Bread, Friendship, Spirits and Bodies, and some of my thoughts....

I got this bread warmer from my good, God-given friend Grace Sorensen.  It means a lot to me and I’m excited to use it. 

Here are two quotes I’ve stumbled across in the last few weeks with some reading I’m doing:

“We are not human beings having a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings having a human experience.”  Teilehard De Chardin

“Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: the soul that rises with us, our life’s star, hath had elsewhere its setting, and cometh from afar.  Not in entire forgetfulness, and not in utter nakedness, but trailing clouds of glory do we come from God, who is our home.”  William Wordsworth

My human experience has little to do with who I am; I am a child of God.  He knows me, He loves me, He will help me every day.  That will never change, even as my life on Earth changes.  My Heavenly Father hasn’t sent me here alone, I have a spirit that guides me, directs me, warns me, warms me.  I really am a spiritual being, having an experience on Earth.  I don’t physically remember my existence before coming to Earth, but when I think of it, it does feel like home. 

One time I worked with a psychic medium.  I didn’t see her for psychic help, I saw her as someone I (tried to) serve through my job.  Mostly she’s a basket case of mental illness and it was heartbreaking to experience her reality for even five minutes.  Sometimes when I’d visit her home, she’d offer me muffins or brownies (probably caked with marijuana and I know caked with cigarette smoke) and then offer to read my future (for free, so it was a good deal).  She was hilarious to be around but impossible to work with. She had a book published (what!?!?) and she gave me a copy.  For years I kept it in my office, and a few times I tried to read some of it.  It always left me with a creepy, evil feeling that I couldn’t shake and didn’t like.  I finally threw the book right in the trash, but I will not forget the feeling I had when I held it. 

So when I read stuff about living with my God, about being here as a pure spiritual person who was gifted a body and mortal life, when I read about healing ourselves, about reaching our spirit and letting it speak to us through our body- I remember the experience I had with my client and her book.  I trust that good things will leave me peaceful, and I know and very much believe about our pre-existence and returning to live with Heavenly Father.  I believe my body will reject other things I come across and read that are not good for my spirit. It's why the church teaches about good and uplifting media, modest clothing, and anything else that might alter our spiritual guidance.  I wholeheartedly believe in the spirit-mind-body connection and what I’m reading aligns with the gospel and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

You may ask, “What does any of this have to do with a bread warmer from Washington DC?”

I will tell you!  My friend Grace gifted it to me this past weekend.  She moved this summer to Washington DC and I didn’t realize how much I would miss her until she came back for a weekend for her son’s wedding.  In the short time I had with her, she asked about Tim’s neck and I told her we found a chiropractor-witch-doctor who really is a close-to-God energy healer.  She opened her eyes wide and explained (in the short amount of time you have to talk when it’s your son’s wedding reception and there’s a line of people wanting to talk to you…) that we needed to talk because she also sees a chiropractor energy healer (she doesn’t speak witch doctor terms, haha).  It’s what helped her lose an incredible amount of weight and helped release grief from five miscarriages, the loss of her father, the taking care of her mother, and the pains of some of her children, plus her husband’s broken back, lost job, and losing everything they had.  All of this in a nutshell. 

The reason this is significant is that Grace is the type of person in my life that I trust wholeheartedly.  I have my social work friends, who are daily lifesavers because I see them all the time and they know and love me.  I have my family, whom I couldn’t live without.  I have people like Grace, who I may not see often but when I do I am reminded of everything good in the world.  She’s who I want to be like one day- great sense of humor, great friend, great listener, and most importantly, close to God; this makes her understand the world and all of its stuff, but she’s not caught up in the world and relies closely on what she knows and believes. She’s not pushy with her beliefs or ideas and is very reserved, but if asked, she’ll tell you.  Then she’ll love you no matter what.  She’s one of my all-time favorite people in this world, one of those you thank God for letting your paths cross.

That’s why I care deeply that she gave me a bread warmer, and why I can in part trust the knowledge of  deeper learning about the body and spirit connection, that our body will tell us, through the spirit, how to heal ourselves, and how to help others, and how to rely on God.

Onto the real life application:

Micah has struggled a lot in the last two years with a lot of fear.  She’s had more enuresis challenges than I can count, with no patterns or triggers.  She won’t go to the bathroom by herself, wouldn’t go upstairs to brush her teeth, wouldn’t go anywhere in our home by herself.  Sometimes she’d cry about it because she was literally too scared.  I don’t know how to explain this; she’d have good days and hard days, but overall, it’s been a challenge.  She hasn’t slept in her own bed in her seven years except a handful of times.  Rewards or consequences don’t work, drugging her doesn’t either (I reluctantly admit I tried it, double-dosing her with Benadryl and Melatonin for about 10 days with no luck).   I’ve gone back and forth- sometimes being very patient and expecting her to grow out of it, and trying to enjoy the sweet girl who steals my pillow and blankets every night- and sometimes getting very frustrated with her to the point where she’s sobbing.  She hasn’t had a full night’s rest, literally, in years. This can't be good for anyone- our bodies need rest.  It’s the worst in the walls of our own home, where she feels comfortable and safe enough to just let it out.

One night a few weeks ago I awoke from a dream I can't really remember, but I was scared.  Not just "had a scary dream" but scared of darkness and evil that might be around me.  It lasted a minute or two is all, but it was the "realest" fear I could imagine.  The first thing I wondered is if that is how Micah feels at time- a not explainable fear, irrational, and just overtaking.  I told Tim, if Micah's ever felt like that, then my compassion for her runs deep.  It was an awful thing.

When Tim started seeing Dr. Beadle, I sat in his office one day staring at a poster of possible symptoms of school-age children who may benefit from chiropractic work.  Nearly all of them could be check-marked with Micah, so I casually talked to him about her neck trauma at birth, the year of physical therapy, her years of throwing up when she cried, her possible digestive challenges, and on and on.  I explained about the anxiety, wetting her pants sometimes, fear of everything, and finally said, “Look, I don’t know if any of it is related or connected… but we’re here, so…” and he jumped in and said it absolutely could be connected.  So she started seeing Dr. Beadle too. 

She loves him.  Every time after our appointment she says, “I wish I could come here every day.”  Her atlas and neck needed some work, but then I asked about muscle testing, emotion coding, and magnetic therapy.  He did that on Tim about 5-6 weeks ago, with my permission because Tim didn’t have an opinion, and it was the most interesting, enlightening, and hilarious (because the words “Tim” and “emotion” don’t really go together) time we’ve ever had with a doctor.  I asked about references to read and kept thinking about my sweet seven-year old.

Back to Micah:  it’s kind of been an amazing thing to watch.  It sounds weird to say about a chiropractor, but some (most) of our appointments have been pretty spiritually based.  I’m not sure how to write about them here or even if I should write about them here.  But here’s what I have seen in a month: Micah isn’t scared in our home.  She hasn’t had any accidents- not one.  She’s doing things by herself that she hasn’t done by herself in a long time.  And last night, she put herself to sleep in her own bed.  Usually I have to tell her a story, or sing, or lay by her until her body rests enough to sleep.  But last night she asked to go to bed, asked to pray first, then climbed in, read a book, asked for a heavier blanket, and fell asleep on her own.  This little step is a BIG deal. Even if it's not all solved, even if it lingers, this is something that's worked more than anything else.  She can’t wait to tell her doctor.  I can't wait either; maybe he'll give us a $$ discount if we endorse him publically.  Hahahahaha.

  

We started praying for blessings as if we already had them, being thankful for our bodies, our spirits, and our Heavenly Father that is waiting for us to come to Him for help.  We started really realizing that our bodies are a temple to house our spirit (our soul, or whatever you want to call it).  Our body is a gift, a great gift, and it will tell us what it needs.

And our bodies could always use warm bread!