Every person has a story and some parts of those stories feel too hard to tell.

You are listening to, if you only knew, a mini series brought to you by the Happy Hour with Jamie Ivy Podcast.

Guys, I'm so excited that you're here for this mini series. We're going to put out a new podcast every Friday for the next couple of months.

My hope for you as you hear these stories is that you won't just hear someone's struggle, but that you will hear how God has used that struggle to bring himself glory.

I believe that when we share our struggles and our mess and our hardness with the world, what we actually get to proclaim is the goodness of God in our lives in spite of those struggles.

That's what I hope that you hear through every single one of these interviews.

On today's show, my friend Melanie Dale joins me and opens up about her struggle with an eating disorder in her teenage years and early 20s.

Her fear of what people would think about her and even what God would think about her kept her from sharing the struggle with friends.

My hope for you as you listen is not that you would just hear what Melanie's struggle was, but you will hear the way that she began to take baby steps and talking about her struggle.

I hope that you hear how Melanie shared her pain with a friend and what that led to and how important her community is to her even today in finding this battle.

Here is Melanie and her story.

Melanie, thank you for joining me today.

Hi!

This whole concept, you've heard me talk about it, I've been talking about it, this whole theme of, you know, if you only knew.

That is the concept of the book that I wrote and it's just this thing that I lived with for a really long time.

I constantly thought, if they knew this about me, what would they think?

The funny thing is, Melanie, and I'll probably say this with every person I talk to about this, is really, I don't know that people would have been that weird about it.

Right? But I just thought that they would.

So what is something in your life where you really had this kind of convincing of yourself, it could have been true, it could have been put on yourself, of if they knew what would happen?

Yeah, well, I just finished your book, Jamie, and it's awesome.

Thank you so much.

Well, I loved it, and I finished it, and I was thinking about my own, if you only knew.

...