By Keziah Mendez —
When Priya was a young girl, she asked her mother, “Who is God?”
“Priya, we live in a country with so many idols,” her mother said. “You can just pick one”
A lot of the Hindu idols had animal heads, and she wasn’t attracted to them. Priya chose this man with long hair who she thought was good looking.
“But in my head, I also had this imaginary God, who was just like Santa Claus who was just, kind and gentle,” she recalls. “Everything that I thought was just amazing was God to me.”
She had a secret relationship with the imaginary God. But at the same time she worshiped the idol of her choice.
Around the age of 18, Priya developed anorexia. She would go days without food or only eat a few biscuits.
Recognizing that her eating disorder was a problem, she appealed to her idol for help. “You see me sick,” she said. “If you are God, why aren’t you helping me? You know I am going to die, and you aren’t doing anything”.
That’s when it hit her: India worshiped the creation instead of the Creator. Would try to have a relationship with the painting when you could be friends with the painter?
She stopped believing in rituals and places of worship.
She began to see the beauty of nature and how it was not possible to have all of this from just a “big bang” because “nothing this beautiful” she says “has come out of an explosion.”
It was then that she decided to try to find the true God. Since she worked at the library, she started reading books. One of the books was the Bible. She realized therein was described the God she was praying to as a child.
She then got on her knees and prayed. “If there is a God out there, show me who you are. save me because I am going to die. I wanna know where I came from and what I am doing on this planet.” She had many more questions as well.
One day she was scrolling through channels and she saw all these different kinds of people just saying Jesus’ name and how they seemed to say His name like He was alive and real.
“Jesus, is it really you up there?” she asked.
“I got this loud, audible voice that said, Promise me.”
What did that mean?
The next morning, she opened her Bible and read, “Just the way I’ve been loyal and faithful to you, promise me you’ll always be loyal and faithful to me and to this country that you live in.” (Gen. 21:23)
When she tried to pray (the Hindu way with lots of repetition), she got bored.
“Even I’m bored,” the voice told her. “I’m not just a religion. I’m your Father. Talk to me.”
She began to get dreams and visions of things in the Bible that she had not learned about yet.
It was around this time that she stopped looking at the mirror because her anorexia made her think she was overweight.
Then one night she had this peace wash over her because she knew that she had a Father who was always watching out for her.
The next morning, she got up and made her favorite breakfast that she hadn’t had for almost three years. She then decided that she would not let anorexia control her; she prayed that God would heal her.
As Christmas approached, she was praying. Opening her Bible one day to the Book of Daniel, she read, “God has listened to your prayers since the time that you first turned to him. You wanted to understand about God” (Daniel 10:12).
A weight had been lifted off her. She felt lighter. She went to the mirror. and for the first time in years she did not feel bloated or like anything was wrong with her body.
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