Wednesday 26 June 2013

"A Gluten-Free Mind" - A personal testimony

I am SO excited to be able to share this guest post with you from a dear friend of mine!   Audrey is a fourteen year-old homeschooling student who loves to write, and she has been eating gluten-free for a number of years now.  Here she demonstrates how changing your diet can change so much more than just the physical aspect of your life, and can better enable us to do the work God has given us to do. 

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A Gluten-Free Mind

by Audrey

You may have read articles about the physical affects of gluten-free living verses non, but what about the mental? The spiritual? The unseen, yet very important part of life. Well today I’m going to express to you the truth about the mental benefits of gluten-free living.

I started my gluten-free, dare I say, diet because of raging head and stomach pains. I practically lived off of Malox, not like it did anything. The Malox was just a mind over matter thing. They say if you fill a pill with sugar, the patient will still claim that it helped with the pain. Other unhealthy habits were my lack of vitamin intake, my carb addiction and my refusal to do anything that required too much energy. From a first person perspective I was half dead, and my life was un-enjoyable.

But throughout my “gluten-free journey” I have found more than just the physical benefits (higher energy level, my skin wasn’t pale, I had an appetite again, etc.) I have found beautiful mental benefits. When I was eight years old, I had MAJOR attitude problems.  When my mother reached out to others for support, she found out other kids had anger issues related to wheat. For the first few days of my cleanse I felt awful, I was still sick and I couldn’t even enjoy the sinful delights that would usually push me there. But on about day five I went through the day perfectly fine, and after about a week I said to myself, “This is what it’s like not to be in constant pain.” Slowly but surely, my anger problems weakened and I was happier, this also brought me a lot closer to Christ. When I was eating all the OREOs and pizza that my heart desired my actions weren’t pleasing to the LORD, but once I surrendered my need for carbs my mind was healthier and I was basically I nicer person to be around, my acts were more glorifying to my heavenly Father.

But Jesus ate bread, didn’t he? Yes, indeed he did, we all know the famous “This is my body-” speech we hear every month, but the difference is Jesus was eating pure, wholesome bread. The grain raised by a nearby farmer then ground to flour, then that would be bought by the owner of the house to make into bread. There were no chemicals, antibiotics, GMOs, just pure bread, and I bet it was delicious. Unfortunately, mankind has played with God’s lovely creation and now we are in this mess we made. Because our bodies were created for that pure wheat when we digest the “enhanced” grains our bodies re-act in inappropriate behaviour like weight gain, anger issues, depression, allergy chain, pains in the head and stomach, arthritis, slow digestion and more.


 This has been part of the Eat Your Heart Out Series:

 













1 comment:

  1. Audrey,

    I am so glad you have found healing in these areas. I was very unhealthy in my college years, and I agree that it very much affects us mentally and spiritually as well as physically. God is so good to show us ways to heal. Blessings to you!

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