At the request of many dear friends (you know who you are), I have decided it is time to come out of hiding, so to speak. At least, to return to the blogging world. It has been six months since I have even touched my blog, so let me see if I can manage a “relatively” brief synopsis of the first half of 2012.

There is a time for everything and a season for every activity under heaven. Ecc 3:1 For me, this last six months can be summed up as a time of healing: Healing within my heart, healing of relationships, and healing for my body. God’s grace is abundant; however, healing, while beautiful and necessary, is often a painful process, thus the reason for my extended leave from this blog.

Healing within my heart: Life’s heartaches and trials do not often leave us unscathed. We must constantly be turning to the Lord for his healing power and grace.

Healing of relationships: The Lord is ever calling us to mimic the love he showed us, and the love he showed us was to lay down his life for our sake. This, then, is the love that we are called to show one another. Christ, however, was perfect. We, in our imperfections, strive to love one another perfectly, but often fall short causing hurt and misunderstanding. Conflict is unavoidable, but if embraced simply as a part of our imperfect abilities to love, we can use it as a tool to seek further understanding and better communication for future interactions.

*For anyone seeking to understand themselves and others more thoroughly, I suggest the following books: The Temperament God Gave You by Art Bennett, The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman, and Strengthsfinder 2.0 by Tom Rath.

Healing for my body: On January 5 of this year, I started the GAPS diet, created by Dr. Campbell-McBride for those suffering from illnesses or symptoms related to digestive issues. As some of you may know, I have been diagnosed and misdiagnosed since childhood for different ailments and symptoms I now understand were caused by Celiac Disease. However, ten or more years (it is difficult to know the exact onset) of this untreated autoimmune disease left me unable to digest not only gluten, but dairy, corn, nuts, and more, accompanied by a whole host of other symptoms. When finally diagnosed, I immediately cut gluten from my diet. And while I saw improvement, I still suffered from an inability to digest my food. May I just say that it is utterly frustrating when you are being so careful to do everything right with your diet and yet you are STILL having symptoms.

In December of this past year, I was at the end of my rope. This is when a dear friend approached me with the GAPS diet. I must admit that I scoffed at the idea at first. Perhaps the rest of you are far more virtuous than myself, but I wasn’t exactly keen on the idea of having to modify my already limited diet. I won’t go into the details of the GAPS program here (you can find out more information here http://www.gaps.me/), but may I just say that it is not nearly as difficult as I built it up to be and that six months after my start date, I have seen innumerable improvements! It is so exciting to see the incredible strides my body is making towards healing, mind you sometimes they feel like baby steps, but the point is this…

I finally know that at 27 years old I am not doomed to a future of fasting from just about every food on the planet, nor am I condemned to live in a body wrecked with ailments from this disease!! 

Already, I can digest certain dairy products and nuts! Doctors diagnosed me as allergic to both of these, and told me that my only option was to avoid them for the rest of my life.

There is much much more that I could say, but I need not say everything today. I think this will do for a beginning. As I do not plan to take another hiatus from writing anytime soon, we have a great deal of time to share all that must be shared.

Cheers to living our lives abundantly for the Lord!