Change Your Mindset and Change Your Life!

So many people talk about things they want to change or how they plan on changing but then fall short. The solution is a mind change because nothing changes until you have a real inside change and that begins in the mind.

I know you have been here. You look in the mirror and are truly dissatisfied with what you see. It doesn’t have to be something major, it can be as simple as your hairstyle. But it is the discontent that stricks a cord with me. When you are dissatisfied and have discontent, something much deeper is going on. There is a huge difference between, “I want a new hairstyle.” and, “I hate the way my hair looks.” And this can be applied to anything in your life!

I want a change and I hate the way this looks are two very different things!

Change is hard but it is worth it. Change takes work, daily work, but it is worth it. It is the small steps that take you the furthest. It is the hard steps, that make the biggest changes.

The mindset is huge. You see, for years I believed I wasn’t good enough. I wasn’t skinny enough. I wasn’t healthy enough. I just wasn’t…..enough!The mindset is huge. You see, for years I believed I wasn’t good enough. I wasn’t skinny enough. I wasn’t healthy enough. I just wasn’t…..enough!

I would try to exercise. I would lose weight and then gain it all back plus some. I would try programs that included pills and shakes and I would look amazing and then it would all change and I would go back to where I was, plus some.

My health was in jeopardy. I was getting sicker and sicker each and every year. I was put on more and more and more pills. My reactions and side effects of each were getting worse and worse.

When I looked in the mirror I could not stand what I saw. Any of me! My hair, my weight, my looks, my smile. The list goes on but you get it. Basically there was nothing about myself I could enjoy. And I kept on trying to change my outsides but never bothered to touch my insides. I didn’t understand the importance of changing my insides before ever attempting to fix anything else about me.

When my insides were broken, nothing else could ever be fixed because I was broken. I was damaged. Even when I was my ideal weight, my hair cut was complimented all the time, people would tell me I was glowing and I would go home and cringe. I still saw all my flaws and my mind saw each and every broken thing about me. That is, except the brokenness inside of me.

Now, I may not look healthy on the outside but I am 100% healthier than I have been since I was 8 years old. My mind wins battles daily. I am even making daily healthier choices that are helping my body.

I still take capsules and I still eat shakes but they are not full of chemicals and fake things I can’t even pronounce. They are full of whole food nutrition and I know it benefits my body. I am getting into working out every day, and for me that means yoga.

Changing your mind is a battle but victory changes the outcome of the war.

Nothing changes until you change your mind and your insides. Are you ready to make a change? I am getting ready to do a 5-day stress release challenge. Really easy, no purchase necessary, and it is completely beneficial for anyone. Would this be something you are interested in? I have been doing this for a while for myself and it is one of the ways I began to change my mindset!

Transparency in 2019

Transparency is not easy to do, especially when it comes to healthy and weight. Who wants to put it out there for the world to see how much you weight, put photos up and invite them into what you hope to do and the struggles to accomplish them. 

I say the struggles because it has been a struggle for me. From a young age, I was and still am an emotional eater. When I am not an emotional eater, I am a bored snacker. When I am not a bored snacker, I starve myself. So as you can see, I have not had the best relationship with food. 

So today on January 1, 2019, I got up and went into the bathroom. I got these clothes on and got on the scale. I took a photo of the weight. I went into the living room and have my Bella take a set of 4 photos. Then I went and created an image. It has taken me almost 10 hours to post this. 

It takes vulnerability, bravery, transparency, confidence, and a willingness to be hurt to post this. I am not happy with my current health. I am not happy with my current activity level. I am not happy with my current eating habits. I am saddened by the actions of those around me when they to try and guilt me when I won’t try a bite, or won’t gladly accept the treat they got me, because if it hurts their feelings I no longer care because this is about me. It is about me being here for my children, my family, my grandchildren, and the best one of all: FOR ME!

On January 7th I am starting the healthy living revolution nutrition program. I am already implementing a lot of these things and today it created a lot of tears. When Bella asked for a snack from the store and I said, “sure but it has to be a healthy one.” And she picked fruit gushers and I said, “not healthy”. I gave her a long list of options and threw her tears picked nothing over healthy. It is okay, it is a process, for all of us. 

So, welcome to my journey, my whole health journey. If anyone would like to join me on this journey, comment or message me. If anyone is curious what the Shred is about, let me know and I can add you to a group that has every question answered you could think of. If you just want to watch, I hope it helps you on your journey and encourages you. 

September is Suicide Awareness Month

I don’t know statistics and to be honest I don’t really care. Statistics do not mean much if we do nothing with them. One person dying by their own hand is to many. One person feeling so helpless, hopeless, and alone that they will never come out of that deep dark black endless pit that it is better to end their time here on earth, is one to many.

I know when suicide is talked about most, it is after a celebrity commits suicide. It is talked about for a while. There is an outcry for more awareness. There are a million social media posts about how heartbroken everyone is and how something has to be done. And then it just falls away, again. That should not be the only time it is talked about or an outcry should happen. It should be each and every time someone takes their life.

I am not a stranger to suicide. When I was younger I attempted it many times but was never successful. My cousin and her husband were both successful. My son has tried so many times and each time comes closer and closer to succeeding. This past spring my other cousin was successful. And even though all of those are heartbreaking and affect me, the one that haunts me is a best friend who took her life last October. Yes, I really do mean it haunts me.

Back in October my life was (once again) changed forever. I do understand that life is an every moving and every changing thing. However, when someone you love decides they can not longer survive here on earth, what they see as options isn’t what the rest of us see.

Since October I have run many situations and circumstances through my mind. I heard about it through someone who barely knew her. She wanted to confirm before spreading a rumor. I was glad this person didn’t want to spread a rumor however the fact you want to spread it at all kills me. It was as if from the time I got the message Wednesday night to the time I walked up to her door Thursday was in slow motion.

Message on Facebook. Reply on Facebook. Message on Facebook. Reply on Facebook. Panic, call her cell phone, call her husbands cell phone, call their home phone, no answers. Panic, want to get the kids out of bed, throw them in the car and drive over. Talk self out of that because if it was the truth there would be no functioning. Get kids ready for school. Intentionally avoid driving by the house out of sheer panic and fear when taking kids to school. Go back home, pay bills, smell her perfume over and over and over. Decide to head to her house to prove what I heard was wrong. Pull into driveway and see husband work car is still there. Panic. Stop car. Get out of car. Get to porch, open door, look at husband, he shakes head yes and I loose it.

I stand on the porch pointing at him, repeating no over and over and over, going into a full blown panic attack and meltdown.

I have no idea how long her husband sat there trying to get me off the porch. It could have been 5 seconds it could have been 15 minutes. Once I was in the house, all I did was cry.

We talked, we hugged, and we looked for the positive. She is a believer, she was with Christ, she wasn’t in pain anymore and she was free.

It isn’t easy to look for the positive when someone chooses to leave this earth on their own accord. Still you have to find it because if all you do is focus on the negatives, as a survivor, you won’t make it.

Suicide became an option for her because of all she was going through. Even though there was an out and help for her, she could not see it. It has almost been a year since I last spoke to her. A year since I heard her voice. A year since I got a text from her. All because I knew she was lying about what was going on, approached her husband and all hell broke loose. She asked me to stay away and instead of following my gut, I respected what she was asking.

I drove by her house every day to take the kids to school. Every day I wanted to stop by and talk to her. Every day I wanted to tell her no matter what she did, we could get through it. Every day I wanted to just grab her, shake her and hug her and say, “It is okay, addiction can cause crazy things, you are self-medicating for a bigger problem, a mental health problem and I will walk this road with you. I have been exactly where you are, right this moment in time. I am proof you can get through it. I will hold your hand each step of the way. I will pick you up and help you when it is overwhelming. I will help you find the strength to say no to the external things and help you say yes to the medications you really need. I am here for you to help.” And yet, every day I respected what she asked me and never stopped.

Suicide hurts those left behind. It leaves them asking, “What if….” But it won’t bring them back.

And yet it is the only thing they see as an option in that moment. Suicide isn’t fair to those who are left behind and yet to the one suffering, they feel as if they are doing us a favor to leave.

How do you get those two clashing things to come together in your mind, in your life, in your soul? I do not know if you ever really can. All you can do is focus on the positive. Focus on how she helped me with school photos. How beautiful she was and how giving she was and how she is finally at peace.

It has taken me almost a full year to even find a way to write about this. It has taken me a year to process any of this, to wrap my head around any and all of it. To try and surrender my anger, hurt, heartache, emptiness, questions and confusion over to Christ about all of this.

I will never get over her being gone. I will always have tears that come and go for her when something triggers a memory. I will always miss seeing her watch her children grow up and seeing her beautiful smile. Her children meant the world to her.

She was a best friend who I tried to help and I wasn’t able to help. She was a best friend who I believed and thought the worst of her husband (I still need to find a way to say sorry to him over all of that). She was a best friend who I had coffee with every Thursday during the school year. She was a best friend whose home I haven’t seen since four days afterwards. She was a best friend whose family I haven’t spent time with since her memorial, on her and her husbands anniversary.

She was a beautiful soul and her spirit and beauty lives on in her children and her husband. I miss her and it is coming up on a year since she has been gone. It is coming up to a year when her suffering ended and she went home to Christ. It is coming up to a year and not a day has gone by that I haven’t thought about, prayed for and cried out over all of it.

Dana Marie I love you and I miss you.

If you are in a deep dark place please go to the top of this post. On the talk to me image there are numbers you can call or text to get help.

If you have a friend who is in that deep dark place, reach out and talk to them. Don’t live with regret and the “what if’s……”

Keepers of the Faith Quartet

Tonight I was blessed enough to go to my church and help support Community Recovery by attending the Keepers of the Faith group. Their story brought me to tears. They music spoke to my soul.

This concert is not at our church but it will give you an idea of what I had the privilege of watching tonight.

They reminded me during their testimony why I am involved with Friday nights. They reminded me how powerful God is. They reminded me that God is able to work in the hearts of the unsaved. They reminded me that I am a Christian who is a sinner who is loved and who has a relationship with Christ.

God has a plan for me. I may not fully know what it is but I am enjoying where I am heading right now. There are hopes and dreams I have and I can see Him working in my life and changing things. I have things I have never admitted to others but have been praying about, and things are moving.

God is in the job of miracles and moving hearts that seem unmovable. Never give up praying, never give up hope and always give everything over to Him. It doesn’t mean you stand still and do nothing, it just means before making rash choices, you go to Him first.

I know two people in my life who have given me real hope. Hope that my children do not have to go through the things I did in my life. Two people who gave their lives over to Christ and lead a good life. These two people made good choices, let God rule their lives and at least one of them said the feel as if they didn’t really live and experience life.

And yet, I look at them and see that they have experienced life, a good life, a Christian life. Yes they have some hardship but not the hardships I personally caused in my life. They never had the consequences of making really bad choices.

Do not get me wrong, all children, teens and young adults can make bad choices. Even though who have Christ in their life. But these two, they didn’t have to worry about getting pregnant out of wedlock, they didn’t have to worry about if they were self medicating to drowned out the things they didn’t know how to deal with, they didn’t have to worry about a lot of things I dealt with on a regular basis.

Things that I brought on myself. My choices. My impulsive decisions. My lack of care or concern about what the outcome would be.

I look up to know and they give me hope. They give me hope that my daughter and my son, my youngest two, can be like these two amazing women. They can accept Christ and they can look to Him before they make rash decisions. They can be happy and not be missing out on life by putting Him first.

They can volunteer. They can be in the youth group. They can go on mission trips. They can pray. They can group up in the church and they can have a relationship with Christ. They can have a RELATIONSHIP with Christ!

I grew up in a church. I went to a grade school that was religious based. Do you know what I wasn’t taught? I wasn’t taught to read the Bible. I wasn’t taught to have a relationship with Christ. I went to church. I memorized some prayers. I memorized some Bible verses. I learned how to do communion, confession, and I went to CCD.

But I was never taught to have a relationship with Christ. I am going to teach my children how to have a relationship with Him. I want my children to be like those two women I know. I want they to be able to make their own choices with Christ. I want them to know that they can experience life, have a great time, help others, have good friends and still make good choices.

Tonight I was reminded of where I have come from. Tonight I was reminded that I am not the same sinner I was when I first accepted Christ. I am a totally new sinner. I won’t ever be free from that this side of heaven but I will continue to work on my issues and problems. I can continue to be better than I am today.

Tonight I was reminded of the fact that I have to teach my children. I have to show them how to have a relationship with Christ. That I have to pray in front of them. That I have to read my Bible in front of them. That I have to volunteer in front of them and involve them. I can’t just tell them to do it, I have to show them how to do it!

Tonight I was lucky and blessed to be able to go to the concert. I was really happy to be able to listen to them sing and to their testimony. Now it is time to use what I was reminded of and to help teach my children about having a relationship with Christ.

When You Realize How Blessed You Are

There isn’t much I don’t appreciate these days. So many of my friends; whom I consider family, have cancer, health issues, financial issues, relationship issues, and other things that can be overwhelming. Each person feels things differently and so there is no way to compare each persons pain but there are so many who are suffering.

I am not without my own pain but I have gotten back to being in His Word. You see I had fallen away from my daily time with Christ. That had caused me to focus on what was going wrong in my life instead of focusing on what is good, what was going right, what was a blessing in my life. I wasn’t seeing anything but bad.

Six days ago, I got back into my daily time. Six days ago I started to open up my Bible app every day and read the verse of the day, read three plans I had stopped and feeling closer to God. One day three, I started to feel content again. I started to look at the positive things. I started to see my blessings again.

One the second day of doing the getting into the devotions I read Psalm 143 and it spoke to me in so many ways.

Lord, here my prayer,
listen to my cry for mercy;
in your faithfulness and righteousness
come to my relief.
Do not bring your servant into judgment,
for no one living is righteous before you.
The enemy pursues me,
he crushes me to the ground;
he makes me swell in the darkness
like those long dead.
So my spirit grows faint within me;
my heart within me is dismayed.
I remember the days of long ago;
I meditate on all your works and consider what your hands have done.
I spread out my hands to you;
I thirst for you like a parched land.

Answer me quickly, Lord;
my spirit fails.
Do not hide your face from me
or I will be like those who go down to the pit.
Let the morning bring me word of your unfailing love,
for I have put my trust in you.
Show me the way I should go,
for to you I entrust my life.
Rescue me from my enemies, Lord,
for I hide myself in you.
Teach me to do your will,
for you are my God;
may your good Spirit lead me on level ground.

For your name’s sake, Lord, Preserve my life;
in your righteousness, bring me out of trouble.
In your unfailing love, silence my enemies;
destroy all my foes,
for I am your servant.

It isn’t that my problems went away. It isn’t that my pain disappeared. It is that my focus shifted. I was looking to God when I started to focus on the issues that are in my life. I would start to pray when the anxiety would creep up.

I started to focus on my spiritual warfare again.

Today, the verse of the day is Joshua 1:9 “Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go.” Not only is it the verse of the day, it was in my Devotional about Fighting an Invisible Enemy. It really made me think.

Every day I should be putting my spiritual armor on. Ephesians 6:11 says “Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes.” The belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace, the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit. And I need to be praying in the Spirit on ever occasion with all of my prayers and requests.

I am not perfect and my life is not perfect. But I am finding joy in the little things. I am turning to Christ when I am struggling and overwhelmed. I am giving it over to Him because I know that even during the hard time, He has me and He will help me grow and make it through.

Yesterday we celebrated my parents birthday’s. They were both born in August only a year and a few days apart. This allows us at the end of each summer to have one more big family get together. We are able to enjoy food, swimming, company and family.

Yesterday’s get together also brought a lot of laughter with it. It has been a long time since our family has laughed and had this much fun. We enjoy each other. We support each other. We laugh with each other. And yesterday had a huge cupcake fight.

No one was spared. It started with me, getting Bella in the face. Which lead to her having a meltdown. I finally got her into the house to clean her face off and here comes my mom with a smurf face and teeth. I step outside and see that there is neon pink, green, blue and yellow every where.

When I say every where, I mean on just about every person, the dog, the ground, the deck and chairs. I sat down in a chair and was covered in frosting very quickly. My brother and sister in law escaped for a little bit. They ran into the house, pulled the door shut and locked the door while their youngest daughter threw a cupcake at them and hit the window.

I then encouraged my nieces to grab a cupcake and run around the house and go in through an unlocked door to get them. They did and it was a great moment.

Here is the biggest thing for me: had I not gotten into His Word days before, had I not gotten my focus off of the negative I would not have been able to enjoy this past Sunday. I would have been focusing on the negative things. I would not have had a good time with my family like I was able to.

I would not have enjoyed the food. I would not have enjoyed the kids laughing. I would not have enjoyed the stressful moments. I would not have been able to laugh myself. I would not have been able to just enjoy the last fun moments of summer with the amazing family God has given to me.

If you are struggling, I encourage you to build your relationship with God. Speak to Him every day. Pray in the Spirit when you are struggle. Laugh with Him. Cry with Him.

You are His child and He loves you!

The Power of Transformation

Today I had the privilege of sitting down with someone who has had a massive transformation over the last twelve months. This is a person who has been in my life for the past ten years. This is the person that brought Jack and I together. I am not even sure if he knew that until this past weekend.

He gave up his old ways because the Holy Spirit had entered into his heart. Not only did He enter into his heart, He began to whisper to him. He was placing people, situations, and places around him that were planting seeds in him.

I got to listen to his story today. I got to listen to his vision for the future today. I was lucky enough to be able to see something I had never before seen and it was amazing.

I was also able to share my story or part of my story with him. I am the first to admit even my husband doesn’t know my whole story. It is something I am working on. I would not be who I am today without my story. Still admitting all of it, isn’t always the easiest thing to do.

Why is it when we meet someone new we are afraid to admit who we were? Maybe you still struggle with some of the same sins but you are an ever changing child of God. If you are working on you, if you are developing your relationship with Christ, what are you afraid of to admit who you were?

Give Him the glory! You can not change without Him moving in your life! You can not transform without Him moving in your life! Your transformation is powerful because He allowed you to be transformed! He is using you in His story, for His glory!

Maybe you don’t have an awesome transformation story. Maybe you grew up in the church. Maybe you followed all the rules. Maybe you never had that ah-ha moment where you woke up and God moved in you. To me those stories are just as moving
because tragedy, mental health problems,  and life still happens!

Those who have grown up and not had a big life change still struggle. There is still hardships and to see how they walk through those moments give hope. To someone like me. Someone who grew up in the church and walked away and created a mess for her life.

There is hope that my life, even though it is full of struggle and hardships, I can look at those who have always gone to God and I have a role model. I have someone I can call and say, “How would you deal with this?” or “What Bible book or chapter or verse would you read?” or “Please pray for me.”

Transformation is a powerful thing. Sharing your story is a powerful thing. Being vulnerable enough to show others what you have become from who you were, is a powerful thing.

I have recently learned the power of writing your story out. Write out a short, quick story to share with people who are not certain. Make it two minutes or less. Write out a longer version to share with those who are dipping their toes in the water. This is your cliff notes version. Give them your highlights. Write out your full story. We are not talking about your life story here. We are talking about what you were, what woke you up, where God had called you and where you are going with Him. This here is for those who are in some where in their own transformation.

Have you ever realized that once your growth starts, if you feed it, it never stops. I have talked about how important it is to spend time with your friend, Jesus every day is before. If He was a friend who was physically here, would you ignore them for days, weeks, months and expect that your friendship would be rock solid? I know I wouldn’t. I know with my best friends, if I do not connected with them at least once a day I feel as if I am missing something.

So for me personally, why would I skip over the most important relationship in my life? I have done that before and I hate it. I grow distant from Him. I don’t feel Him. I don’t hear Him. I feel like I have this hole in my heart that nothing can fill up. I have excess anxiety, worry, fears, bad choices and an overall uneasiness. It isn’t any fun for me. I am an irritable mess.

I decided over a year ago now I didn’t want to get back to being that person. There are still times I fail miserably at it but now it doesn’t take me as long to realize what is off, what is wrong and what is missing. The best part is He is always waiting right where I left Him. He is standing there with His arms out waiting for me to come running back.

How awesome is that? I can walk away a million times and He stops and waits for me to come back!

Today, I really realized the power of transformation. I can’t tell you how many times I hit rock bottom before I figured out what was going wrong. I can’t tell you how many times I made horrific life choices. I can tell you that what I felt like was a big gaping hole in my life that I was constantly trying to fill with the wrong things was the Holy Spirit working in me.

She was biding Her time. She was waiting on me. She was always in me and always with me. She just waited for me to die to myself to come to Her, to come home to Christ, to walk through the doors to God.

That cycle has happened far more than I would like to admit but it is my story. It is who I am. It is who has brought me to this point in my life. It is the story He has allowed me to go through for His glory.

The person I met with this morning, he has a similar story. To see a baby believer come into their relationship with Jesus was uplifting. To see the fire in him was inspiring. I will be the first to admit, it is easy to become complacent, to let that fire fade into embers.

That isn’t what we are called to though. We do not have to do big things to transform others. We are called to share our love, our story, and to plant seeds by being Jesus with skin on here and now.

The power of transformation is an amazing thing. Allowing your story to be told for His glory is an amazing thing! Do not be ashamed of who you were and what you have gone through because He is using you in big ways and you may not even know it.

Nutrition Is So Important And We Don’t Get What We Need

I have really been thinking about how far I have come in the last year. In March of 2016 I was ready to break. I was miserable, in pain all of the time, and I was not a happy person. When you live with chronic pain, autoimmune issues, mental health issues and attempting to keep it all together it is hard to look at a glass that is partially filled and see it as half full. 

I wanted to be happy. I wanted to be healthy. I wanted to be positive. I wanted to look at that glass and see it as half full. I wanted to laugh. I wanted to play with my children. I wanted to stop crying. I wanted to be able to stop feeling like a failure to others. 

A friend posted on Facebook about her son’s journey since starting the daily dosing of fruits and veggies to boost his immune system. This is what she wrote: 

I live in a constant state of gratitude 💕because of how the portrait of my family’s health keeps improving but there are some things that make my jaw drop and I just have to share. 💥
Buckle up. 🚗 This is going to be a long and vulnerable post but it’s too significant to put into just a few words. So read on if you feel so inclined. ☺️
Our first born child has had it pretty rough. From experiencing painful silent reflux from birth that took us 5.5 months to get under control, undergoing a lip and tongue tie frenectomy at 3 days old, suffering from MSPI (Milk Soy Protein Intolerance), and a diagnosis of Sensory Processing Disorder at 18 months old. His infancy was miserable and his toddlerhood was isolating and worrisome. I’ve always kept proper perspective that in the grand scheme of things he is otherwise healthy, it’s just that a lot of the time it’s seemed like life just keeps “kicking him when he’s down”. Another kick to the shins came around 9 months when he contracted his first cold sore. Not a big deal you would think, but we knew these run in the family and now that he had one it meant this virus was in his body forever. 
For those who don’t know, a cold sore “fever blister” is classified as HSV-1 (Herpes Simplex Type 1). It is a virus that travels to a single nerve and lays dormant until something awakens it. Most commonly, stress, fever, illness, excessive sunlight, or poor diet. A weakened immune system is the perfect environment for this virus to spring to life a few times a year however around 10% of people who HSV-1 have 6+ outbreaks a year. 🔶G* had 8 or 9 last year alone🔶
His pediatrician began to express concern by the age of 2 and we had blood drawn to discuss the likelihood of him needing to undergo suppressive therapy for how aggressive his case was. He has contracted several unidentifiable bacterial infections that have placed him in the hospital over the past 2 years. It became so commonplace that if we went anywhere with a high concentration of germs such a kids play area or the grocery store he would wake up with a cold sore in about 4 days. No matter how diligent I was with making sure he didn’t put his hands in his mouth or disinfecting his pacifiers, etc. I couldn’t prevent them…only treat them over a slow process of applying powerful amounts of essential oils which DID speed up the healing time but couldn’t prevent them because what made him so susceptible was his poor diet and weakened immune system. And these were the case because of his severe food aversions that made improving his diet and immune system by extension, impossible. Rock.🗻Hard place.
✨✨Enter fruits, veggies and berries. ✨✨Yep, here I go. 😆 We started G* on the soft chewables in the beginning of March. Ever since then his body has been flooded with a WIDE range and HIGH number of fruits and vegetables (that he would never touch in a million years) on a DAILY basis. The nutrients that he’s been getting have been doing a hard reset on his immune system and the changes that we’ve seen cannot be explained any other way. 
Now remember earlier when I told you how frequent his outbreaks were..I would average it at every 5-6 weeks he would wake up with that tell tale blister and lingering fever. Keep in the mind that the typical healing time for a cold sore is 2-3 weeks so do the math..his outbreaks were cyclical. Since adding gummies into his diet, G* has had ZERO outbreaks in 4 MONTHS.🙌😄👏🕺🎉 That’s the longest period of time he hasn’t had one since before he contracted the virus to begin with. 
So what happened? WHOLE. FOODS. 
🍎🍇🍊🥒🌶🍓🍐🥕🍆🍒🍍🍐

Foods that are high in vitamins, lysine, and arginine. Foods like apples, oranges, beets, broccoli, parsley, spinach, cabbage, kale, garlic, and whole grains. ALL of which and MORE are found in his simple little gummies. 

The University of Maryland Medical Center said, “Vitamin C assists in skin and wound healing, which can decrease the healing time needed to remove any trace of a cold sore.” (Source linked in comments)
Vitamin C is a POWERFUL antioxidant that BOOSTS immunity and is an antiviral. Through it the the body is cleansed of toxins so that the immune system is able to function at its best. 💪
It’s probably clear now why I attached these pictures of G*. In each one you can see a blister or the shadow of one on his face in the same spots. That’s because the virus stays on that nerve and doesn’t travel. It may seem superficial but I usually airbrush them out before posting pictures of him because I don’t want him to grow up and see those blisters on every single picture of him as a young child. I haven’t ever wanted it to be a source of insecurity for him so in a sense I’ve tried to “erase” it for him. Of course we’ve also had to keep him from affecting other children, which I imagine makes him feel like a leper and has hurt my momma heart so much. 💔 He does have seemingly permanent marks where the outbreaks occur and I’m working on getting those to fade since now he hasn’t had one in so long and I don’t expect him to ever again. 😝
To some of you reading this it might not have impressed you. That’s ok. That’s not why I wrote it. I wrote it to share a piece of our journey. A piece of our life, because truly G* having this has been a norm that we didn’t have hopes of it ever changing. It’s known as an incurable virus. No matter how “minor” a virus may be it doesn’t make it minor for the person dealing with it. So that’s why it brings me unbelievable joy that we’ve actually been able to DO something to help our child not to have this be a constant burden in his life. We have found something that keeps that incurable virus at bay and to me that is a victory that we helped win for our son. 🏆
What greater feeling is there than to win a battle in your child’s health? I’m passionate about this…and I’m passionate about helping you win battles in your child’s health too. Will you let me go to war with you? I’ve got some serious ammunition. ❤
So if you read to this point, thank you. It’s sometimes hard to be so open about the struggles that we face but in doing so we find boldness in ourselves and community with those who link arms with us and we all walk forward together. It is my hope that in sharing this you find the courage to not be ok with the “norms” of your health and you make a move to change your sick story into a health story. ❤
#missiondrivenmomma #thepowerofproduce

Now here is the amazing thing. After reading her post and thinking about it, it started to sink in, I have been outbreak free from a cold sore since July 2016. My last cold sore was at the end of June last year! I am coming up on a whole year of no cold sores! The silly thing is, while they are annoying, painful, slow to heal (until I learned a few tricks about 3 years ago), and always reoccurring they were the least of my problems! 

Yes they bothered me and I hated going out in public with them. Which of course caused more stress, more flare, and I could be finishing one when another one would start up. Still with all of my health issue and concerns, it wasn’t at the top of my list to try and make better or less reoccurring! 

So here I am and it has almost been a year since my last outbreak. I never knew it was possible to live so free of them! It has almost been a year since my last cold sore! A year is unheard of when you have them. I used everything from prevention to abreva to essential oils. They would heal faster but I always had them! I am truly in awe of the power of whole food based nutrition!

I do not know your story but I would love to help! I hear so often how healthy the diet is or how they already eat healthy and guess what? So did I. Yes I had my down times but I have always love fruits and veggies and berries! We are lacking the nutrition in our food though for so many reasons. I responded so well because of the fact that they are harvested when they are perfectly ripe and full of nutrition and vitamins. The foods they use in these capsules are not like going to the store and getting a salad because that lettuce was picked 3 or more weeks ahead of time to it being perfect. They can’t pick our food when it is ripe because by the time it gets packaged and shipped and on the shelves it would be bad. 

Foods get the majority of their nutrition in the last few days of it turning ripe. Yes, I was eating healthy but yes, my body was still missing a lot of nutrition I needed. I have done vitamins and supplements. I urinated most of it out and it didn’t change a thing.

And here I am now doing so much better because my body is using the nutrition it is getting, that it was lacking, that it needed from actual whole food based nutrition! 

How can I give you hope?

How Much Does Your Health Matter To You?

I have been using the whole food based nutrition capsules for over a year now. I have talked about them before and how thankful I am for them. Life has changed, for the better. I still have bad days, we all do. However I am totally blessed to be about to move on with life, move forward with life and not stay huddled up in bed (although the last two days I have wanted to because the minute I step out of my room, I am dripping with sweat. We don’t have central air and only have a window unit in our room).

I used to avoid people. I used to avoid so much. I didn’t realize how much I was missing. I didn’t realize how much life was passing me by. Even though I have felt a nudge for a while about youth, I have pushed it down and pushed it aside. I was so embarrassed by my looks that there was no way I was volunteering to be with teens. I would look at myself and wonder how they would see or hear anything other than my face that was so full of pustules, redness and pain. I couldn’t see anything past my face, how could anyone else!

Today I was talked to a couple different people. It is so hard for some to understand these are not supplements. I so often hear please tell me the DRA (daily recommended allowance) or how is this any different than me going to the store and buying fruits and veggies. I eat healthy and I take vitamins. I wish I had a magic wand to help someone’s eyes be opened to see the difference. 

These are dehydrated, crushed up, put into a capsule (or chew) fruits, veggies and berries. This isn’t broken into a million pieces, and put it back together in a different form using chemicals and who know what other products to make it a supplement for what you don’t get from the real thing. Even when you eat healthy, you are still not getting what you need. There are a lot of reasons for it but some of the basic ones are

• In order to get fruits, veggies and berries to the stores on time, they are picked very early. This way they are able to be packaged up, packed up, shipped and to the store about the time they are ripe. 
• Fruits, veggies and berries get 90% of their nutrition in the last week to few days prior to the food being ripe. So if they have already been picked, weeks (and sometimes months) before they are rippened, they are no longer getting nutrients from the sun or the soil. 
• Soils are depleated of nutrients from farmers not rotating the way they should and using harmful chemicals on the foods to keep pests away.
• A lot of our foods come from genetically modified organisms (GMO) and that includes our seeds.

Often photos say way more than words ever can. I was scrolling though Facebook and saw this.

“A friend shared this and it was too good not to pass along. 

•Vitamins Vs. Wholefood•

“So I decided to share with my friends how vitamins are “dead” with no living enzymes…I used a powerful visual and took 3 separate bowls of creamy cooked quaker oats and in one I crushed up a Centrum vitamin ..in the 2nd bowl I crushed an Alive vitamin (which you can see should be called (Dead) and in the 3rd bowl I opened one Garden Juice Plus capsule and one Orchard Juice Plus capsule. The Centrum and Alive crushed tablets that were stirred in the bowls and left for over two hours looked like hard putty and could easily be held upside down and stuck to the bowl. The bowl with the Juice Plus turned the oats to liquid ….why?????? Because it IS ALIVE!!

Juice Plus has living enzymes and is real produce that gets into the cell …it’s food….not a hard synthetic fragmented man made vitamin tablet. Sometimes a picture really is worth a thousand words.
Save yourself the unnecessary expenses of MultiVitamins and just get what’s truly affordable & your body will recognize:) Whole Food Nutrition in a capsule!
EAT REAL FOOD…TAKE JUICE PLUS. :)” 

watch this🙌🏼

#wholefoodnutrition #healyourtummy #letsbreakitdownfolks #thinkonechange #justletitsinkin”

Are you spending money on supplements? Do you know that your body only utilizes about 25% of them? Let’s just look at what that really means. If you purchase a bottle of multivitamins and you spend $20.00 on it (I have no idea how much a bottle is but I do know I used to personally look for the cheapest bottle I could find because what did it matter, they were vitamins!). If your body is only able to process 25% of what you take daily and that bottle lasts you a month you are wasting $15 a month. Now how many different supplements do you actually take monthly? 

When I was taking vitamins I know I had a lot of different ones: B’s, multi, D, E, and the list goes on. So it wasn’t just finding the cheapest one, it was finding the cheapest all of them and my body wasn’t using even half of what I was putting into it. That is really sad to think about. 

These capsules are whole food based nutrition which means that my body is using 100% of them. I am no longer wasting money. My body is taking it all in, breaking it down and using all of it. Plus it is something I can tell is happening! I feel it, I see it and there is no denying that it is helping me as a person. 

How much does your health mean to you? I was trying to do the right things, part of the time but I was going about it the wrong way. Truth is we were made to eat fruits and veggies and berries. Our bodies were created to use them for food, nutrition, healthy, energy, healing. I was not getting enough of anything in order to get well. I had to take lots of medications to try and fix what was wrong. The problem for me was, each new medication had its own new side effects that required another new medication. 

I felt like a walking pharmacy and at times I had to think really hard about what I was on the medications for. Was it something I had gone to the Doctor in regards to my body? Was it something that probably was for a side effect from a medication? My life was becoming a joke. Add to all of that, I had turned to emotional eating. That might not have been such a big deal if I was allowed to eat healthy foods (I love salads) but I was also on warfarin/Coumadin for a clotting disorder. So my list of what I could and could not eat was long for that. Then add in having IC, IBS, kidney stones, ulcers, rosacea and all my other diagnosis’. 

Part of the problem with being told what to eat and what not to eat is that we were not created to avoid these things. We were created to use them. I sat down with my doctor one day and we went over the list of things that were on my “no eat” lists. Do you know I had about 5 things I could eat on that list but they were all limited to small amounts once a month. So what it came down to is that I was expected to live on water! 

What does health mean to you? How much does your health mean to you? No truer words have been spoken that I have come to believe: You either pay for your health now with good choices or you will end up paying later for your bad choices. What do you want to do? I had to learn the hard way and was paying for my poor health choices at an early age. No more! What about you? 

Think One Change, this one change has changed my life in ways I never knew were possible. 

Go Foward, Stand Still, Go Backward

The last few days have been a bit crazy. I avoided posting a couple times last week because I tend to rant. Things have gone wonky around my life, so to allow it to stay wonky here, I stepped away.

This is a place for me to write what I would like, when I would like but when it involves others, I try to use restraint. I am not always good at it but I do try. So what do you do when you get stuck? What do you do when you have to step out of your comfort zone? What do you do when you have to address wrongs and broken trust? 

I personally have stepped away. Most of the time I avoid it all because of past issues in my life. I do not like confrontation and in the past, addressing issues, wrongs and broken trust always turned into confrontation. I have avoided confrontation for over ten years now. I have not stood up for myself for ten years now. When things take a turn, when someone does something to me, against me or when I realize the extent of what is going on I would compose a letter, and run. 

I would tell them what I knew, how I felt, what I watched, what I kept in and I would mail it so there was zero confrontation. I would do whatever it took to avoid and get away. My past did a number on me and not in a good way. I was so afraid of being honest with people for fear of what they would say, what they would try and twist and how they would try and turn it on me. 

Before I would send the letter though, I would avoid them forever. I would collect as much information to make sure I wasn’t crazy and had my facts. It had become a true avoidance masterpiece when you looked at it. I had all my ducks in a row, so that if I did have to see them after all was said and done, I had my armor all on and ready to go.

I was a pathetic, hiding, scared soul. I did this with everything in my life! Friends, ex-landlords, ex-husbands (or would be ex) and the list went on. I was always in defense mode. I was always ready to pounce and never ready to listen. I was so tired of defending what I had found (in my past) that I had lost the ability to trust myself. 

I was no longer a good person. I gave up on listening to what people were saying because I didn’t want to have to listen and change. I didn’t want to have to forgive. When it all really came to light what I was doing to myself, I had to make a huge choice. Was I got to move forward, stand still or move backwards. I had to make a choice to move forward. I still have times when I am stuck standing still or I want to revert back to the way I ran from it all. However those options do not teach my children how to deal with life.

I have had to grow a backbone. I do listen now but I am slow to respond. I will avoid communication if I ask for a break and it isn’t given. I need time to process things. Do not mistake what I am doing now as being a doormat because I am not. It may seem cruel and heartless but it isn’t. I am protecting them and I am protecting me. I am giving myself time to process. 

I do have a select few I turn to that I use as a sounding board. I am not using my own judgment anymore. I am asking for others opinions. When I have a clear vision, when I have prayed and have had an answer, I will have a conversation with the person. There is a real good possibility they won’t appreciate what I say. I do not just roll over anymore and say, “It’s okay.” I process and let them know where I stand. 

I am taught as a Christian I need to forgive. That is great but forgiving does not mean forgetting and it doesn’t mean wiping the slate clean and allowing myself to fall right back into the same situation. If I don’t trust anymore, I will tell you. If I can’t have a relationship with you anymore, I will tell you. It doesn’t mean that it can’t get back to what it was, but that takes time and because of my past, it takes a lot of time. 

I lay it out and then the rest is up to you. Are you going to accept what I have said or is it going to make you want to run and hid like I used to do? 

Life is full of choices and when you have to make changes it isn’t always easy. I fought these changes for a long time. I could not stay the same anymore though. I had to step out of my comfort zone. I had to move forward. I had to listen to what Christ’s word was saying to me and what I was being directed to. 

I have been really good at hiding from what I needed to do to change. That is over. The new me, I am not sure I really like her and I know I am not where I need to be yet. But I am so much closer to who I need to be than I was, even a year ago. I am not a doormat anymore, I am a woman who has a backbone, and I am a woman who doesn’t just pounce but weighs my options and what is laid before me. 

How you had to make some scary changes in regards to how you deal with things? How had it worked for you? Did you jump in head first or did you dip your toes and try to run from it, like me? 

Reflecting Back, My Gut Has Always Been Correct

I have talked about before how I didn’t make the wisest choices growing up. As a matter of fact, I typically went against my gut feeling and did the exact opposite of whatever I should be doing. I know that most kids at some point start making their own choices, right or wrong because you have to learn somehow.

I haven’t made the right choices about a lot of things. At times it had to do with me being defiant and just wanting to be an adult making my own choices. Other times it was because I was so desperate to be approved of by others. One of those times was when I married my ex.

You see I had always made wrong choices in my parents eyes. When I got engaged, I think they were happy. I remember talking to my sister in law after I left my ex. She said something about how they all thought he was the answer for me and then they found out different. I knew though, before we got married that we should not be getting married.

I talked to others about backing out. I talked to my ex two weeks prior. I recall laying on the couch in the living room, crying because I knew it was a bad choice. His response was something along the lines of I would have to be the one to tell everyone because he and his parents and my parents had spent so much money on this wedding, it wouldn’t be fair to those people. After speaking with others, I ended up getting married to him. My gut said no, my head said maybe, my heart said I hope it works and my drunk self said to hell with it.

Not even a year later I went to my parents house. I had gone to a woman’s domestic abuse shelter. I had filled out the form. They accepted me into the program. They gave me a business card for an attorney who worked with woman from the shelter. I went there to tell them that I wanted to leave. I was told that it had not even been a year and I really needed to give it a chance. When the call came from the shelter and the attorney, I told them both I had changed my mind. I wanted my parents to be proud of me and if I left, I wasn’t going to have that.

I really tried to make things work. I am bipolar and I own that. I have been on many medications. I have been hospitalized. I have attempted suicide. I was a self mutilator. I was an check out of town with alcohol, sex and cigarettes. I had been with the same psychiatrist since 1999. She would change meds, she worked with me, she helped me get counseling and always tried to point in me the correct direction. 

I reached out to support groups. I tried to get us both into marriage counseling, but he didn’t need help, it was me because I was mental. I started a blog writing about what was going on. It had become my only outlet. I didn’t feel as if I could be open or honest with those in my life. They didn’t think I was capable of making good choices or decisions and no matter what I did, I always felt wrong. One day a long time friend messaged me and asked me if I realized what I wrote about was abuse. Yes I did was my response. 

She kept after me in subtle ways. She would message me after I would post. She would encourage me to seek out help. She wasn’t alone though, my psychiatrist knew and she encouraged me, in different ways. She suggested I get this book called, Why Does He Do That, Inside The Minds of Angry and Controlling Men by Lundy Bancroft I did get it. I did read bits of it. It only confirmed what I knew from before we got married. It made me sad. It made me question my ability to make wise choices.

Funny to put that down. I was so certain I didn’t know how to make correct choices, I got married to make my parents and others happy and approve of me, even though I knew it was a bad choice. And here I was questioning my ability to make wise choices because I got married. I didn’t get married for me, I got married for others and I knew it was wrong. So me questioning myself, made me question if I should really even be considering leaving. 

If you go back just a ways, I had told my ex I wanted a divorce. I asked him if it was possible for me to not pay for everything he expected me to pay for so that I could save to get a place to live. A hour later, he came upstairs with all of the bills in the house split telling me I would have to pay for half of them. I had just paid all of the monthly bills, he had just given me a check to put into our joint account (we had separate accounts and all the bills were paid from my account, he would approve them for the amounts I wrote them out for, then he would give me a check to deposit into the bank and then I could mail them out. Sometimes it resulted in me having to rewrite checks because he would refuse to pay late fees and others things. Those were my responsibility) to cover those bills. He let me know he had done a stop payment on the check until he received enough money from me to cover half the monthly bills. Every bill I had mailed out bounced that month. I had so many NSF charges and I also had to pay a fee for depositing the check and then him doing a stop payment on it. 

I was mortified. I was lost. I was on disability and worked a few hours for him. I didn’t even make enough to cover half our monthly bills each month, let alone the other things he was no longer going to cover. I was responsible for the boys, their clothing, medical and the food the three of us ate. Some of that I was already responsible for, but when you don’t have a lot coming in to begin with, it can only stretch so far.

After two weeks of misery. I gave in. I begged for forgiveness. I told him I was wrong, I didn’t want a divorce, that I would do whatever it took to make it work.

Now fast forward again and here I am getting ready to leave. I had gone to the shelter and been approved because of a huge bruise on my stomach from a remote he threw. I had told two friends (they were married) and the only reason I told them was because I was using their basement to store some things for the boys when I left. I wrote letters to my parents, his parents and to my ex. It was the hardest thing I had to do, not saying anything to anyone.

However each time I had tried to talk to someone about this exact thing I was shut down. I was wrong. I was making a bad choice. I needed to try and make it work. I would be stuck with a bill that would take me over a year to recover from. I had to do this, by myself because at that point, everyone I tried to talk to, made me feel as if I didn’t know what I was doing.

My gut had been telling me for six years that I wasn’t supposed to be here. I was finally doing what I needed to do and I was leaving. I did leave and I did mail the letters out and left the one for my ex on the table in the kitchen. I didn’t know what was to come but I knew it would be its own battle. 

The YWCA no longer had attorneys who were doing pro-bono work for them. I had to find my own attorney. I had parents on both sides who didn’t understand why I didn’t go to them for help. I had a brother who would not have liked the ultimatum I gave to my ex if it was him either (mind you I had tried for years so, yes it was an ultimatum). I had two boys who had no idea what was going on and me, broken, alone, afraid, scared and knowing I was making the right choice.

Now fast forward again to current time. The divorce took almost five years to complete. By the time the divorce was final, my legal bill was, well lets just say more than I have ever made in a lifetime. He did write a lot of it off and I was very thankful. My ex was supposed to sell the house and pay me a certain amount of money. It never happened. Recently we had to make a hard choice (if you can call 2015 recent) about our financial life.

I was tired. I was worn out from tying to make things work. We had done a lot of things. We lived off credit cards and my disability when Jack was out of work. We tried doing Dave Ramsey’s way (Financial Peace University). We did debt settlement. We tried many times, many ways and when we finally felt like things were going well, lawsuits started. We had been lied to by the debt settlement company and my world crumbled again. After speaking with my attorneys, we finally decided to file for bankruptcy. 

You would think, it would have ended all the craziness, but it didn’t. We just had no idea where things were going to go because of it. My ex owed me money. My ex wasn’t paying me money. My ex’s money was considered an asset. It was one thing after another. Basically, here we are in 2017 and we still have an open bankruptcy on our report. Things we didn’t put on our bankruptcy, died and we still owed money on it. Roof leaks and even though we paid someone to repair it, he didn’t repair it and went out of business. The list goes on.

I was reflecting backwards. Had I not been so worried about other people. Had I been listening to that gut feeling. I was so focused on being loved and approved by everyone, I forgot that I was the most important one. I was so convinced by everyone’s disappointment and disapproval with what I did that I didn’t know how to make good choices. 

My gut feeling, it hasn’t been wrong. I knew when I was doing wrong. I have come to a point in my life where I know that my choices won’t make everyone around me happy. It makes me sad that they feel they know my life better than I know my life. Yet, I am at a point where I know that my gut feeling, it isn’t gas, it isn’t bad Mexican food, it isn’t IBS or monthly cramping. It is a sign, a knowing, a foretelling of what will come if I pretend it isn’t there. 

If I had not gotten married, I can’t say where my life would be at, but I can say I would not be in this exact predicament if I had listened to me and not wanted to make everyone else happy.

Do you ever have a gut feeling and dismiss it for fear of what others will think of you? I had a reality check this past week and it really opened my eyes. My gut it isn’t wrong. When it is pushing me to or from something, there is a reason! How about for you?