It was not until college that Troutt confessed her sin for the first time and found freedom from it. “I think a lot of times we think with our sin that if we confess it or we finally tell someone about it, they’ll judge us,” Troutt said. “They’ll think we’re gross. They’ll think we’re a bad Christian.”
“But really, as soon as I brought that into the light, it was like that grip that Satan had on my life broke off,” she said. “And immediately, I felt lighter. I felt freer.”
Bure said she felt something similar in her struggle with bulimia. “I don’t know why I was thinking that if I ever told anyone,” she said, “they would say to me, ‘How dare you? How dare you treat your body that way? You’re gross. You’re disgusting. How could you even think of doing that? What kind of person would do that?’”
Instead, when Bure finally told her husband about her struggle, “there was such relief, and not to my surprise ‘cause I have an awesome husband, but it was met with such compassion.”
“When that confession was there and my husband was like, ‘How can I help you?,’ like just hugged me and held me and like, ‘I’m going to help you through this,’” said Bure, “it felt like such relief and the ability to be able to take the next step forward.”
Bure shared that her struggle did not simply vanish after she confessed it. “For me,” she said, “that sin in my life, it’s never really left me. It’s gotten a whole lot easier, though, to kind of battle through. But I have my weapons of war.”
“When those thoughts creep into my mind, I know how to handle it and how to ward them off and because it’s not a part of my life anymore, and I don’t want it to be a part of my life,” she explained, “and I’ve chosen and determined for it not to be.”
“But it doesn’t mean the thoughts don’t still cross my mind,” said Bure. “I just have the power to slay it. You know, I have the power in Christ to slay it because I invited him into that.”
After Bure confessed her struggle to her husband Valeri, she got connected with a female friend who had gone through something similar. Twenty years later, they are still friends—and they are still helping each other.
Bure mentioned a recent series of episodes she did with author and speaker Lisa Whittle that focused on body-image struggles. It turned out that Bure’s friend called Bure and said, “I was creeping back into some old habits, and I didn’t really think a thing about it. And then your podcast came up on Facebook, and I saw your face, and I saw you talking about your struggles.”
“I can’t believe that over 20 years ago I was ministering to you,” said the friend, “and now you’re ministering to me even though you didn’t realize it.”
