Better healing is closer than you think.
Healing enhanced by faith and creativity.
Not just any faith. Targeted faith.
Before I clarify the target, let me reminisce my last nightmare.
2019 was really scary as I hurtled through a strange disease.
My body lit up like a July 4th sparkler.
Nerves from head to toe misfired like a dying Terminator.
Google said “you’re cooked.”
That’s neuropathy.
Fried nerves. No cure (they tell you). No solution.
Just drugs when you consult most doctors.
But, faith led me down a better path for long-term healing.
Sometimes, pain pushes us off the cliff.
Psychiatrist Frederic Flach calls this cliff, the “strange, gray land.”
No immediate answers.
So, the quick reaction is . . .
- alcohol
- drugs
Anything that will dull the pain and reduce fear or panic.
Healing in a strange gray land
When I hit the cliff, patience almost jumped with me.
But, I held on to greater strength. And greater strength led to answers.
I believed God would hold me together for solutions down the road.
“How gracious he will be when you cry for help. As soon as he hears, he will answer you. Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying, ‘This is the way; walk in it.’” Isaiah 30:19, 21
Our body is God’s gift to us.
The solution for pain and disease is within our body.
They heal themselves if we let them.
But, woe to our healing when we cram the All-American diet.
- Added sugar
- Fried anything
- Overloaded carbs
- Repeat these again
The biggest breakthrough for my healing was the realization that my all-American diet of added sugar and overloaded carbs combined with low Vitamin D blew my nerves out.
Eliminating every food with added sugar and substituting carb snacks with real fruit like grapes, blueberries and cantaloupe dropped nerve pain from 10 to 2 in a few months and ultimately 0 after two years.
“Small destructions add up and finally they are understood collectively as large destructions.” Wendell Berry
So do healthy habits. They add up . . . to healing.
Simmering through pain
Simmering reminds us that “not yet” is normal.
The body takes time to repair even on a healthy diet.
Why not allow it to simmer?
By “simmer,” I mean patiently believing the answers are out there.
We just need to find them.
There are so many wrong choices!
How to avoid them?
Ask, “Is this masking or solving my problem?”
Some doctors treat neuropathy by masking the pain.
That’s true of many diseases.
But, a good doctor will show the cause and the long-term solution.
After a nerve test in 2019, I lost 25% of the feeling in my feet.
I asked my doctor if I could get it back.
He explained there’s a chance if I accept the real cause.
“Maybe 1% do that,” he said.
1% are those willing to change a lifestyle.
Low carbs, no added sugar and a non processed food diet led my healing.
Faith and creativity heal the worst diseases
I believe everyone is capable of healing.
But, our odds dramatically improve if we believe in the power of . . .
- faith
- creativity
So, I face every crisis with the God of all possibilities.
“. . . the God who gives life to the dead, and calls things that are not as though they were.” Romans 4:17
The point here is not that you can do anything.
It’s rather, God has the power to do anything.
And He inspires creativity.
How do we recover from the worst diseases?
- Gather all information
- Expect all possibilities
Louis Pasteur discovered immunization this way.
His thorough research on fowl cholera failed.
So, he took a long vacation.
When he returned, the germ cultures were sterile.
He almost quit the experiment.
But, sensing an answer, he reinoculated the fowl with a new culture.
Incredibly, the birds didn’t get sick and immunology was born.
Creativity works. Faith works.
But, ya gotta let both simmer.
How do faith and creativity help you?