My Favorite Book

Options today were to write about my favorite book or something taboo. By choosing to write about my favorite book, I am also writing about something taboo.

My favorite book is the Holy Bible. Although I grew up attending church (and loved it for the most part) there was not very much emphasis on the Bible. So when I got to college, I joined a Bible study some of the other girls were having in the dorm where I lived. That one simple thing impacted my life more than any other choice I ever made.

The Bible comes alive when you have a personal relationship with its author. Without that it is simply a collection of dusty old stories and seemingly miraculous tales. When you realize that you are a condemned sinner and that Jesus died on the cross in your place and you repent and thank Him for His sacrifice, a transaction takes place that transfers life and spiritual understanding to you. I will never forget the day I did that and verses from the Bible began to come alive, taking on meaning I had never understood before. Now each time I read old familiar passages, the Holy Spirit quickens them in new ways.

The Bible is my favorite book because it has the power to instruct me, teach me, train me, correct me, admonish me, encourage me, strengthen me, bring life to me and much, much more.

My Favorite Thing - Not Health Related

Just about everyone who knows me, knows that I am a passionate gardener. It's something I've enjoyed since I was young. And even though it isn't directly related to health, it probably has a significant impact not only on my health but on the health of many others; those to whom I sell my superior produce.

For me, gardening is a way to relax, be outside, get good exercise and just have fun. Nothing delights me more than to see little seedlings begin to push through the soil. And harvesting my own non-GMO and pesticide-free vegetables and fruits is icing on the cake. Admittedly, there is quite a bit of work, but it's so gratifying to go out and pick the best, freshest vegetables imaginable.

I garden very differently from the way my parents did. And I'm continually reading and learning new things about gardening. In the last few years I've become very interested in gardening with heirloom varieties. Each year I try new seed varieties, participate in seed exchanges, save seed from my favorites and plant them again the next year.

So far I don't have a greenhouse, but it's one of my dreams! Then I'll be able to keep my plants outside instead of bringing them into my house each winter!

P.S. Since I wrote this quite a few years ago, my backyard now has a greenhouse. I discovered that having a greenhouse wasn't all that I expected it to be and I hardly use it at all now. Live and learn!

This Was Hilarious

The joke was on me!

When we lived in Brazil, we occasionally encountered bats. They were in some of the houses, attics, dark closets and yards at dusk. It was never very pleasant to be dive bombed by a bat. There were so many bats in some of the houses that occasionally our young teen boys were hired to shoot some of them. They had fun doing that.

One day I was standing in my living room and all of a sudden I felt something in my hair. My immediate thought was that it was a bat and that it had gotten tangled in my hair. I frantically thrashed my hands, jumped around in circles, screamed and yelled and generally carried on something fierce. My husband happened to be nearby and came to my rescue. Once I settled down, he helped me get the masking tape out of my hair. I had completely forgotten that he had tacked a piece of masking tape to the ceiling a couple of days earlier - to trap flies. Ended up trapping me instead.

I still chuckle when I think of how hilariously funny I must have looked! I felt pretty silly. But in all honesty, getting a bat tangled in my hair was one of my biggest fears.

A Descriptive Story about a Memory

On Sunday, my husband and I went to the Dallas Arboretum along with a dear friend. She had tickets to share with us. What an enjoyable day!

But it brought back memories of the day my son and I spent the day at the Arboretum in Madison, Wisconsin. He was studying at Wheaton College at the time but I was there and we were in Madison - although I don't really remember why.

It was a gorgeous spring day and the birds were beginning to appear again after their winter absence. Both of us loved plants and there were so many to see. Most had labels and we delighted in exclaiming over this plant or that plant. And in the midst were the chipmunks, squirrels and birds. We did a lot of walking, as I recall. It was a big place. And we had a hard time trying to decide which way to go; there was so much to see. I'm sure we missed many of the areas. I don't recall seeing too many flowers but some were budding out and the earliest ones were in bloom, I'm sure.

The thing that stands out to me most was my delight and enjoyment in being able to share such a glorious day with my middle child. We had often enjoyed nature together, but it had been a long time since we'd had the opportunity. He had gone off to boarding school when he was in 10th grade, now he was in college and we were in Brazil. So spending the day together was a rare occasion indeed.

All these memories flooded my soul last Sunday as we walked and enjoyed the Arboretum in Dallas. It was very different. There were flowers in bloom everywhere and blown glass sculptures of enormous proportions, crowds of people and warm sunshine. My thoughts were on John who is no longer with us. If you care to read the story you can find it at Aloha is Forever..

A Letter to My Health

I'm not particularly inspired on either of the topics for today's post, so I'll go for this one. I'm writing it more to my body than to my health as it is really my body that enables health. So in my mind, it is my body that is responsible for my health.

Dear My Own Health (Body),

Thank you so much for responding positively beyond my wildest dreams to the healthy natural supplements I put into you. Thank you for being the amazing creation of God that is able to create good health out of good food, good habits and good supplements.

I wish I had known the secrets to keeping you healthy when I was much younger.but I'm very happy I finally discovered them. I went so many years suffering from lack of energy, symptoms that caused me intense discomfort, grief and pain. I lost so much time that could have been spent more productively. How glad I am that you are in good health now at the age of 65. You're amazing!

What an awesome blessing it is to be able to get out of bed feeling rested and ready to tackle the challenges of the day! What a blessing to be able to do anything and everything I would like to do! Thank you that I can dig up a whole garden bed without a single sore muscle or creaky joint! Amazing, amazing, amazing!

How faithful God has been to direct me to all the natural and beneficial supplements I need to walk in health. Without health, all my other plans would be frustrated. I would not be able to function at top performance and accomplish God's plans for my life.

Awesome, amazing body! Awesome, amazing supplements! Awesome amazing health! Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Redesigning a Doctor's Office

One of the best ideas I know of for designing a doctor's office is to have a partition or separate entrance for sick patients as opposed to well patients. When my children were small, I once had occasion to take one of them to the doctor and I was very impressed by the fact that all the well (or non-contagious) children were received through one entrance and all the sick and potentially contagious children were received through a separate entrance.

How many times have you been to a doctor's office and been concerned about all the germs floating around in the waiting room? Having a way to keep this kind of separation, I believe is an excellent idea.

Sorry to make this post so short, but this is one topic I don't have real strong opinions about.

Taking the High Road

Taking the high road is never easy. I'm not sure what "taking the high road" means to others, but for me it means asking and extending forgiveness even when I have not been the one in the wrong. I can best illustrate this by telling a story about an experience I had one time with my father. Although I'm using only one incident, this is something I have repeated many times throughout my life in my relationships with others. The result has always been good.

Let me tell you a story of what happened after I had already been living on my own for several years. Through a series of circumstances, a good friend of mine ended up with a box of tools that belonged to my father. One day when I was home, he confronted me with accusations against my friend. I felt those accusations were totally unfounded and blew up at my dad, yelled at him and told him what I thought about what he had just said. I think that was probably the first time I had ever said anything disrespectful to my father to his face. (I'm sure I rehearsed many disrespectful dialogues in my mind, but had never dared to voice them out loud.)

I stormed off in a huff and as I began to cool off, the Holy Spirit began to say, "Now go back and ask your father to forgive you." I argued with the Lord, "No, he's the one who needs to ask for forgiveness. He's the one who started this." Again came the Holy Spirit's prodding, "Ask him to forgive you and you forgive him." After arguing for awhile, I went back downstairs and asked his forgiveness. He, of course, asked me to forgive him also. And soon all was set right. The box of tools was returned and my relationship with my father was re-established on a firm foundation of respect and love.

Many, many years later, I found a little book that talks about this very principle. It's called, "You Don't Have to be Wrong to Repent." It is one of the most important principles that affects relationships, but it requires humility and guts to actually do it. The benefits to you are enormous. Nothing affects health as much as having peace or the lack of it, in all your relationships. I have found that when I am not at peace in a particular relationship, it takes a tremendous amount of emotional energy and that affects my ability to sleep, my immune system and ultimately my health.

I highly recommend keeping your repentance and forgiveness ready to put into action.

I'm Thankful For...

1. My husband. I'm so thankful we met over 40 years ago on a little airstrip in southern Mexico. Life together has been blessed beyond measure!

2. My family. Each one contributes an enormous value to my life and I'm grateful for each and every one.

3. My Savior. Some may wonder why I place this one third in the list. It's because He is the foundation for everything else. Without my personal relationship with Him, I would be lost and without hope.

Essentials in My Purse

To be perfectly honest, I'm writing about what's in my purse today primarily because the other prompt was not one I wanted to tackle.

I only have one thing in my purse that directly relates to health. That is the card that tells my blood type. Back in 1974 when we first went to Brazil, our doctor intern friend who spent many hours teaching us Portuguese, was horrified that we did not know our blood types. So he made sure we had blood drawn and analyzed and presented us with cards showing our blood type and Rh factor.

The other health related item I always have in my purse is Stevia sweetener. My husband has lost 65 pounds in the last year and is trying to keep it off. Stevia is the only palatable sweetener we've found that he is happy with. So it's always in my purse and available whenever we're out and about together if he needs some.

A Conversation with My Doctor

I have had a number of very unhelpful conversations with doctors over the years. One conversation in particular caused me intense grief and suffering. In my opinion, I could have sued that doctor and probably won the case. I'm not at liberty to divulge details as they are very personal, but suffice it to say, that if I had not had strong faith in Jesus Christ and implicit trust in my husband, it was something that could have destroyed me, my marriage and my family. Fortunately, it served to draw us all closer together instead.

On another occasion (in Brazil,) a doctor engaged in some very unprofessional actions making me decide that I was never again going to a doctor's appointment with a male doctor without my husband or a friend with me - in the examining room.

Perhaps, this gives a little insight into why I prefer to let food and supplements be my medicine, leaving doctors to deal with accidents and emergencies only! At least that's what works best for me personally.

"Let Food Be Thy Medicine..."

"Let food be thy medicine, and let thy medicine be food." Hippocrates

Although many of us think this quote is part of the Hippocratic Oath, it is not. After reading through several versions of the oath, it is in agreement with the spirit of it but not an exact quote from it.


How far we have gotten away from this premise that the food we eat should be our first and primary and even perhaps our only medicine! Perhaps that's because most of our so-called food has had all the life-giving properties taken out of it. If you meander through the aisles of any modern grocery store, you will find very little real food in it. Even most of the "fresh" produce isn't really fresh. The vast majority of it was picked before its prime and had some sort of artificial process done to it to make it more or less palatable! This kind of food could never be construed to be beneficial to our bodies, much less be medicine to them!


Let me tell you a story. Once upon a time, roughly 15 years ago or so, I spent much of my time and energy looking for things. It seemed as though I was living in a fog, unable to remember the last place I set my glasses or what I had gone to the refrigerator to get. It began to worry me, thinking of the possibility of early onset of Alzheimer's disease. But I didn't know what to do about it. We had recently lost our middle son in Hawaii. For the story, you can go to this link. I imagined that I was suffering from stress, grief, etc, which to some extent, I'm sure was the case. In about March, my husband decided to do a fast and together, we decided to radically change our eating habits, adopting what is known as the Hallelujah Diet. You can check out their website for details if you're interested, but the basic principle is that you juice vegetables and you eat about 80% of your food raw. You also eliminate from your diet all dairy products, caffeine, salt, sugar and processed grains.


I was completely astounded by the impact this diet had on both my health, my energy, my digestive system and my memory. Within a month to 6 weeks, I had more energy than I had ever had in my entire life, my chronic constipation I had had since early childhood went away, never to return, my memory became so vivid that I could go into a group of people and remember every single name after hearing it just once, the fog lifted and I began to enjoy life once again.


While this is a rather dramatic and absolutely true story, I tell it to illustrate the powerful healing property of REAL food! I no longer eat 80% of my food raw, although I would do so again in a heartbeat if I found myself back in the position I was in 15 years ago. Our family now eats sensibly, including a nice amount of raw food straight out of our organic garden, we shop very little at the grocery store and take some very helpful dietary supplements. I'm a firm believer that in our society today, supplements can and do fill in the gaps in our busy schedules, enabling our bodies to better utilize the food we take in.


What do you think? Should food be our medicine? Is it yours?

Why I Write About My Health

Being healthy affects every other part of my life and it is so important that I blog about it so others can learn and benefit from my experience. Although I've never been a fast food "junkie," I haven't always been careful about what has gone into my body. I am now 65 and have lots of experiences under my belt, both positive and negative. My blog is designed to help those who are interested in helping themselves to improve and safeguard their health. It isn't for those who only want a doctor to tell them what to do. I personally have read enough to be of the opinion that I know my body best and that I, along with the guiding of the Holy Spirit, am fully capable of making decisions that will enable me to live a long and healthy life.