I recently discovered that on a blog you can check stats to see how many people are coming to your site and how often, and from where. I know, I'm way behind. So for those of you who come here every day looking for something new to read, I'm sorry I've been sick!
It's been a long time since I was last sick. Part of what woke me to the reality of my unhealthy life situation more than a year and a half ago was frequent and very debilitating illness. In the fall of 2010 I got strep throat for the first time and I got it again and again and again and again and again, until February of the following year when my doctors finally said "If you get this one more time, we're going to take your tonsils out." and "You have chronic fatigue syndrome and adrenal failure." and "systemic inflammation" and "come back in a month for follow-up blood work... if it hasn't improved we'll need to start looking for what is causing this... cancer screening... allergy stressors..." etc. etc.
Nothing wakes one up to the reality of their life like words like that.
I read up on things like chronic fatigue and adrenal failure and inflammation. No wonder I couldn't shake the strep. Most of these things stem from one issue: stress.
The body handles all stressors the same way. So I had mental stress, emotional stress, physical stress, dietary stress, you-name-it stress, and my body had totally fizzled out in its ability to handle any stress at all - adrenal failure - which leads to CFS, inflammation, and of course, inability to heal from things like strep throat.
I knew a huge part of the stress in my life was job related, but at that time I couldn't quit my job yet. Even though my doctor had said "the best thing you could do for yourself right now is to take a 6 month sabbatical from life." I began to pray earnestly for release from my job, and in the mean time I took steps to reduce stressors in my life I could control.
Sugar is a huge stressor on your digestive system. And since your body handles all stress the same, taking sugar out of my diet would have the same physical effect as a less stressful job. So I quit sugar. Started feeling better almost immediately. Then one day while toasting a white bagel for breakfast I heard this still, small voice say "You know, white flour is only a few molecular changes away from sugar..." and so I quit bread products. Started feeling even better after that!
Over time I adapted my diet to a pretty natural animal/vegetable array of edibles. I lost some weight, of course, but the best part is that I quit getting sick. I quit suffering from exhaustion. I quit suffering from anxiety and depression and fatigue and everything else that was making me miserable. My follow-up blood work showed remarkable improvement so I didn't get tested for allergies or have a cancer screen or tonsillectomy or whatever else they wanted to do to fix me. And then, hallelujah, God answered my prayers and made a way for me to quit my stressful job!
It sounds extreme, I guess, to cut all sugars and grains out of your diet. I've had more than one person say to me "I don't think it's healthy to eliminate an entire food group." (And for the record, I don't do this militantly or to the extreme that I offend. I do this maybe 70% of the time.) But when your doctor says, essentially, "you either have extreme stress or you have cancer" and "you need a 6 month sabbatical from life", I'd say that calls for the extreme.
And I do believe God led me to this way of life to bring about my physical healing. At the time I was suffering from those repeated bouts of strep, I was memorizing scripture regularly, and this is one of the verses I took on:
"And so, dear brothers and sisters, I plead with you to give your bodies to God because of all he has done for you. Let them be a living and holy sacrifice - the kind he will find acceptable. This is truly the way to worship him. Don't copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you in to a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God's will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect." - Romans 12:1-2 NLT (emphasis mine)
That "don't copy the behavior and customs of this world" part is what clued me in. The behavior and customs of this world I'm in says that low-fat/whole grain are the way to go. But I had been doing that for years and years, and was still sick. I needed to be transformed into a new person. I needed God to change the way I thought about food and the relation of food to my physical health. If I want my body to be a living and holy sacrifice for him, it needs to be healthy. If being healthy means going against the grain, so to speak, than so be it.
And the amazing part is, it works. This is the first time I've been sick since that last trip to the doctor the last time I had strep, more than a year and a half ago. And of course, I've been extremely lax with my diet lately, and dealing with life stress relating to work and school and finances... so I'm not at all surprised I couldn't fight off this particular bug. But it underscores to me the importance of a few things:
1. Trust God to be God
2. Do what he tells you to do (like, for me, don't eat sugars and grains.)
So I'm eating eggs for breakfast this morning and praying for adrenal health and practicing letting go of things I can't control and letting him be God.
Because that's what he does best, after all.
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