..to a mostly organic lifestyle. In 1980 two life changing events took place. Our first child was born with Down syndrome and I was diagnosed with severe rheumatoid arthritis. The next twenty years of my life were all about conventional treatments: drugs, shots, surgery, drugs, shots, more drugs and drugs for the drugs. In spite of all these ‘interventions’ my joints were on fire, cushioning between bones disappeared, tendons shifted, fingers and toes drifted out of place, neck bones began to shift and constant headaches radiated from the back of my head across the front. There were days it killed to comb my hair, button my shirt, hold a pen. Simple tasks became monumental. Pain dominated my life. Shoulders. Elbows. Ribs. Jaws. Anywhere bone met bone, pain and swelling existed. I cried a lot. I was angry a lot. I felt hopeless. A lot. In the year 2000 we moved from New England to Florida. The sun and year round warm temperatures helped, but I was waking up to the idea that doing the same thing and getting the same results seemed stupid. I wanted to live long, especially for my son who will always need me. I needed to be healthy. What I’d been doing barely managed symptoms and I was afraid for the future if I continued down this road. So I prayed. I asked God to help me. To show me what I was missing. What I didn’t know. A friend made an appointment for me at her chiropractor’s office and there I began to learn what the body needs to heal itself, to stay healthy. I started to exercise (carefully), cut many inflammatory foods out of my diet and had gradual success. I’ve been off all medications since 2005 and have learned I can live just fine without fast food, processed food, sugar, dairy and excess meat consumption. Then in 2011, I started having reoccurring episodes of hives and rashes. Urticaria hives, an auto-immune condition, are large marble to golf ball size bumps that rotated around my body to any spot they chose. I could have one or ten of them at in a time in varying locations. They burned, itched and swelled my skin to uncomfortable tightness and would last 24-48 hours before vanishing. Then more would appear. Misery! I drove myself to the emergency room one night because I thought my throat was closing up. I had hives in my throat. The doctors didn’t know what was wrong with me and prescribed steroids. Tiny, burning, itchy cluster bumps began popping up on my ankles, legs, arms and around my nose and mouth. I went to my primary care doctor and was sent to a dermatologist and an allergist. The dermatologist gave me steroid cream. The allergist ran all the typical allergy tests. Everything came back normal. When I went back for the follow up to discuss results he told me there was nothing he could do but give me steroids. He also told me I had about a 2% chance of finding the cause. By then I had totally lost faith in mainstream medicine. How can all these doctors not know the cause of so many chronic conditions? I thought they went to a zillion years of school to learn this stuff. I realized, once again, I was on my own. I’d have to figure it out for myself. I began reading and researching and discovered how our food supply is being poisoned by large corporations. How the FDA, USDA, pharmaceutical giants, food corporations and chemical companies are in each other's pockets. They do their own (not independent) short (not long) term safety studies then release demons into the food supply with no idea of long term intended or unintended consequences. They tell us everything is safe but the fox is guarding the hen house. Profit is more important than health! I was eating all the right foods, fruit, vegetables, nut milks, lean meat and fish, but now I’m reading about gene splicing, genetically modified plants, toxins sprayed all over commercial farm fields and plants genetically implanted to withstand the pesticides sprayed on them. Wheat that’s sprayed with weed killer three days before harvest (gluten intolerance anyone?) and the animals who are fed GMO grains they’re not meant to eat in the first place (such as grass eating cows fed GMO corn and soy!) and then given antibiotics to keep them from getting sick from what they’re eating, not to mention the crowded living conditions of commercial stock farms. They’re given hormones to fatten up faster, probably so they can get to the slaughter house before they get sick! Then we eat the animals and the toxicity travels up the food chain. The more I researched the more horrified I became! I realized my body was in rebellion against the toxic sludge it was ingesting, so I went on a total, organic only, plant only, eating experiment for three months. No cheating. And guess what, all the hives went away! After slowly introducing foods one at a time, back into my diet, I discovered I’m allergic to chemically grown foods. I made marinara sauce with GMO tomatoes and immediately got hives. Made the same sauce with organic tomatoes, no hives. I continued experimenting on myself until I was sure. I remember asking many doctors through the years if what I was eating had anything to do with my chronic conditions. All of them said no. If only I’d known then what I know now. As long as I eat mostly organic, I’m inflammation, pain and hive free. Is it expensive? Compared to misery, agony, and piles of medical bills? No. I’d rather forgo other unnecessary wants to have my health. If you see me wearing the same clothes over and over it’s because I’d rather spend money on good food. Is it easy? Not at first. Old habits die hard. But the longer I do this the easier it is. It becomes a normal lifestyle after a while. I’m sharing this for several reasons:

• People need to know. We’re busy living our lives, trusting the government, medical community and those who are supposed to be smarter than us, but we can’t trust that anymore. We have to be aware, informed and educated. We have to take back our health and the health of our children. I don’t want my grandchildren or yours, to end up like me, years of misery and pain, crooked joints or worse, especially if it can be avoided by something as simple as what we put in our mouths. I want my family, friends, everyone I care about, to live long, healthy lives.

• I post often about health awareness on social media. I am a living, self taught science experiment and this information is too important to keep to myself (those who are tired of it can unfriend me or call me crazy or tell me to go jump. I’m ok with that). If you have any chronic conditions from cancer to diabetes, I dare you to try it and see what happens. I’m not guaranteeing a total cure for all, but I’m certain of a large turn-around for many.

• We can change the toxic stranglehold on the food supply with our buying power. If we all start buying more organic, if we all start demanding no GMO, pesticide and hormone soaked food, with our wallets, WE can change the grocery store shelves faster than those in Washington, DC, can even think about it. Supply and demand still talks in a capitalistic economy. We can make organic, toxic free food affordable for all.

Do yourself and your family a favor. Buy organic, non GMO as much as possible. As much as you can afford. Eat For Health! It could save your life.

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For years, after a diagnosis of rheumatoid arthritis at the ripe old age of twenty six, I asked, begged, pleaded and tried to brownie-point my way into God's good graces for a healing miracle. I doubt there's ever been a call for healing or an offer of prayer in my life I haven't responded to. I've been prayed for, in the past thirty plus years, more times then I'll ever remember and I still believe and know that I know that I know, God can and does miraculously heal! He can heal me right now while I'm typing this with two crooked fingers. No one knows how to make the crooked straight like my Heavenly Father. But He hasn't. Not yet anyway. One day, I asked Him if he was tired of me asking for healing - again! I was tired of begging and told Him so. Seems as if most of my prayers were all about me and honestly, I was tired of me. The thought immediately downloaded into my heart and mind. "Don't you know your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit?" For several days, I went to bed and got up in the morning with this question stalking me. I couldn't shake it. "OK, God. Yeah, I know that. I've read it a zillion times. So what are you trying to say?" I went and looked up 1Corinthians 6:19. "Do you not know that YOUR BODY is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who LIVES IN YOU and was GIVEN BY GOD? You do not belong to yourself." "You do not belong to yourself." The answer came in the gentlest way. "I could heal you today but you will be sick again in six months. You are not giving your body what I designed for optimal health. You are not fueling it properly." I was stunned. After years of expecting an instant fix, this was not what I had in mind. After all I had cut my teeth on living a faith-filled, easy believe-ism, ‘God said it and He’ll do it’, name it and claim it, speak it and see it Christianity, which included the doctrine of healing. In the meantime, my ‘temple’ was systematically falling apart and in a severe state of disrepair. I had a big decision to make; keep doing what I'd been doing and stay sick or make a drastic change and get better. I was set on a path of discovering what God’s Health Plan is and has always been for the human body, the temple He resides in, and I had a lot of work to do. I could write a book about my health journey from that day until now but I will just say, life has changed for this gal. I've learned and am still learning much; reading, researching, praying and asking for discernment and wisdom. In this internet age there's plenty of information out there, some of it misleading, but I'm encouraged to ask for wisdom from my Father (James 1:5). Who else knows better what my body needs to operate optimally but the one who made it? I don't examine anything without first asking God to show me what I should accept or disregard. He's been my best teacher. Though still limited by severe joint damage, I've been off all medications for over ten years. Four years ago when I started having reoccurring outbreaks of urticaria hives, I kicked it up a few notches and went for a ninety percent plant based plate. The hives return only when I stray too far from this plan. I'm now convinced many of the chronic diseases we deal with come from our SAD (Standard American Diet) way of eating. If I know I can't fuel my car on anything but what it was designed for, gas and oil, why do I think I can continue to pack my body full of non-nutrient, processed, chemically laden, hormone and antibiotic induced meat, packaged food and obsessive sugars, stuff it doesn't recognize as food or fuel, without eventually suffering a breakdown. We are well fed, but not well nourished. We are stuffed, but not full of life giving, cell restoring nutrients. Yep, it's certainly easier to microwave a hot dog and grab a cupcake then cut up veggies. It's more fun to suck down a couple Diet Cokes then drink a glass of water with a lemon wedge floating in it. But I am living proof that a lifetime of hot dogs, soda and their nutrient deficient relatives don't make a body happy in the long term. I'm also living proof that reversing this trend keeps every cell inside me smiling and thankful. As my eating choices improve, I can almost hear them screaming to each other in pure exhilaration, "Hallelujah! She's finally figuring it out!!" Eating well is mostly common sense and I find many people instinctively know what they should and shouldn't be swallowing. Following a healthy lifestyle is difficult, when tantalizing junk food constantly surrounds and entices us, but as my always wise husband says, "Everything that is worth it will probably be hard." Since my body ultimately belongs to God, I believe He wants my temple, the place where He resides, to be full of health and vitality more than I do. He says I am fearfully and wonderfully made (Psalm 139:13-16). He says this body He made for me is a miracle. I need to be a good manager of this miracle, which includes what I put in my mouth. Healing can come in ways we don’t expect and good health starts with me. It begins in my grocery cart, in my kitchen, on my plate, with my fork and with grace and strength for every new day. God and I will do this. Together. Genesis 1: 29-30 “ Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds in the sky and all the creatures that move along the ground—everything that has the breath of life in it—I give every green plant for food.” And it was so.” “Let thy food be thy medicine and thy medicine be thy food” ~ Hippocrates ”The doctor of the future will give no medication, but will interest his patients in the care of the human frame, diet and in the cause and prevention of disease.” ~ Thomas A Edison “Sickness is the vengeance of nature for the violation of her laws.” ~ Charles Simmons

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A mom on a Facebook page for parents raising special needs children excitedly posted her child finally said his first word. I don't know what her son's diagnosis is but at almost five years old he has never spoken, until now. His first word wasn't the typical 'ma ma' or 'da da' but mom didn't care. He wanted Goldfish Crackers and when he said 'goldfish', it was the most beautiful sound her ears have ever heard. Another mom raved about her ten month old daughter who is finally able to sit up alone. Other parents might post that their ten year old autistic child is potty trained at last or how a child has taken first wobbly steps with leg braces. These parents are over-the-moon happy and as an online community of support, encouragement and cheerleaders, we celebrate each child's achievements with thumbs up Likes and comments into double and triple digits. Parenting a child with special needs means appreciating what others often take for granted. Every milestone, every accomplishment, no matter how small or when it comes, is a victory and blessing that brings with it incredible gratitude. (Read more about my recent experience with this here.) As the mom of a developmentally disabled adult son, many years of heightened observation and appreciation overlap into other elements of my everyday life. I find it easy to see the joy and beauty in little things others may miss; the song of a bird, the color of a flower, the pattern on a butterfly wing, the subtle difference in green layers of foliage, the fragrance of an orange blossom, the beauty of a sunset, the satisfaction of a good book, the rapture of incredible music, the tranquility in lingering over a scrumptious meal, the melty goodness of dark chocolate, the uniqueness of people I love, laughter with a friend and peace found in prayer. All of us are busy; working hard, paying bills, raising families, making decisions, solving problems, chasing fulfillment, living the purpose driven life, but sometimes we need to look up and around and notice the simple gifts God has given us to enjoy. How much do we miss in the rush to possess, conquer, do, do, do and go, go, go? Life is not about how fast we go but the moments we enjoy along the way. In the rush of the every day, stop and take a moment for simplicity. Become intentional about slowing down long enough to notice the magnificent details that are hidden in the rush of accomplishment. No one enjoys simplicity as much as my son and If Jon has taught me anything, it's to slow down, take a deep breath and "stop and smell the roses" as the saying goes. After all, a guy who can turn dinner at a restaurant into a six hour event might know more about enjoying the simple things in life than the rest of us. Being with him forces me to pause and sniff a few roses. And one thing I know about roses, they may be thorny, but they still smell beautiful! “Progress is man’s ability to complicate simplicity.” ~ Thor Heyerdahl "The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak.” ~ Hans Hofmann Jeremiah 2:25 (The MSG) “Slow down. Take a deep breath. What’s the hurry? Why wear yourself out? Just what are you after anyway? But you say, ‘I can’t help it. I’m addicted to alien gods. I can’t quit.’ Psalm 39:5 "You have made my days a mere handbreadth; the span of my years is as nothing before you. Each man's life is but a breath."    

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I grew up in a home with no TV. And yes, there were cars back then, for those of you who are now wondering how old I am. There were even TVs back then, we just didn’t have one. Every Friday my dad would grocery shop after work and take me to the library on his way to the store. I’d search row after row of shelves for books that I hadn’t read yet, check out the maximum amount allowed (ten, I think) and read them before the following Friday. While my friends were rushing home from school to watch cartoons; Popeye, Looney Tunes, The Three Stooges and the Little Rascals, I went home to read. And I couldn’t wait. Words threaded together, creating pictures, people and stories have intrigued me as far back as I can remember. As I read descriptions of places and personalities, I would imagine them in my mind. I could see it all, the backdrops, settings and what each person looked like. Many a night, when I should have been asleep, I was under the blankets with a flashlight and a book I couldn’t put down. By the time I was in middle school I had a fondness for horse stories; Misty, Black Beauty and My Friend Flicka, to name just a few. I’ve had a lifetime love affair with books and reading was and still is one of my favorite getaways, a form of relaxation and fun. It’s hard to be a decent writer without reading. Because I enjoyed reading so much, I also developed a fondness for writing. Putting my thoughts into words forces my mind to be deliberate about my own opinions, viewpoints and desires. Seeing my heart written out in black and white give me reason to be both intentional and reasonable in how I think about life and the myriad of emotion and events swirling around me. I’m currently taking a writer’s course and am being told that reading has changed in America. Technology and finger tip access to information, texting, social web pages and constant entertainment has moved our attention span meter next to zero. The latest generation now reads and writes in small bites (or should it be bytes), if at all. “LOL!” (laughing out loud, for the few who may not know) “OMW “ (on my way) “Where R U?” I’ve been informed that people don’t read anymore, they scan, scrolling thru web pages on mobile devices faster than film frames roll in an animated movie. Writers are being told to create shorter sentences that are “tight” and have punch, be more attentive to white space in relation to words on a page and hook people with interest and excitement in the first paragraph to instantly catch and keep their attention. While these are good writing techniques to follow, I admit to being disappointed for the reason they are being suggested. Maybe I’m old-school; after all I grew up without a TV… But...instead of dumbing down our writing, how about we teach kids to read again. Really read. Gather our children around us on the sofa. Turn off the TV, smart phone and tablet and read a book out loud. Together. Find time during the day; at breakfast before school, after dinner or at bedtime, whatever works for the family schedule, to read. Start when the kids are little. Let them fall in love with books. Statistics show that children who are read to and who read do better in school and become lifelong learners. And if that isn’t enough motivation, some of those readers could become famous authors, publishing book after made-for-movie book, creating sufficient wealth to take care of you into your old age. So read, read, read! P.S. I hope you didn't just scan this post but actually read it.    

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