Are you filling your life with something tangible because your emotions are missing the intangible gift of love?

Lately, I’ve been overindulging in emotional eating. No sooner than finishing the last bite of a cow and my stomach is signaling to eat the hog too. It’s a pretty serious problem. Even now, as I type this at 7:30 p.m., I’m taking down several chewy Chips Ahoy and no amount of self control or fullness is registering, so I’m tackling an ice cream sundae because dinner didn’t fill me up.

I’ve had my own hypothesis for these buried emotions I’ve been sweeping under the table I’m gorging at, but my solution is enough exercise will zero out the day and hours of self analysis can be avoided. (I’m going to go out on a limb and say all our problems stem from the same thing I’ve been settling my stomach with.)

My available time is shrinking this summer, which means I need to figure out a better method to make up for these meals or stop being a coward and deal with these emotions so I can stop overeating. The solutions are slim so I invested in wisdom; Breaking Free From Emotional Eating by Geneen Roth.

My hypothesis was right. The deeper emotion that causes people to react in reaching for food is… love, or a lack of, I should say. People are lonely deep down and they want to feel loved, so they eat to suppress their appetite for affections. It stems from the lack of tenderness and touch in our lives. The stomach isn’t empty, just the love tank.

Regardless of whether you’re single or in a committed relationship, God made us all for love. If you’re body isn’t experiencing a form of love daily, it reacts through depression, anger, anxiety and withdrawal.

I even believe the source of a sour character is a scarcity of love. An inner revolt happens when there is a deficit of devotion and sentiment surrounding our soul; touch, time, gifts, affirmation and even service.

The hard truth is, you may be getting what you’re giving. You are a life created for love, but also a life made to live love. So I thought about how to live love. But the reality is, you can’t walk in these ways of you’re wandering in the wilderness of ‘busyness’.

So first, get free from the demands holding you down and then load up your empty love tank with what it’s really lacking:

1) Guard your heart and mind with the Word of God daily. Don’t let the sun go down or come up without the Word in your mind and on your heart. After all, God is love. If you are in need of love, you are in need of God.

2) Find more friends who are in a similar position of life as you. If you’re single, find single friends. If you’re married, get with other couples.

3) Allow others to love you. We are generally a selfish society. We want love the way we want it. A preference is good, but I’m challenging you to renew your perspective and accept love in the way it’s given. Take what you can get and find the good in it.

4) Love lavishly. Encourage others. Get involved in other’s lives (it can be online). Give your time to someone, or even something they care about. Ask questions and follow up! Generously give out hugs. Invite someone to coffee, dinner, a movie or a walk .

Everyone was created to be loved.

Next time you reach for the refrigerator or have an adverse attitude, understand food won’t fill your deeper need. Get un-busy and start extravagantly loving others, and this love will overflow their reservoir and flood your own.

God, you see the depths of our hearts and know that void space that’s crying out for love. Help us to see the need in others. Give us the willingness and energy to begin pouring out what little love we have left in us, trusting that You will bring a mighty flood our way. You are Love. Help us to take Your Word and Spirit and transform lives with the unselfish nature of who You are. In the name of Love, I pray this in Jesus’s precious name, Amen.