gluten.

so here is a brief history of the joy behind that last post. for about two years now, i have been dealing with chronic pain and sickness. and for about two years now we have been trying to discover the source of this mystery pain. the doctors' greatest suspicion has been that i have endometriosis. endometriosis, as you probably know, is a disorder that more times than not leaves a woman unable to bear children. as i mentioned in my last blog, having children is a hope deep in my heart. i'm sure this isn't a universal statement, but for most, it is a very painful thing for a woman to discover that her body cannot carry a child...there is something terribly cold and dehumanizing about it... and even though the diagnosis was never sure (it cannot be diagnosed without surgery, which i could not afford), every pang of pain brought that cold sorrow with it, and it has been a very troubling year for me as a result. i have worked even harder at convincing myself that i don't want children...that i'm not meant for it...that i'd rather be alone anyway.

ok. so i started a nutritional biochemistry four weeks ago and one of the first things my professor mentioned in the class was how often people are intolerant to gluten, don't know it, and are misdiagnosed (endometriosis being one of these misdiagnoses). so i figured, i have nothing more to lose here, and i began an experiment about three weeks ago cutting gluten completely out of my diet (which i must say is not an easy task). and i will tell you this...i am already noticing so many changes. i won't share any gory details, but suffice it to say, i have not had one pang of pain or any fever in these three weeks. in fact, none of the symptoms that usually show up in my daily life have presented at all. I HAVEN'T HAD A HEADACHE IN THREE WEEKS. i have headaches ALL THE TIME. what?! how crazy is this?!! gluten. gluten in my bread and cereal, my pasta and pizza and all the things i shove down my throat every day. gluten. this gluten has been poisoning my blood and my body...keeping me from breathing well, from processing food normally, from waking up like a normal person in the morning. and now i know it, and now my life is going to be so very different.

as usual, it's in the relief of something that we realize how bound we were by it. so the relief revealed the hold this fear of being barren had on me. and that revelation made me shake my head at myself. am i so faithless? do i not know that my God is greater than my plan and my expectation? have i not yet pushed back and waded through this doubt enough that i can rest in that assurance? so that's what compels me to claim these desires of my heart...not try to manipulate them into something else.

hooray for healing! hooray for nutritional biochemistry that i hate writing papers for!!!

ps - baking with corn flour instead of wheat flour is extremely disappointing as i found out this evening...