Episode 21
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Abbie: Welcome to your daily bread with co hosts, Abbie Stasior and Hannah Calhoun. We're here to be your weekly source of spiritual nourishment, guiding you to find food freedom in a deeper connection with Christ.
Hannah: As we explore the intersection of faith and nutrition, these bite sized episodes will help you heal your relationship with food and your body through practical advice, biblical wisdom, and heartfelt encouragement.
Abbie: And as a disclaimer, we are not pastors, but passionate registered dietitians and sisters in Christ, offering our insights to support you on this faith filled journey to a healthier, more fulfilling life. Join us by taking a seat at our table as we break bread and allow God in to break the chains of diet culture.
Hello. Hello. Where are our gut health girlies? Uh, today we are going to be talking about just total body healing and, uh, specifically gut health issues. I have been through the ringer when it comes to gut health issues. Um, so I want to speak to that today and what has helped me the most in my healing, but just know that this episode can also apply for any type of healing that you need and you're praying for right now.
So we're going to be reading in Psalm 46. God is our refuge and strength, an ever present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar in foam and the mountains quake with their surging. There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy place where the Most High dwells.
God is within her. She will not fall. God will help her at break of day. Oh, this is so good. Um, so Psalm 46 really is Sentimental to me. I had a very profound encounter with God on a retreat I was at over the summer and God was really moving. I was going through a gut health flare at the time and , I have tried everything to heal my gut health issues.
I had IBS, SIBO, small intestinal bacterial overgrowth. I, I tried everything to, to try and heal my gut. The only thing that really worked for me was. gut directed hypnotherapy, which is basically visualization meditations for, for your gut. So I used the Nerva app. We'll link it up in, in the show notes. It really helped me.
Basically, it just taught me how to breathe and helped me slow my lifestyle down. Um, and it's funny that I was directed towards the Psalm because verse 10 is literally be still and no, I just needed to be still. So. One of the visualization meditations that's part of this app walks you through walking up to water and seeing this stream as almost a, an analogy for your GI system and the flow and the woman on the meditation is walking you through and she's like, okay, now this stream is like your GI system.
So if things are flowing too fast. You know, like if you're going too quick, uh, that's a problem. If things aren't moving there, maybe there's too many rocks in the water. So things are getting blocked up. Then that's a problem as well. So go into the water, go into the stream and rearrange things so that your stream.
Your GI system flows smoothly. So I would get in there. I'd smooth out the sand. I'd visualize myself moving rocks around cleaning things up. And it really helped me to feel like I had autonomy over my symptoms. Again, I had a part in my healing because sometimes you feel like your body's just working against you and you're really, you just have no control over your healing.
So it just felt like I was getting some power back and I was, It's helping my healing, but I don't know. I was in this particular flair. I was doing these meditations again and I was like, Oh, it's just not working the same as it used to. And then I'm at this retreat and we all took an hour of solitude and silence and my spiritual director, my pastor's mom brought some paints and canvases and say, Hey, if you just want to paint during your silence hour, like just let the spirit lead, just paint something.
So I started painting myself in this scene, and it was very cathartic with the paintbrush to be like painting the water and smoothing everything out, and I was kind of breathing through it. It was very calming. And then I just heard God say to me, put at the top of the painting, be still and know that I am God.
And I was like, okay, so I wrote that at the top and white paint. And then I said to myself, I don't even know where that is in the Bible. I've heard that before, but I didn't know where that was. So it brought me to Psalm 46. And so I'm reading and it's all about like the verse one verses one through five that I just read.
We're all about water, how the waters roar and foam. And, but this is the holy place. where the most high dwells. God is within her. She will not fall. God will help her at break of day. And I just heard God say to me all this time for two years, I've been doing these gut health meditations. Two years, I've been visualizing myself getting into the water, trying to heal myself, hustling around this imaginary stream, trying to heal myself.
God's like, no, no, no. I am within you. I am healing you. You don't have to do this in your own strength. You're trying to white knuckle your way through this. No, be still and know that I am within you, that I am healing you. And you are not doing this alone. So now whenever I do this meditation, I visualize me and Jesus in the water together.
We are, we are moving the rocks around. And honestly, my gut health symptoms, that flare up literally went away that day. I haven't had another flare up since. Um, I sometimes do the meditations just as like maintenance and honestly it's kind of fun because now I feel like I'm bonding with Jesus in the water, but how incredible is that?
I hope that this is encouraging to someone.
Hannah: It's encouraging to me like that. Yeah. I'm, and my, I have like IBS and a lot of it is like anxiety related. And I'm just thinking about how much more anxiety inducing it is to feel like we have to heal ourselves. Like once, once we stop trusting in God when it comes to our health, you know, we want to trust Him with our relationship, trust Him with our finances, trust Him with our jobs, but it's like, what about our health?
Like, we, we don't have that burden, like, we can give that to him, like, we can, we can call on his name and take his hand and like you said, like, go, go into this together with our savior at our side, like, we don't have to do this alone, we weren't made to do this alone, we can't do this alone and we can't heal ourselves.
And so, like, you know, God has blessed us with, like, earthly tools that we can use that aid in, like, healing, right? Um, but, like you said, you were using the tool, but without, without God. And so it was like this independent effort of yours, and like, he was the missing piece. And, um, yeah, and how much more stress inducing is it to feel like you have to do it alone?
Which would cause me to have more flare ups, you know? Literally. If I feel like I gotta walk this road alone, you know what I mean? Yeah,
Abbie: because it's just too big. It's just too big. We can't, we don't, we weren't made for the capacity, you know what I mean? So, uh. So good. This reminds me, we probably need to do an episode on like the whole story of Gideon.
I forget off the top of my head where exactly it is in the Bible, but the story of Gideon, he's just like, Lord, I can't do it. I can't fight this battle. And he's like, I will give you the strength. I will, um, like give as much as you can give. I will make up the deficit. So if you only have 3%, I will make up the other 97%.
So we just truly were not made. We have limitations as humans. We need God. We need to depend on him. And honestly, if we are trying to heal ourselves on our own and do everything in our own strengths, we're kind of being disobedient to God. Like, but that's not what he intends for us. He wants us to depend on him and loop him into things.
And, um, like we are co heirs with Christ. Romans talks about that. We are supposed to be co creating this life with him in his easy yoke. That means you're yoked together with him, walking in step with him. So if you're not doing that, you're just off on your own, that's really not what we were made to, to do.
It's going to be definitely a lot more stressful.
Hannah: Yeah. We were, we're not supposed to be our own gods, you know, here on earth. We understand like we are his creation, um, and he loves us and cares for us deeply. And sometimes, yeah, we have to cry out and say like, I can't do this on my own. And I acknowledge that I can't do this on my own, and sometimes all it takes is, is crying out to him, and he will meet us where we are.
Abbie: Yes.
Thank you for joining us on this episode of your daily bread. We hope you found inspiration and practical guidance to nourish your body and soul. Remember the journey to a healthier relationship with food and a deeper connection with Christ is ongoing and we're here to support you every step of the way.
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As we conclude today's episode, we encourage you to take what resonated with you into your quiet time with God, allow God to reveal to you any changes that you can make for his glory, trusting that you are fearfully and wonderfully made in his image. Stay tuned for our next episode where we'll continue to explore how God's word helps us heal our relationship with food in our bodies Until then may you find both physical and spiritual nourishment and may you be filled with his peace and joy.
God bless
