My Body Just Needed a Break.

The Crisis

This first photo was taken at what felt like the pinnacle of everything failing.

By then, my body had been whispering for years, but pain eventually stops whispering. Illness compounded illness. Grief layered on loss. Steroids, medications, disrupted sleep, and chronic stress reshaped my body from the inside out. Cortisol did what cortisol does under long-term strain, it changed my features, held fluid, distorted energy, and blurred the woman I recognized in the mirror.

Nothing fit. Not my clothes. Not my strength. Not my sense of self. Age was no longer theoretical, I’m approaching 50, and recovery no longer looks like it did in my 20s and 30s. Fatigue became constant. Pain became structural. My cervical spine turned into an unforeseen crisis that threatened not just comfort, but mobility. My right side carried the load. My head stayed tilted to protect one disc from crushing a nerve, while another compressed my spinal cord. Life narrowed. Function depended on pain meds—just enough to move, just enough to sleep. Smiles came through tears.

And yet… there were rainbows.

Every time I preached, the pain ceased.Completely. Between August and November, God sent me to pulpits and platforms, and in those sacred windows I could lift my left arm. I could hold my head straight. When the assignment ended, the pain returned. The same miracle I had experienced in Botswana in 2022 happened again, prayer warriors carried me. As long as they prayed while I was on stage, the pain was gone.

But eventually, endurance was no longer enough. Crisis came. Instability took over. Surgery, once avoided because my neck was considered “too risky,” became unavoidable. And with it came more: heart, lung, and liver complications… and a diagnosis I never expected, Type 2 diabetes. Chronic illness and long-term inflammation can do that.

Phew.

What I didn’t need was more pushing.

My body needed a break.

Recovery Emerging

This second photo, the green one, marks the turn, but this time, I didn’t panic.

I remembered how healing had been done before. I reset my mind.I returned to the treatment path I knew. I followed it with intention, discipline, and faith. I trusted God’s design, respected my body’s wisdom, and leaned fully into the naturopathic way, working with my doctors, with my body, and with the Spirit who created it all. I’ve been here before. And I’ve recovered before. I was determined and ready for another fight for my life.

I do believe that surgery created space. Medicine stabilized what was fragile. Rest gave my nervous system permission to exhale. What once felt like an ending now feels unmistakably like a new beginning. But this time, I didn’t panic. I remembered how healing had been done before. I reset my mind.I returned to the treatment path I knew. I followed it with intention, discipline, and faith. I trusted God’s design, respected my body’s wisdom, and leaned fully into the naturopathic way, working with my doctors, with my body, and with the Spirit who created it all. I’ve been here before. And I’ve recovered before.

My body just needed a break. A long enough break to remember how to heal.

Today - Embodied Healing

This third photo...this is today.

What once felt like an ending now feels unmistakably like a new beginning. Healing didn’t happen in isolation. It happened in community and collaboration. My medical doctors walked carefully with me, monitoring, adjusting, explaining, protecting my life and mobility when the stakes were high. Surgeons did what only skilled hands could do. Specialists paid attention to my heart, lungs, liver, and spine. Moreover, they didn’t rush me, they respected the complexity of my body.

Naturopathic medicine replenished and cleansed my body to help reboot my sytem. Herbs reduced inflammation. Food became medicine again. Sleep returned slowly but steadily.

Eight weeks post-op, the shift is undeniable.

• Glucose numbers normalizing within three weeks.

• Inflammation quieted.

• Water weight released...Edema gone!

• Almost twenty pounds gone.

• Sleep returned.

• Strength regained.

• Body functions back under control.

• Movement returned.

And for the first time in over 20 years, I am off pain medication. This is what happens when the body is finally given rest, respect, and the right support.

The following scriptures anchor me now, because I have lived their tension and their fulfillment. The hope of healing did not arrive quickly, I celebrate that healing arrived faithfully, through collaboration, courage, and care. What follows in my life like everytime before is not theory; it is my living testimony. A testimony echoed in my doctors' rooms.

“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord,“plans to prosper you and not to harm you,plans to give you hope and a future.” — Jeremiah 29:11

And this prayer now governs my daily life:

“Beloved, I pray that you may prosper in all things and be in good health, just as your soul prospers.”— 3 John 1:2

With God, all things are possible, including healing that honors faith, medicine, wisdom, and rest.

My body needed a break. The result? This isn’t just healing. It’s resurrection.

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Integrative Healing in Practice

I am a chaplain and I process life throguh these lens of presence. In chaplaincy and Clinical Pastoral Education, we are trained to see people not as diagnoses, but as whole persons: body, mind, spirit, story, relationships, and meaning held together in one sacred life. My healing journey reflected that truth. Alongside my medical doctors, who monitored, stabilized, and protected my life and mobility, my naturopathic doctor helped me listen to what my body was saying beneath the symptoms. We worked intentionally with herbs, anti-inflammatory supports, gentle detox pathways, nervous-system-calming remedies, and foods that loved my body back. This wasn’t alternative instead of medicine. It was integrative healing. Wise medicine. Whole-person care.

Above all else, PRAYER covered all of it.

“Faith does not cancel medicine; it animates it. Prayer does not replace care; it covers it.”

Reflecting on Healing and Faith

From a spiritual care perspective, pain is often a form of communication. The body speaks when words are insufficient. Trauma, grief, and chronic stress do not remain abstract, they lodge in the nervous system, disrupt regulation, and fracture meaning. Chaplaincy teaches us that healing is not always synonymous with cure. But it also teaches us that presence, participation, and permission matter. Integrative healing invites people to re-enter relationship with their bodies, not as adversaries, but as partners in restoration.

“Healing accelerates when belief, behavior, biology, and spiritual grounding are allowed to work together.”

Scripture affirms this holistic vision. The body is God’s workmanship (Psalm 139:14) and the Spirit’s dwelling place (1 Corinthians 6:19). It is important however to remember that caring for the body is not a lack of faith, it is stewardship. Rest becomes obedience. Attending to grief and stress becomes spiritual practice. And, most importantly, God heals in many ways: sometimes instantly, sometimes gradually, often collaboratively, through caregivers, disciplines, and faithful presence.

“In chaplaincy, we don’t rush meaning. We accompany people until meaning emerges.”

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"Glow Means Good" - Clinical Proof of Grace

I wrote the first portion of this reflection while sitting in the waiting room at my cardiologist’s office. I was waiting for news I fully expected not to be good. My heart had been through a major crisis, blockages, injury, inflammation, enlargement, even concern about prior silent heart attack damage. This appointment carried weight. I wrote with anticipation, bracing myself emotionally and spiritually for whatever confirmation might come next.

When the doctor walked in, the first thing he did was look at his chart… then look up at me.

He paused. He couldn’t recognize me. He said, “You look like a completely different person.”

Then he said something I didn’t understand at first:“I’m printing your glam shots.” I was confused. Glam shots?

As he walked me through the tests results and imaging, what we were facing before and where we are now, he turned the papers toward me, showed me the images, then he smiled and said,

“Glow means good. Everything is glowing.”

From the day after Thanksgiving, post-surgery, until now, everything had reversed. Then he said the words that took my breath away: “You have a new heart. There is nothing wrong with your heart. Everything is working perfectly.”

I praised God right there. When I walked out, the same women who had checked me out in December didn’t recognize me either. One of them genuinely thought I was about 25 years old and glowing!

“Pain ages the body, but restoration restores the glow, From the inside out.”

Yes. I’m going to sit in that and enjoy that statement. Period!

The staff could not believe I was about to be 50. And the truth is this: pain, chronic illness, and prolonged stress slowly drain the life out of anyone. They age the body. They dull the eyes. They wear down the nervous system. They drain joy. But the God we serve is a God of rejuvenation. A God of Sabbath. A God of restoration. He is still in the business of helping His creation do exactly what He created us to do.

Physician, heal thyself.