Mistakes Can Teach Us

The journey through health is a massive learning experience, filled with ups and downs, triumphs and mistakes.

When you want to emerge out of chronic illness, you are constantly loaded and bombarded with opinions on what to do and how to get better. When faced with these massive amounts of choices to make, it's enough to make you crazy!

AHHH.

I finally realized that the whole process is imperfect and that it takes time to implement the best plans for healing. The plan changes and evolves over time and I've learned to be still and quiet and do my best to listen and pray for direction and then move to make a choice. The frustrating thing is that even though I do that, I still make mistakes all the time. The best I can do, is go back to my place of stillness and prayer and try to take the lessons learned from the mistake and try again.

We can not be too hard on ourselves. When we realize how many times we had to fall before learning to walk, maybe then we can understand that falling down is a big part of many of our life experiences.

I just wish falling didn't hurt so much!

Individuality in Health and Healing

We as humans are so much the same in many ways, yet so different as well. The road through health and healing is an individual process and should be treated that way.

I have a very good friend that has dealt with many of the same chronic health issues as me, yet there have been times that we have had to move through this journey in vastly different ways. It doesn't mean that I am right and she is wrong, or that she is right and I am wrong. It just means that we are different.

I'm not saying that principles of healing are not universal , but it's important for us not to judge each other for the process that we go through individually. We can never fully understand all the pieces to someone else's puzzle, so we just have to love. We can not know the lessons they are learning and the direction their personal journey is helping them to experience. We just can't know.

We each need our own navigation system to guide us through this jungle of life.

Healing Vs. Band Aiding

We all need a band aid from time to time. There is no denying it. In fact, when I started on my downward health spiral, I realized I was in for a lot of band aiding. And I also realized it was necessary at times. When I say "band aiding", I am referring to the immediate, emergency type care that we sometimes need on this health journey.

The frustrating thing is that it seems like much of the holistic medical community looks down on the band aid approach, but I have to say that it has absolutely been critical for me at times. On the other hand, just because we do need the band aids at times, shouldn't cloud our vision on the miraculous tools that are out there for healing. It's unfortunate that much of the traditional medical community doesn't even think about the process of healing and cleansing through an alternative approach.

I guess that's partly because healing takes time, patience, prayer and a lot of work. The process of healing is not really that easy, but it is worth the effort that goes into it.

So anytime someone tries to tell me that I have to go "all" traditional medicine or "all" alternative medicine, I just remind myself that I have needed to use both and various times in the journey, and I have a feeling most people do to. It's better to be humble, prayerful, and open to the needs that our own bodies have at various times along our journey.