I just realized that it has been quite a while since my last blog post. The Lord has been leading me through so much, I’ve been sharing quite a few bits and pieces of it on Instagram and on facebook, but I forget to sit and compose a more complete post here. So today I want to share with you some of the things that have been going on lately and how the Lord answers prayer sometimes in the most natural way.
2019 was filled with many ups and downs regarding my health. After a very intense health crash at the end of 2018 where I had landed in the hospital over night. I started learning about the alkaline diet and the alkaline way of life in general, and also about the lymphatic system. I came across a book called ‘Get off your acid’ and it really changed things around for me. I was able to get myself off of a medication that I had been on for a couple of decades and greatly impressed my primary care physician as well as my cardiologist with how well I was doing. But diets on their own are difficult to maintain, and if you’re relying solely on them then it’s easy to relapse. That’s kind of what happened to me over the Summer, I wasn’t back to square one but had slid enough to cause a health struggle.
I’ve always had an affinity for a more holistic approach to health care…diet, exercise, vitamins and herbs… any gentle form of healing, as pharmaceutical drugs often have a very negative effect on me…curing one thing, but leaving me with so many other issues. So, when I started to struggle again…I went back to praying… and listening. The Lord kept showing me ‘Frankinsense’…mind you, I wasn’t much into oils at this point. I had some that I had bought on Amazon and used them to make the house smell nice instead of using air fresheners which literally made me ill (as well as many other things I had around the house…cleaners, my husband’s cologne, soap, laundry detergent…the list was insane by this point and it was very hard to explain to my family. It’s not that I didn’t like these smells, I did…sometimes very much…but they made me physically ill.)
By the end of November I got an invitation from my friend Cath, for me to come to her massage studio, where she had another friend from our Route One Networking Group, Kimberly Marrama, come in and introduce us to essential oils. More specifically Young Living products. During the course of her presentation, she goes on to mention Frankinsense and my ears perk up at this point, and then she mentions something about the lymphatic system and the light bulb started coming on. She enthusiastically shared her experience and knowledge with us. We got to test some of the oils, I had brought my 17 year old daughter with me who absolutely loves this stuff…and we were in heaven.
I immediately came home and ordered my starter kit and it was like Christmas when it arrived. I just had to get out the bottle of Frankincense that came with it and started looking up recipes to use it on. I found one for a face cream and began using it religiously…I’m serious…like in obedience to God. Had no clue why other than I felt strongly that this is what I needed to be doing. I did have some skin issues, a mole between my eyes and some scarring from my teen years dealing with acne. Also, at the age of 56, I’m thinking the Lord just thinks I need a little extra help in this department. lol. But if someone had asked me then what I most struggled with health wise, I would not have said skin issues…not even close.
Well, a couple of weeks later I go to my regularly scheduled doctor’s appointment and they didn’t like the look of that mole I mentioned before. The skin specialists came in and felt sure it was Basel Cell Carcinoma, so they booked an appointment at the dermatologist right away. That was followed up by a biopsy which confirmed within days that I had a very common form of skin cancer. But quite frankly…I don’t care how common it was…knowing that there was any type of cancer cells in my body kind of freaked me out and escalated my stress level. My mom had died of cancer, and it runs rampant in my extended family. I know that cancer cells can come and go, and that our body can usually deal with it…so if it hadn’t…something within me wasn’t right. High acidity explains it… especially due to lengthy highly stressful and emotional life events.
I felt confident though that if the Lord was providing me with something to help me then it would all be ok…He had this covered. 😀 I had sometime leading up to the biopsy and then a couple of weeks from then until the scheduled Mohs surgery and I was committed to doing all I could on my end to help the healing along. I went back on my alkaline diet, used my my face cream with the Frankinsense and diffused relaxing oils to keep me in the present moment and not worrying about anything that I had no control over. And of course, asked prayers form anyone that I came in contact with.
The surgery went very well, they only had to go in and cut twice…sometimes it can take many attempts, as they go layer by layer to get all of the cancer. I followed doctors orders for after care, and used the Vaseline instead of my cream while the stitches were still in place, but now I’m back to using the Frankincense cream and I’m fully confident that it will help keep the scarring to a minimum. I’ve now also bought the YL Sun Screen lotion as well as their body lotion. I’m getting rid of all the household toxins I can, and replacing them with YL products. I take my health seriously. If you think these health products are expensive, you should see my medical bills from this surgery alone. 🙁 I’d rather spend my money on health maintenance, wouldn’t you?
I need to add a little blurb here…when I started mentioning oils, some friends felt they needed to warn me against the ‘pyramid schemes’ out there. Honestly… if more people can make a living through these amazing products by dispersing education and sharing their own experiences, I’m all for it. I listen to God’s voice and His leading, and this is all I want to show others to do as well. God doesn’t need a product to support my healing process… but if He chooses to use one, who am I to say no? I didn’t say no to pharmaceutical drugs all those years and no one batted an eye.
If you’d like to know more about this feel free to contact me. Here is my link if you’d like to order a start up kit…it comes with so many amazing oils and other great products at a highly discounted rate. You’d pay so much more if you were to buy everything separately. Anyway…I know that I sound like an advertisement and I’m not even sorry for it. lol. Just ‘stepping into’ obedience and doing what I’m feeling called to do.
In my last post, 
I’m reading a book that I’ve only recently learned about, it’s called The Values Factor, written by Dr. John Demartini. This isn’t a Catholic book, I must tell you upfront that I like to read from a variety of world views…I absorb what is for me and let go of the rest. If I discover while I’m reading it, that it’s completely contrary to my own world view, then I discard the entire book. It’s just how I do things. 😀 Anyway, I’m enjoying this one very much, its similar in some ways to the popular Love Languages book, It goes through a series of questions that leads you to reflect on what you really are all about at your core and the values that you hold the most dear so that you can live your life the most authentically. For instance you may say that your truly value something, but if for some reason you are always finding that you lack time, money, or whatever to get to it, then it’s probably not one of your higher values and could even be a societal ‘should’. I have several of those as a Portuguese woman, this may be true for all women but in my opinion it’s especially true for the Portuguese, my list of shoulds is pretty darn long. I should keep a spotless house, I should be a great cook…I should, I should, I should…and not surprising, that little voice in my head uttering these words sounds very much like my mother. The problem is that those aren’t MY highest values at all…not even close. Are you unsure of your highest values? What you need to do is look at what you already do, day in and day out. How do you spend your time, your money, you’re energy. Chances are good that barring addictions or any such thing, you are already pursuing your highest values…you just may not have put it all together yet. It’s what brings us joy and what can also potentially irritate us the most about others who don’t hold the same values as us. So this is a great way not only to learn about ourselves and our particular gifts, but to learn about others as well and come to respect and value them for what they can offer instead of what we’d like them to do. I’ve discovered that my 3 highest values are, revealing the Kingdom of God, Teaching, and Healing. In other words, the things that drive me and fill me with passion have these thing at their core. Whether it’s reflected in my parenting, my marriage, my career choices…these three things will always find its way in.
