Stewardship

Since this is my first week of blogging, I thought I'd spend a few days introducing myself and explain why this lifestyle I've chosen is so important to me. If you want to start at the beginning, click here.

In those first few weeks after Isabella was born, I had a lot to process. I was celebrating. I was mourning. I was thinking a lot. The death of my brother made me take a hard look at everyone around me. Those I loved, those I read about in the news, those I passed in the grocery store. I realized something. We are a country of sick people. Pharmacies are booming because diseases like depression, IBS, chronic pain, diabetes, cancer and more are becoming more and more common each year. I looked at my family history with new eyes. I had to face up to the fact that I have a very strong history of mental illness in my family background. I had to realize that chronic pain is no joke, and I didn't want my daughter to struggle as I had, and especially not as my mother has.

As soon as I got the ok from my doctor, I started to run. I've run before, but this time I had to run. I was running away from sickness and towards a life of health. I got angry - at what happened to my brother, at sickness, at sadness, at weakness, and yes, even sometimes at God. Giving my family the best opportunities to be healthy went from a hobby to a big priority.

I know that sickness happens. I know that emotional disorders are real diseases that can strike anyone, no matter how healthy. Believe me, I do. However, I also know that as the keeper of my home I have the responsibility to give my family the best, and that mean not giving in to what's "normal" today. It means doing my research and making some changes. This blog is to share this journey and invite you to come along.

Living naturally is not just about my family's health, though. As I mentioned before, I believe it is our God-given responsibility to be good stewards of what we have.

Stewardship


That's an important word in our household. We've been given much, and we feel the weight of that responsibility. I want to know that I've made the most of what I have.

We want to be wise with our money. I have been surprised to find out that we have actually saved a good bit of money with most of the changes we've made. If it costs more than the mainstream alternative, I'm probably going to look for another way. I often say about cloth diapering that the environment made me think about it, but our budget made me actually do it!

We want to be wise with the earth's resources. If I can conserve resources at all, I do. That old saying "reduce, reuse, recycle" is a great mantra, if not a little overused. I know we've saved ourselves a lot of money, clutter and guilt by adopting this mindset.

Phew, all I set out to do was share a little about myself, and I ended up taking all week! Well, I'm done now, I'll move on to more exciting things come Monday. We're going to learn to make our own...well, you'll just have to come back and see!

What's one thing you do to be a good steward of what you've been given?

After a while, that word steward starts to sounds funny. Steward. steward. steward.

I'll stop now. Have a great weekend! Go do something crunchy!

Sickness and Health

I left off yesterday thinking about myself in relationship to the creation around me. My story, up until now, has been about my Mom getting sick. Today, I'll talk briefly about my own journey to health.

Growing up, it seemed like I always had something weird wrong with me. I can remember having to do a glucose test as a child. I had to eat a whole plate of basically just sugar for breakfast before going to the doc. This was an exciting task at the beginning, but by the end I can remember crying for mom not to make  me eat any more. Fortunately, I tested negative for diabetes. Another time, I remember getting my head scanned by some big machine because I was having a lot of headaches. They concluded I was having allergies. I was never terribly sick, but I just didn't have the stamina it seemed like the other kids had. 

When I hit adolescence, I started having all sort of digestive troubles, and it seems this is a fairly common issue today. I didn't want to talk about it much because, well, when you're a teenager everything's embarrassing. It would come and go, sometimes it wasn't debilitating, but I always knew where the bathroom was everywhere I went. My senior year, I had some emotional problems that escalated my stomach issues and I ended up losing about 14 pounds off of my already tiny frame. I was very weak and sick. I can remember it feeling nearly impossible work just to wash my hair in the morning. Things got better for me emotionally, and I went off to college. My stomach got a little better there for the first year, but things escalated the second year and the pain just wouldn't leave me alone. I finally went to my family doctor, who gave me a strong antibiotic and prescribed some strong probiotics. She called it IBS and said we would just try to reset my digestive system. It worked pretty well, and I really started taking all of this "healthy bacteria" stuff seriously. I still had a lot to learn, though.

I'll pick up here tomorrow with the conclusion to my story. Well, I guess conclusion isn't really the right word because I'm still kickin' and my story's still being written. You'll be caught up to today by the end of tomorrow, though. :)

This next post is a bit of a tear-jerker, so consider yourself warned. I'll try to bring a box of e-tissues for ya.

What inspires you to be healthy?