Fasting {Weeks 11-12}

*A note before you read this. After doing an audit of my blog in 2022, I have decided to leave content that speaks to the Christian I was at the time this was written. I no longer identify as Christian (and haven’t for a very long time.) I chose to leave these posts because it is who I was then and it is important to me to be honest and true with every iteration and evolution of self that I experience. I may decide to add comments to the end of posts like this as well

I have learned SO much in the last couple of weeks about my mind/body/spirit healing.

The assimilation of knowledge is at a breakthrough level for me. In a way it seems like I should have already known this stuff, but then I’m not sure I could have.  I think we’ve all been programmed to believe that the mind is separate from the body which is separate from the spirit and the ways I’ve been trying to go about healing have been based on systems that propagate that belief. I *think* I’m learning that a new system needs to be created. And since my strength in life is to create efficient systems, I’m on task and challenged enough to be consumed with this.

I don’t know if I can rightly regurgitate the things I’ve been putting together, but I’m going to try.

May 15th, I had this dream:

I was at a conference and there was a sign for free hair styling. I FB’d the company and got an appointment. When I got there, they was also some kind of newly discovered stone therapy for relaxing. It looked a lot like the hot stone thing at spas but the stone was special, supposed to draw negative energy out. The lady put me in the chair and told me how to put my hands and it was so uncomfortable. She left the room to get the stones and the chair folded up on me! She came running in apologizing and fixed it. She put hot stones on my lower back but they weren’t hot enough for me.

When finished, I was supposed to walk down the street for some reason. I had a huge tub full of art supplies and also rocks in a back pack. It was so heavy and I was really upset that it was not relieving my stress. I stopped and used blue watercolors to write something on a wall. I don’t remember what I wrote. Dr. House said that I didn’t have to lug all that stuff around. He told me to take one rock and 2 or 3 of the art things. So I did. First I pulled out a Spongebob foam character and thought, “No way am I taking this with me, and threw it back!” I picked 3 things (don’t know what) and I was just ecstatic and hugged him and them got on a bus.

Found a pair of Con-way (where Phil works in waking life) pants like Phil‘s hung nicely across the entryway of the bus. I picked them up so I could text Phil and probably take them to him. They weren’t his though. And they had a pair of long johns still inside.

I took my seat and texted Phil then tried to figure out what stop I needed. I asked a girl who was about to exit on the next stop and she looked at my ticket and said I probably had 10-12 more stops and the last one was the one I needed. She pointed to the last three letter abbreviated stop: JOP and said “Joplin is your stop.”

I know the Spongebob meaning: my friend and I joke a lot about a Spongebob episode where he procrastinates by doing ALL kinds of things other than what he’s supposed to do. So when we’re procrastinating we call it Spongebob Syndrome and joke about sharpening pencils. So I’m thinking that I need to get rid of my tendency to procrastinate and quit lugging that around!

I’ve also had other dreams about House characters. I think House represents my intellect and/or common sense. He’s bold, to the point, and says things I should already know.

Spongebob-Procrastination

Since my adrenal system is a wreck (adrenal failure is the diagnosis–stemming from chronic inflammation–stemming from gluten intolerance) I’ve been working (hard!) on doing the right things for my body in order to heal.  Under stress (not just external stress, but also internal stress, like fighting off gluten) my body releases stress hormones constantly which destroys a body. Eliminating gluten was just one step towards helping. It has stopped the main cause of the stress. But in order to heal, my body needs the relaxation hormones released. And I’ve been working towards being aware of what I’m doing to harm that process.

The dream said get rid of procrastination. I was like, ok sure. But really, is it that big of a deal?

Well. I learned, indeed, it is.

As an assignment from my endocrinologist, I’m reading Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain. I read this and nearly fell over.

Two neurotransmitters put the brain on alert: norepinephrine arouses attention, then dopamine sharpens and focuses it. An imbalance of these neurotransmitters is why some people with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHA) come across as stress junkies. They have to get stressed to focus. It’s one of the primary factors in procrastination. People learn to wait until the Sword of Damocles is ready to fall–it’s only then, when stress unleashes norepinephrine and dopamine, that they can sit down and do the work.

In reality, I’ve wondered often if I have ADHD but didn’t pursue an official diagnosis. I can’t say for sure why. But after the dream and then reading this I started to pay attention and I’m fairly certain I do have ADHD and I think my body is saying that I need to learn to deal with that in order for the healing to continue.

That is a breakthrough.

And yet, there’s more. But I think I should break up the posts so they don’t get too long and technical. So for today, I feel amazing that I asked God to reveal to me what is hindering my healing and (at least part of it) has been revealed.

I don’t know the best way to fix it yet. I think I’m on the path to discovering something and I’ll get into that in my next post. I learned all of this and immediately learned that the verse God gave me at the very beginning of this fast is now coming to play and I would’ve never in a million years guessed it related to the healing of my adrenal system.

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