Ashli Roussel, a junior nursing major, has used her own experiences and struggles to write a devotional book for teenage girls.
Roussel’s story began on the track team in high school. Track became an essential part of her life to the point of obsession. She ran so much that it caused her to develop an eating disorder. In order to help her, Roussel’s doctor told her to stop running and focus on her diet instead.
“It really shook my world,” Roussel said. “It was like pulling a rug out from under my feet, because [running] is what I did, where I found my worth.”
Roussel said she felt like the eating disorder had wrecked her life but that God used it to transform her relationship with him.
“When I got an eating disorder and my life seemed to be falling apart, that’s when God really took hold of me and taught me to surrender to him and to have a personal relationship with him,” Roussel said.
She called it her “Surrender Adventure.” Roussel said that though it was one of the hardest things she has ever gone through, she would not change a thing because her relationship with God grew so much.
This experience was also the inspiration for her devotional book.
The fall semester of her senior year of high school, Roussel had just been released from an eating disorder clinic. She was doing well on her road to recovery and was reflecting on the past year and the struggle she had been through, and she wondered what she was supposed to do. She said she felt God was calling her to write about her experience.
She spent a year and a half writing and self-editing the book. During this time she was also researching publishing options. She sent a few proposals but heard nothing back.
In May 2010 she heard about the Blue Ridge Mountains Christian Writers Conference in North Carolina. It was there that she first heard of the publishing company Sonfire Media. She picked up a business card and sent in a submission.
Sonfire contacted Roussel about her manuscript, and within a few months they agreed to publish her book. She signed the contract on Nov. 30, 2010.
Roussel’s book is currently finishing the first round of editing. Normally editing involves three rounds, but there can be more. The tentative title is, “Boundless, Discovering God in Your Eating Disorder.”
“An eating disorder can be very binding, making you feel like a captive,” Roussel said. “So in Christ we can have healing from eating disorders and be boundless.”
Through this process Roussel said she has learned a lot about waiting on God, and his ability to help her do things she did not think she could do.
“I don’t consider myself worthy of having a book published,” Roussel said. “But God has shown me he is bigger than my weaknesses and he can use and does use my weaknesses.”
