One year ago, I was living with severe
symptoms of something. It was a huge
struggle to get through a day without a nap. I would go to bed at night tired
and often wake up 10 hours later just as tired. My muscles ached. My stomach
was bloated and sore. My brain was in a permanent fog. I would forget words,
people’s names, the point of what I had just started saying. Conversations were
very difficult. I couldn’t follow what people were saying. It was very hard to
process things going on around me. My brain couldn’t cope with any extra
stimuli. If there was any background noise or activity while someone was
talking to me, I couldn’t tune it out. And I couldn’t express myself in
conversation. If I could write it down, I would get it out eventually, but in
person everything moved too fast for my brain to keep up. I dreamed of being
able to shut myself in my room with a pile of books and not have to talk to
anyone. Most days I would assess my energy as 1 or 2 out of 10. It was a huge
achievement for me if I was able to get dinner ready in the evening having
looked after Esther during the day. I had mood swings, feeling snappy and impatient,
worried, stressed, cross and sometimes unbearably sad. My creative spark was
gone. I clung to routine. I would aggressively avoid trying anything new,
because it would use up so much precious energy to process all the new stimuli
involved. Even things that should have been restful (a trip to the beach, a
backrub or a meal out) were hugely stressful to me. All of these things were
impacting on my relationships. Being around people was such a draining and
frustrating experience (being unable to fully express myself), that it was hard
to develop friendships. As mother to a talkative, inquisitive 5 year old, I
struggled to give Esther all the care and attention she needed. It was more and
more of a struggle for me to get out and do things with her. Sid was amazing
through this, listening, reassuring, comforting, cooking, but it was a
continual battle for us to stay connected emotionally.
Many of these symptoms had been there to
some degree since I was a child. I remember at age 6 or 7 needing to leave the
table at mealtimes to go lie down because my stomach was so painful. They have
definitely had a profound impact on my social life and my interactions with
people right through my life. Then I was diagnosed with anaemia when I was 17
and an underactive thyroid after Esther was born, so it was easy to assume that
any tiredness was related to one of these. Looking back, my symptoms did take a
turn for the worse after we moved to Tanzania in October 2010. But I had had
problems with my health for so long, I felt like there was nothing I could do
to turn the situation around. This was just my lot and I was stuck with it. I
really didn’t have any faith to see it change.
Until, one day I was talking with a friend
about her health problems… She has low energy and we were talking about
possible causes of it, and food allergies came up as we chatted. But it was something
about her attitude that struck me. Where I had given up and let it take over, she
was frustrated by her lack of energy, and didn’t want to accept it. I remember
her saying, “It is not normal to have
so little energy!” As I thought later about her reaction, I started to feel
increasingly unwilling to let my life slide by in a haze. My mindset changed
and I started to think that there has to be a reason for my lack of energy. And,
taking it one step further, if there’s a reason, I can ask God and He can show
me what it is! The Bible says we should call to God, so that He can show us great
and mighty things that we don’t know (Jeremiah 33 verse 3), and that we should seek
wisdom, so He can give it to us.
I started reading about food intolerances,
and singled out gluten intolerance as matching with my symptoms. I read for a
couple of months about how intolerances worked, and how to do an elimination
diet to find out what’s causing the problem. While I was reading, I became hyper
aware every time I ate gluten that I could be damaging my body even more. So
when the date came that I had set as my first day of gluten-freedom, I had
actually not consciously eaten it for weeks. It was the 18th of May
2011, and I was so excited that this might be the solution to all my problems!
As it turned out, this year hasn’t been all
smooth sailing. I initially felt better without the gluten, but then it’s been
up and down on a daily or weekly basis as I’ve tried to adapt my diet to
reflect what my body needs and can cope with. Overall, my health has steadily
improved but I have had to turn detective every time my symptoms change or
worsen to analyse the links between that and my diet. Did I eat something that
might have contained gluten? Do I need to increase my intake of something? Decrease
something else? Change one of the supplements I’m taking? Of course, I’m seeing
a very good doctor, who has been fantastic, but at the same time I saw very
clearly the need to understand this for myself as he is not there at mealtimes!
I have figured out that I most likely have
celiac disease (2 close family members just got diagnosed with it). As a
result, I suspect I have some major vitamin deficiencies. I also have
pernicious anaemia and had a candida overgrowth through my digestive system and
possibly something called Leaky Gut Syndrome (which is as nice as it sounds!). I
had to drastically change my diet, cutting out a heap of foods (most carbs,
almost all processed food, all refined sugar, additives and preservatives on
top of gluten). As I cleansed my body of the candida, I lost more than 10% of
my body weight in the space of a month and a half. 9 months on, I am just now
starting to very slowly gain it back. Many days have felt so frustrating as I
would have an energy crash which brought my symptoms flooding back and left me
unable to do much more than sit on the sofa, going over the last few
meals in my mind.
Despite the struggles, I come to the end of
this first year of gluten-freedom with energy! My life looks and feels very
different now, praise God! Most days my energy levels are 5 out of 10 (9 being
Jack Bauer J). Along with energy crashes, there have been amazing step changes
for the good. There was the day when I took a different route home. It was such
a small thing, but it was a sign that I was becoming more able to step away
from my routine. Then the day came when I realised that I am having ideas
again! I had started to wonder, “what if…?” and suddenly I couldn’t stop the
ideas coming! This had been absent, and it was amazing how noticeable the
change was. A few months ago, another change came as I realised that I felt
much more sociable and wanted to spend time with people! I now feel like I want
to invest in friendships and am able to start doing that in small ways. I’m also
able to process auditory data a lot better, and can even join in a conversation
with several people after 7pm! This was unimaginable just a year ago!
As I recover and build my body up
nutritionally, I am meeting new challenges. Issues of identity have kept
surfacing recently. As I have more energy, I am finding that who I am has been buried
under tiredness for years and I now need to separate out the patterns of
behaviour that were due to illness, and those coming from my heart. This is an
amazing task, as I find what God has put in there! I have always been told, for
example, that I’m quiet and shy (because I have always behaved that way), but it
always surprised me when people told me that. It didn’t line up with my heart. I’m
just at the beginning of the journey, but as I feel my way along I can see that
what is in my heart will be expressed more easily with time and healing. I’m
excited to see these changes and find out who God made me to be!
Through it all, God is good, and He
promises peace for each one of us. John 14 verse 27 says, “Peace I leave with
you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let
your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.” The word ‘peace’ here is the
Hebrew ‘shalom’, which has a much richer meaning in Jewish culture than our
narrow word ‘peace’. In Strong’s Concordance, ‘Shalom’ is listed as “completeness,
wholeness, health, peace, welfare, safety, soundness, tranquillity, prosperity,
perfectness, fullness, rest, harmony, the absence of agitation or discord”.
I pray this Shalom on you.
