in every sense of the way.
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I was lying about the food I was putting in my body to my parents.
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They knew it and they probably know it to this day, but I you know, I lied to them about how much I was eating.
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I would rig my weigh-ins because my mom was like weighing me.
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Um and she would never let me see the number, but she was weighing me to make sure I was making progress.
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I would rig them.
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I would chug water ahead of time so that my like stomach was full of water.
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I'd like put things in pockets.
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Like I I was being deceptive and manipulative and lying because I was so deep into this addiction.
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At this point, I knew I was dying.
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I knew that I was hurting myself.
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I knew I in deep in me, I knew I wanted to get better, but I was so deep into the addiction side of an eating disorder that.
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I couldn't figure out how to get out of it.
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And so I figured I'll the only way to get through it is to just keep doing it.
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And I'm just gonna lie to everybody.
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And if I lie to everyone long enough, then I'll lie to myself and I'll get better.
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Well, that it that's not how this works.
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Um that's not how any of this works.
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And but when you are so sick, you make excuses for everything.
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Um when you are deep into addiction, you make excuses for everything.
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I wasn't leaning into the fact that people wanted to help me.
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They did.
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They really wanted to help me.
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They wanted to see me healthy.
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Um, they weren't doing things like making me eat because they were mad.
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They weren't doing it because they were like disappointed in me.
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Like, I mean, were they?
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Yes, but that's not why they were trying to help me get better.
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They wanted me to get better because they loved me.
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And
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So I'm backstage.
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I can't feel my feet.
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I haven't slept in days.
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I'm fainting all the time.
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Um, sometimes like no one would know.
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I would faint in my bedroom and no one would ever know.
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And I kept it that way until now.
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A lot of things I'm talking about, this is the first time I'm talking about them.
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because people need to hear this story, but they really need to hear what comes next.
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And what came next was that moment where I realized I needed to get better.
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I needed to, I didn't have a choice because I was days away from dying.
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Days.
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And there was no way I could pull myself out of it.
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And I knew that.
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And I said, okay, I don't know how to get out of this.
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I know I need to.
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My parents can't do it for me.
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My coaches can't do it for me.
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Um, there's only one person who can, and that's Jesus Christ.
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And
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I remember going home from that performance, laying in bed that night and just crying and begging.
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I s I remember begging the Lord and being like, I promise I'll start eating.
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Please let me live through the night.
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I said, Lord, I will eat tomorrow as long as you let me live tonight.
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And it was the first night I actually slept in in probably a week.
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And I slept.
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And I woke up the next morning and I said, Lord, I know I told you I was gonna eat today, but I'm scared.
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I'm terrified to gain weight, I'm terrified to eat, I'm terrified of what's gonna happen.
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And I remember going and sitting at the table and eating breakfast.
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And my parents, my mom was there, my brothers were there, my sister was somewhere in the house too.
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Um, and I ate, and all of a sudden I started feeling really weird.
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And I fainted in my kitchen.
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Um, and I remember all I can remember hearing was my mom yelling at my brother, go to the gas station, get her some Gatorade.
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And then I remember dreaming, this brief dream.
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And all I remember is this voice that said, I've got you, you're gonna be okay.
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And that was the moment I knew that the Lord had me in his hands.
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I knew I had done the right thing by eating breakfast that morning.
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And from that point forward, it was, it was an uphill battle.
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It was relying on the Lord every single day.
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I prayed before everything I put in my mouth.
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Lord, I'm scared of what I'm about to do, but I know that you have put this in front of me for a reason.
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This is gonna make me better.
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And I did that every time I ate.
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And it was, I remember sometimes just being so upset I ate.
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Um,
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I would remember looking at myself in the mirror, my clothes weren't fitting anymore because I was gaining weight.
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and I remember every single time being like, I know that you are doing this for a reason.
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Everything that you have let happen in my life up to this point was for a reason, and this is no different.
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And it took me from December to my birthday in April that I ate.
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I went through extreme hunger.
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Which is what happens when you have an eating disorder and you start putting food in your body and your body goes, We never know when we're gonna eat again.
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We gotta eat as much as we possibly can.
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And I remember like binge eating and then I would obviously start crying because I just binge eat.
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And I then I'd have to go back to the Lord.
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And it just was a constant cycle of it felt like I had to sit next to Jesus every single meal.
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Like I had to save him a seat at the table because if he wasn't sitting there, I wasn't eating.
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Mm.
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And I did that for December till April.
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And all of a sudden, in April, I stood on a scale and I didn't drink water ahead of time.
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I didn't put anything in my pockets.
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And I was finally at a healthy BMI.
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Um finally, I had crossed that threshold of being underweight to being in a healthy BMI.
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And then all of a sudden
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I smiled and laughed for the first time.
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And that's something people don't talk about either in addiction and eating disorder.
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Is this you lose the ability to feel emotion other than anxiety?
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But I remember laughing for the first time and it felt so good.
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And then I couldn't stop laughing.
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And I sounded kind of like the Mad Hatter or like the Joker or something because I just couldn't stop because it felt so good to laugh again.
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And I remember thinking in that moment.
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The Lord pulled me out of this for a reason.
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I have now survived anorexia.
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And it was for a reason.
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And every single day from that moment forward, I remind myself of that.
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Every single day I have the ability to touch a life, to share the life changing love of Jesus Christ, to make a difference in the lives of others, and in whatever capacity that
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might be.
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Maybe it's just smiling.
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Maybe it's being a bubbly person.
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Maybe it's praying for someone.
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Um, maybe it's talking to people at church, or maybe talking to people that aren't at church.
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and now I'm starting a dance program um for children and adults with special needs because I have so much love in my heart that needs to be spread and shared because the Lord didn't
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pull me out of this dark, dark time to just be selfish and to just to be.
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you know, take life for granted.
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Cause for so long I did.
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And when you're knocking on death's door, you and you come back from that, you don't take that for granted anymore.
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You take every day as a blessing.
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I woke up today.
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I actually got to sleep last night.
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For one, I don't take sleep for granted anymore either, 'cause I actually can sleep now.
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And uh
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You don't you wake up in the morning and you're like, I'm not wasting today because I was given today.
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It was a gift.
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And that was a huge mindset shift for me.
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It was truly where my faith deepened.
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Um, it changed my yeah, it changed my mindset and it changed my relationship with the Lord.
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And now it's this dependency relationship.
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Like I depend on him for everything.
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Um, because I tried to do things on my own.
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I tried to put my own health in my own hands.
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I tried to do all this stuff by myself.
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I was gonna do it.
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I was gonna recover by myself.
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I was gonna, it was gonna be me, me, me, me, me.
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And the and God said, no, this is going to be him, him, him, him, him.
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He's gonna do it in his timing, in his way, and his way is not my way, that's for sure.
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And so, cool, so that is for sure.
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Um, and that's how I live my life now as well.
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Yeah, I think we can all relate to, you know, it's his timing and not ours.
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And sometimes we just have to be like, seriously.
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But I love your infectious joy and energy.
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And I know that comes from the peace that God has given you.
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And what I really appreciate is that this happened quite a few years ago.
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But you don't forget.
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And I think sometimes when people recover from a life-changing event, let's call that what it is.
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Um
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We, and I'll say we because I've been through my own couple life-changing events, we forget how bad it was because we kind of like want to just move on.
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But I love how you've kept it front and center and you're using your platform now to speak about it, to help others, and you're still dancing and right.
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So you didn't throw that part of your life away as part of that healthy, you know, trial that you went through.
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Right, you kept that with you.
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And I love that for you.
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Yeah, I mean the truth is is I could let that be the enemy.
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I could have let dance and the idea that a dancer body looks a certain way.
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I could have kept that and had a nasty attitude towards dance for the rest of my life.
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I could have taken fitness and been like, oh, well, fitness was what started this and fit in the fitness industry is so terrible and blah blah blah blah and had this nasty attitude
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towards it.
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And
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I could have done the same thing for anything.
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I could have done it for food, for vegetables.
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I could have done it for, you know, water.
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I could have had this nasty attitude and resentment towards those things.
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But what good is that gonna do?
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Those industries help a lot of people.
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And they can help a lot of people when done health when done in a healthy way.
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And it's the same way for people too.
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People come in our lives and they hurt us.
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They hurt us in a deep way that causes deep.
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Harsh wounds.
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And we have two choices.
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And this goes in this goes for most things in life.
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You have two choices.
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You can either be resentful and hateful and nasty towards a person, towards a thing, towards an industry, or you can say, Hey, God loves them too.
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God created them too.
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And if God loves them and God can forgive them, then so can I.
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And that's how I view my relationship on dance and fitness, on healthy food.
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It's how how I view certain people in my life who have hurt me at one point.
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Um, because if God can forgive them, so can I.
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Yeah, that's great that you don't have that all or nothing attitude because I think that's kind of what got you where you were to begin with, right?
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You took all the compliments and all the good information you were getting and you made it your identity and then you went into this perfectionism where you had to protect that
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identity at all cost.
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And it's correct.
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I did.
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it was yeah, creating the world to be your identity was how I got myself in that situation to begin with.
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The world has a lot of beautiful things in it that God put there for a reason.
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And I chose to make those things an identity rather than finding my identity in Christ.
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Yeah.
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So how are you using your platform now to talk about your relationship with Christ, to talk about your eating disorders?
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And I know you're moving forward with, you know, the new Dance and Shine program, which I'm so excited for.
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But how are you using your platform to really just project that?
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Yeah.
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So I for one, I don't hide my eating disorder.
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I talk about it very openly.
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Um, I I understand that, you know, eating disorders can make a lot of people really uncomfortable.
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But when we don't talk about things, then it becomes a vicious cycle.
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And so I'm very open about it.
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I talk about it a lot.
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When people ask me about my testimony, the first thing I always tell them is my eating disorder.
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It's not the story of when I got saved at eight years old.
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It's
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This happened to me as a teenager, and this is why I continue to foster a relationship with God.
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So A, I don't ever hide these things that happen to me.
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And I think it's very important that you know we celebrate differences.
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Don't mind my cat.
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He's very excited about this story, too.
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Um, but now creating a program that celebrates life.
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And celebrates the differences in life and celebrates that people were put on this earth for different reasons.
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And so I did create Dance in Shine as a dance program for children and adults with special needs and helping these individuals find a purpose, an individuality, and autonomy.
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I do, I spend a lot of time in assisted livings and assisted living facilities and nursing homes, teaching chair-based dance classes to senior citizens and
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You know, helping them know that like life is beautiful, um, working a lot with dementia patients and you know, reminding them of when they were, you know, young and in their 20s
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and bringing that piece of life back to them.
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And and even though someone is a hundred years old, they might be in a wheelchair, they might have dementia, their life is just as beautiful as a 23-year-old pageant queen's
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life.
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And there's no difference in the Lord's eyes about our two lives.
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So there should be no difference in the way.
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That I treat them and the way that and the opportunities they get.
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And it goes the same for children and adults with special needs.
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They're on this earth for a reason and they should be treated and given equitable opportunities for recreation that a neurotypical or you know someone who has been blessed
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with you know certain other abilities, all life is beautiful and all life deserves equitable opportunities.
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And so that's why I created my program.
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So that every child and every adult has the opportunity to experience recreation.
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Hmm.
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I love that.
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That's so good.
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So now I want I wanted you to talk to the past you.
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So if there's somebody listening, a parent or a a child or a teenager that's going through this, or they suspect their kid is going through this, what do you want them to know?
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That love actually is unconditional.
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That unconditional love exists.
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I know that sometimes it's hard to love yourself unconditionally.
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It's hard in those deep, dark times of your life, maybe when you're struggling with food and exercise and and body image, to love yourself unconditionally.
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But there are people in this world who do love you unconditionally.
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Parents love their children unconditionally in almost every situation.
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And my parents loved me unconditionally.
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And they're the ones who fought for me when I didn't fight for myself because they loved me, not because they were mad, not because they were disappointed.
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I had people rooting for me and praying for me, people I didn't even know, people that came to me years later and were like, I knew you were struggling, but I prayed for you.
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I have never met you, but I knew you were struggling and I prayed for you.
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Unconditional love exists and you don't have to earn it.
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You don't have to earn unconditional love.
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You don't have to look a certain way, act a certain way, eat a certain way to earn people's unconditional love.
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It exists and God's unconditional love more than anything.
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You have to do nothing to earn it.
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From the moment you are created in the womb, God has loved you unconditionally and he will, regardless of your actions, he will be there rooting for you and loving you.
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And he will be there to help you out of it.
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You just have to take his hand.
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Hmm, so good.
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I love that.
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I I say something similar.
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I always tell people you don't to earn your worth, you just have to own it.
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And that's true, right?
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And that's true when we are children of God, that he's got us.
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We just have to say, Hi, I'm right here.
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Please help me.
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I can't do this alone.
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And he just asks that we surrender.
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And you've done an excellent job of that while you're you know, and so yeah, congratulations for all the things that you've done through him.
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And worked through because it's not easy.
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It's hard.
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You know, it was hard being an addict.
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It was hard recovering.
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It's hard living everyday life, I'm assuming, right?
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Um, but tell me, what is your favorite Bible verse?
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What do you lean on in these hard times?
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My favorite Bible verse has been my favorite Bible verse for as long as I've read the Bible.
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It's I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.
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And I live by that.
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I wouldn't have survived if it hadn't been for Christ.
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I wouldn't be able to start a dance program if it hadn't been for Christ.
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I wouldn't have won a pageant if it hadn't been for Christ.
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And all those things happen for a reason.
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And whatever comes in the future, I know I can do it through Christ who strengthens me.
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Yeah, Philippians four thirteen.
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So good, so good.
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Becca, it was so great to have you on here.
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Thank you for opening up, sharing your story, some first time things that are coming out today.
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Um, I appreciate you and congratulations on all your success.
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Thank you so much.
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Thank you for having me and giving me an opportunity to share this story.
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Yes.
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We'll see you next time.
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Thank you.
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See you next time.