Emily Parker spoke with author, award-winning blogger and speaker, Emma Scrivener.

It happened gradually and I did it in secret. I knew that people would be worried and it felt to me that this was something that gave me identity and gave me a kind of strength and I didn't want it taken away. It wasn't that my parents woke up one day and saw I had lost an awful lot of weight, it just happened very gradually. The doctor said don't worry about it and then we got to a point where we went back again to the doctor and my mum said, "This is really worrying me, you really don't seem to be doing well at all." Then the NHS staff swung into action and said "Another week and you'd be dead."

It sounds incomprehensible to somebody who's outside. How can you let someone get to that point? How can it happen? But, it took months and months and months. I was lying and hiding everything, and so you can get into quite a bad way without people realising. Particularly if those around, including medics, don't spot it in time. So that began a long battle for me.

My parents and family were great. We got treatment, but it was treatment that was just physical to begin with. That is absolutely vital, particularly if someone's anorexic, because if you lose a lot of weight, your brain starts to break down as well. It's not just that your body is emaciated, your thinking is affected too. Until you start to put weight on again, you can't think properly. There's no point in giving someone at a very low weight counselling, because their brain is as broken as their body is. However if it's just that your weight is fixed and you don't look at the issues underneath, then you end up the way I was at 18, which is back to a healthy weight and looking like I was fixed on the outside, but with all the same issues still inside. In fact even more, because now I'd put my family through a real nightmare, and it seemed in many ways that I was messy, even worse than I had ever dreamed I could be.

Emily: Where did you see God at work, in some of those moments where you'd felt messy?

Emma: It was only later on that I started to understand the gospel and understand not just sin, but grace and not just this 'headmaster' type of God.

When I left home and went to university, I threw myself back into being a good girl. For me that meant going along to Bible College and getting engaged to a vicar-in-training; talking the talk, but again not really understanding it.

I'd always been frightened about what it meant to be a woman, and frightened about what it meant to be a godly woman, so when my husband's time at Bible college came to an end and he was due to start as a vicar, I suddenly realised, "Gosh, I'm going to be a vicar's wife and all the vicar's wives I know are amazing, and I'm not even semi-amazing. I'm just really messy." I got really frightened and then my old behaviour started up again.

I lost an awful-lot of weight and got very ill and was dying. I kept saying, "I'm going to get better. I'm going to get better." But I just couldn't do it. I reached a point where I cried out to God and said one evening, "Look Lord, I'm dying and I've come to the end of myself. I don't know what's left, but if you want what's there, you can have it, but will you help me? If you're this God of mercy and of grace, will you speak to me?"

When I opened up the Bible, I looked at the Book of Revelation and in there there's a description of Jesus. It says, "He has hair that's as white as wool, and blazing eyes, and He's beautiful, and brilliant, and intense." I'd always felt like I was too much for everybody and too nasty, but here was a God who saw my mess and said, "You're not too much for me. I see you as you are and I love you and I won't leave you that way."

As I read on in Revelation, I read about a Lord who wasn't about rules and regulations, but who was also a broken lamb who was slain for me; a God who didn't say, "Clean yourself up and then come to me," but a God who comes down to us at the cross, in our mess and joins us there and then carries us out; instead of us saying, "I'll sort myself out God and then I'll go to church and then I'll be okay." He says, "My body is broken for you on the cross. I pay for the things you've done wrong and I take your sickness on myself." I was so struck by that; I was so struck by His love and grace, and also His power and majesty. I think at that point I realised that the Lord had been keeping me from death and that He had been calling me and calling me and calling me, but it was only when I was at rock bottom that I was listening and actually prepared to see who He was and stop trying to perform for Him. It was only then that I stopped trying to go to Him on my own terms and instead say, "I'm a mess, but you've come for messy people, and that's me, and I need you."

That was the beginning for me of coming to know the Lord properly for myself and the outworking of my own life, in terms of not just moving away from anorexia and other struggles that I have like depression, or being a perfectionist, or suffering from my anxiety or control issues, but just seeing how He's at work and He's with you every single day.

It doesn't happen overnight. It didn't happen overnight for me. It wasn't that I woke up the next day and said, "Everything is fine and fixed." It's a process. But as well as that, something changed when I saw the Lord. He gave me a picture of who I could really be and I saw for the first time someone more beautiful than anorexia. I saw a relationship, not just a set of rules, or reasons to get better, but a person who would walk me through all of my struggles; not just issues with eating, but issues with life, identity and everything else.

Emily: Words like 'mental health' and 'anorexia' and 'anxiety' can feel very frightening, but they can also start to feel like you're wearing a label, particularly when you hear them being used by medical professionals, and family and friends as well. You mentioned before that you started to feel like they were a bit like your identity. Did it feel like that? Did it ever feel like you were having labels put on you?

Emma: Yes, it did. But I think a lot of those labels I put on myself. Something that I've learned, or I'm learning, is that I'm not who I think I am. I'm not what other people say I am. I'm not good or bad. I am who the Lord says. So in myself, my tendency is to think of myself as 'shameful,' or, 'a bit rubbish,' or, 'not very together' and wishing I was better. But God says, "You're my daughter. You're chosen and redeemed and absolutely loved. I've set a price on your head; the price of my Son and you're precious and worthwhile. That is bigger than any identity, or label that you or anyone else could put on you. Being a self-harmer, or struggling with OCD, or being anorexic or bulimic, or anxious, or any of these things, that's not who you are. These may be struggles that you have, but you are mine and I love you. You are so much more than these labels." Knowing the Lord means that I'm able to step aside from the labels that I give to myself, 'flawed,' or 'rubbish,' or anything else.