Editor's Note November 2012: If you are looking for information on restoring your digestive system, please know that The Body Ecology Diet helped me, but it didn't completely restore my health. My body actually stalled out on the the diet, and I needed to go off it to heal other parts of my body. You can read about my last steps in healing by clicking here.
Hot, salty tears spilled into the warm bath water I'd just sunk my tired body into.
Healing, I said aloud through sobs,
where is my miracle?
John and I had finished listening to a sermon on modern miracles and Jesus' instantaneous miracles recorded in Matthew moments prior ... and I couldn't help but let the words slip out of my mouth.
Shoulders shaking, head in my hands, eyes blurred with tears and bare skinned and bared heart before my husband and my Lord, I asked the question I'd been side-stepping ever since week three of this yeast detox when I felt like this cleansing just wasn't giving way to the kind of rebuilding for which I'd hoped while on the diet.
Six and a half weeks.
For six entire weeks, I've been following the
Body Ecology Diet in effort to
holistically eliminate what we're pretty sure has been candiasis clothed in IBS, anxiety, sinusitis and fatigue.
Simply, following a no-sugar diet has been difficult because even natural sugars found in sweet potatoes, tomatoes and fruit feed yeast. As do vinegars, alcohol, caffeine {oh, tea!} and most grains.
And to get rid of the yeast, they must be starved because when they are starved, they die. When they die, they omit toxins into the body, which must be filtered and carried out. And before they are carried out healing feels like anything but.
I've been having a hard time accepting this-- this kind of healing where getting worse before getting better is the necessary route-- chills, fatigue, night sweats, digestive upset, hives, an episode of a green tongue, anxiety, irritability have been par for the course.
It's only been the past few weeks where I've felt a resurgence of my old friend energy and a major decrease in the brain fog that had been plaguing me for the past several months along with significant ease of digestive issues.
But there are still smaller waves of cleansing my body has been undergoing that continuously push me into longer stretches of sleep and relaxation and, samely, bouts of frustration and questioning.
This experience has me heavy thinking about so many things -- the way we view food as a culture and individually, the diseases and conditions we deem normal when they are actually very abnormal, the way our bodies cleanse themselves and the way we handle dis-ease.
When we don't feel well, we often want a quick fix of medication and instant relief.
When we medicate instead of naturally and holistically treat with food and quality self care aren't we sending mixed signals to our bodies -- telling them to stop the process of elimination by stopping fevers and drying out snot in the sinuses?
These symptoms are our bodies way of cleansing impurities -- and so we feel worse before we feel better.
I've been purging the invaders from my body these past six weeks and half weeks, and, thus, I've felt worse before I've felt better.
And there in the small pool of bathtub water, as I struggled to make peace in my mind between all the different ways healing comes and healing looks, I heard His voice through my sobs.
You never asked for an instant miracle; you asked for healing.
And patience. You asked for that, too.
There has been healing from His hand.
And in this healing, He's grown my patience, too.
When He said "Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you," He meant it.
He's been listening and responding all along in love.
And now it's my turn to respond in faith with trust, saying, yes, sometimes we feel worse before we feel better, but better is on the horizon and closer with every mile logged.
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Live.
Reflect on the blessings that were apparent to you this week.
Capture.
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Visit at least the person linked before you and encourage her in this journey we call life.
