I am posting today in response to this post . (I recommend reading it if you have the time as this is where I'm jumping off from, though I ended up going a slightly different direction than I first thought I was headed...) We have been praying for Aimee's healing and for strength for the whole family. Nolan's mom is my friend Janis.
You may or may not know my own "radical" views on health etc. I keep pretty quiet because I don't feel it's my job to get anyone to see my point of view. I figure my friends and family have the right to make their own choices regarding how they live. I'll offer my opinion if it's asked for. But, today reading Nolan's post I felt like saying a few things.
Aimee's situation was desperate. With a large mass in her chest that had collapsed one lung and was putting pressure on her heart, having lost way too much weight and hardly able to breath. Her family was desperate for solutions. Nolan mentions at first he was happy to agree to the drugs. Anything to help his wife.
To a much lesser degree I have felt the same way in the past. For the first six years of his life Brannon had asthma. This disease affects a number of our family members. I noticed him wheezing as soon as he started to crawl. I'd had suspicions before because of a couple things I'd noticed with him. But I knew for sure one day when we were playing on the bed, he was crawling around laughing and wheezing. I knew the sound well from hearing my mom and brother all my life. It was devastating to admit it out loud though. Saying "My baby has asthma" was so difficult. Then came illness after illness, every cold he got turned to nights awake making sure he was still breathing.
The worst part though was that I couldn't get a doctor to listen to me and believe me. Somehow at every doctor's visit he was breathing just fine. When we went to the ER they said "Don't label him with that disease. It's just a virus causing temporary wheezing'' No matter what I said to any doctor they didn't listen. One doctor even said "Well, he wheezes when he runs on grass. He's allergic to grass, let's get him some allergy medication" I had just explained various situations, NOT just the one. I said "What about his wheezing when he laughs?" The response was, "I don't know why he would do that, but for the grass let's try this..." Aaarrrgggghhhh!!!! Was what I was thinking about then. Needless to say I did not fill a prescription for allergy medication.
It never occurred to me to go to a naturopath at that point, mostly because it was not covered by insurance and we could not afford it.
Finally when Brannon was 3 1/2 I found a doctor (a respiratory specialist) who listened to me and believed me. At the time Brannon was to the point where his passages were so inflamed he was wheezing almost all the time. I gladly accepted the drugs offered.
As time went on and I realized the side effects of the drugs were to weaken his respiratory system further I was horrified. But, I didn't know what else to do. I kept giving my son the drugs even though I was tortured by what I was doing to him. Eventually through a set of circumstance that I won't go into today we began to see a naturopath. He prescribed a series of homeopathics for Brannon, which I gave him while still keeping up his other drugs, but I didn't see any changes. I wonder now if it was because of the weakness caused by the drugs that I didn't see any effects from the homeopathics. But, I was not brave enough (some would say stupid enough) to wean him off the drugs while trying the other. Then, God healed Brannon and it wasn't an issue any more. His pediatrician looked over all his info and said to take him off the medication but to expect to need it again when he enters puberty (Ha! I don't think so! I'm not accepting that word of doom after all the miracles I've seen:)
We also at that time discovered a number of food allergies and changed our diet accordingly, seeing a big change in our overall health, though it took quite a while, but we were pretty far down the illness road as far as the allergies were concerned, it took our bodies a while to recover. Which makes me wonder, if we had had holistic care available to us years earlier than we were able to afford it on our own, would we have had to walk through some of the devastating things? I agree with Nolan. There's no money in holistic care. There's no money in training our medical doctors in nutrition. There's no certainty of an immediately visible result when you set out to heal the whole body instead of to mask a symptom. The general public is also trained to expect immediate relief from symptoms.
Now, understand that I am not saying we don't need doctors etc. I'm just saying the system is not there for the people who are seeking care. It's not designed around making people well. I could go on about agriculture and education and so on, but really what do we expect. The world is a broken place, it's going to operate in a broken manner, when left to itself. The thing is, we, the Body of Christ are not supposed to be leaving it to itself. We are not designed to sit in a pew and wait for the "rapture bus".
"For all creation is waiting eagerly for the manifestation of the sons of God" Or "For all creation is waiting eagerly for that day when God will reveal who His children really are." Romans 8:19 And from one of my favorite passages "I pray that you will begin to understand the incredible greatness of His power for us who believe Him. This is the same mighty power that raised Christ from the dead and seated Him in the place of honor at God's right hand in the heavenly realms. Now He is far above any ruler or authority or power or leader or anything else in this world or in the world to come. And God has put all things under the authority of Christ, and He gave Him this authority for the benefit of the church. And the church is His body; it is filled with Christ, who fills everything everywhere with His presence." Ephesians 1:19-23
Understand when I say church, I don't mean a gathering in a building on Sunday morning. I mean every believer filled with the Spirit of God, the literal body of Christ living a life filled with LOVE and Power walking the streets every day, changing the world as we know it. If "everything everywhere" is filled with His presence the world would look a lot different than it does now. WE are the carriers of His presence. I've heard it said that Christians should be the most creative people on the planet. It's true, we have the Creator of all living in us. We have the literal mind of Christ (according to my bible). That means creativity and life-giving power in EVERY arena of life. Medicine, government, media, everything.
So today----
I pray that you will begin to understand the incredible greatness of His power for us who believe Him!!
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