Cleansing My Soul

 
But if we confess our sins to him, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all wickedness. (1 John 1:9, New Living Translation)

I found a Bible verse which fit today’s theme much better, I thought. But I decided to open with the one above instead.

If you have followed this blog for a while, you know that I am not averse to sharing too much information. I don’t keep much to myself.

One thing I haven’t shared with you lately is my continuing problems with pain. Constant pain and stiffness in my low back and upper back, pain that pops up in my one knee, then the other, the next day a shoulder, the following day my wrist. This has been going on for nearly three years. I’ve been to lots of conventional Western medicine providers and none of them had any answers.

The day after Christmas, I started going to an alternative medicine, holistic clinic. They did some testing, started me on lots of supplements, and put me back on that anti-inflammatory diet – remember the one from two years ago, where I didn’t eat anything with gluten, processed sugar or dairy? The diet which nearly made me give up my will to eat anything and which caused me to lose thirty pounds, about twenty pounds more than I needed to lose?

So, here I am, trying to work on that diet without get more stressed out than I already am. Still not seeing much relief, but I know this will take time.

But here’s the latest. When I went in on Thursday, they told me it was time to do the “cleanse”. Clean all the sludge out of my digestive track, gallbladder, kidneys and liver. Yikes! Like a colonoscopy prep on steroids.  

Anyway, it went okay. Again, no big improvement yet in my symptoms. (And I know my friends in the medical field will say this is all quackery, but I have to try something.) But here’s what it reminded me of.

It’s important for our physical health to eat healthy foods, exercise, and all that other stuff they always tell you. And sometimes, when the bad stuff takes over, you have to kick it out of your system somehow.

Isn’t our spiritual health just as important? Shouldn’t we monitor our thoughts and actions to make sure we are honoring God? Shouldn’t we purge ourselves of evil?

You must purge the evil from among you. (The same line is in the book of Deuteronomy eleven times!)

So, eat right, exercise, don’t smoke or drink alcohol or do drugs. Then read your Bible, listen to some sermons (at church or on line, just so they are Bible based and follow Christian values), keep the Ten Commandments as best you can, pray, draw closer to God, and talk to Jesus like you would your best friend.

(The picture at the top is Val working at the Saikeri clinic in 2010. Looks like she's mixing something similar to what I drank Thursday night! The picture above is the sunrise at the safari camp at Masa Mara when I was there in 2015. Looking at any of my pictures from Kenya brings peace to my soul.)