I just thought that was a nice title. Breakfast was steel-cut-oats which I added
almond milk, a tablespoon of cacao and stevia (about 6 or 7 drops). Last night was so rough (I didn’t end up
getting to bed until after 1:30am) because I had to go get my in-laws at the
airport and their plane ended up being late so I ended up laying down for a bit
this morning. Lunch was leftover lentil
beans and salad—dinner was almond flour, lemon pancakes.
It’s easy to look at the best of every day and focus on
those moments as I write, and I know this is the way I will improve the very
most—positive thinking is said to invoke the powers of healing. You hear it all the time, the more positive you
are the better your chances are at succeeding; but, that idea also leaves out
the frustrations that come along and when you have other people reading the
blog it would be easy for them to think that all is going much better than it
really is and may get discouraged when things don’t go the same way for them.
70 days into this cleanse—I use the term cleanse lightly
because technically we are done with the cleanse we are just working on
figuring out where we are now. No doubt
I feel better now than I did when I started this cleanse but I also have no
doubt that I am not doing as well as I thought I would be at this point and
quite frankly in the past 5 days or so I have been READY TO GIVE UP!
My wife and I have done searching online (something that is
bound to get us into more trouble than it’s worth) and we come across one
experience after another where the individual working to clear candida is at it
for 3 months, 4 months, one year, 2 years, etc.
Those, however, are not the most frustrating pieces of information we
find out there—more than one person has said that when they got a couple of
months into the program they just couldn’t do it anymore and had to quit.
Early on in the process I didn’t understand how they could
quit if they were feeling as good as I was feeling (I assumed everybody felt as
good as me during the first month of the cleanse). Well… after 70 days of this program I
understand what they meant about almost ready to quit. I’ve mentioned a little of how it felt during
my posts over the last couple of days but I didn’t really get into the scope of
what I was feeling during that time.
I talk about it now because I think I have just about worked
through the slump and am ready to continue this journey, but trust me when I
tell you that my wife and I were both almost done! During the week I stared to have the bad days
before my wife (a lot of the my anxiety seemed to be returning, the progress in
my ears seemed to be disappearing and much of the exhaustion returned (much to
my dismay and frustration). Well during
the first day or two of this my wife was my rock—telling me that it would be
fine helping me work through the tough feelings.
I honestly felt like I could cry and wanted to cry. I had done what I promised myself I would do
(and more importantly what I promised God I would do) to try to get
better. I lived the promise to a T,
better than any other promise I’ve made in my life, and right after the actual
program was finished I not only stopped getting better but seemed to be doing
much much worse. I could not figure out
why I would work so hard to have the relief I’ve sought for so long just to
have all my symptoms return and be back at square one. It wasn’t worth-it to me, it wasn’t something
I wanted to put myself or my family through.
The whole point of this cleanse was to feel better and be better so that
I can better support my family, and I didn’t seem to be able to do that.
The next few days were more difficult—not the symptoms
necessarily but the self reflection of where I had been and where I was
going. How would I continue and why
would I continue. I ran and ran so hard
last Saturday and seemed to be getting better, but my self pitty was still
strong and I was really ready to quit.
My wife was my rock and kept giving me the encouragement I needed.
Well… Sunday morning was just about the breaking point for
both of us. As we were hurrying out the
door my wife went to print some papers off the printer and it didn’t work (one
of the jets must have gone out on it and the pictures were coming out with a
green hue to them). It was only a few
days ago that my 8 year old accidently knocked it off the stand it was on and
it crash just about 8 inches or 1 foot to the floor. My wife needed this thing printed and
unbeknownst to me was feeling very stressed out that morning and started to get
after my 8 year old.
This isn’t something my wife or I have ever really been big
fans of, things break all the time and it may or may not have been something my
8 year old did but the printer was about 5 years old anyway and was probably on
the way out to start with. However, this
didn’t stop him from getting a little mouth full which then caused me to give
my wife a little mouth full. We are not
yellers but we were coming as close as we have that morning and was really at
everybody’s throats (again in our own little ways).
As we got to the church my wife said something (I can’t
remember exactly what it was now) but as I got out of my door I said very
loudly that I was just ready to go get a huge hamburger with lots of bacon and
just be DONE WITH THE WHOLE DIET! As I
walked around the van to open my wife’s door every bit of my spirituality
seemed to leave my body and I felt empty.
I opened the door and said to my wife that I didn’t even feel like going
to church today. I’m not sure if our
sons heard this part of the conversation but they may have and I feel real bad
about it now, but it was what it was at the time.
She agreed that she didn’t want to go and we almost left
right there—ready to sulk in our own pitty parties. Well… it only took about 30 seconds to one
minute before coming to our senses and heading into the church. It ended up being good that we did go in
because our frustration quickly melted away and we heard the things we had to
hear at that time. A couple from our
congregation spoke to us and the wife told how they had just found out toward
the end of last year that her husband had cancer and had seemed to stop
responding to treatment and then was given just 4 months from Christmas time to
live.
As they talked about this she told how instead of talking
about his problems or himself he gathered his whits and told her that he needed
to show her how to change the filters in the furnace and show her where the
water-shut-off valves were and how his only concern was for her and how she
would be doing after he was gone—the whole experience was enough to bring tears
to anybody’s eyes and definitely put our paltry little problems in
perspective. How dare we be so pompous
and vain as to think our problems are anything.
Well… after church we apologized to each other and then had
a great day. I tell this story for two
reasons; first, to say that any problems you think you have they don’t compare
to some problems that others deal with on a daily basis and; second, this morning
was a time when my wife and I had both lost our cools and we were both very
very weak and it almost wrecked our whole progress.
Then the very next day my wife had the worst day she had had
in a long time and I was the stronger one.
As she talked to me about her frustrations and as she told me about a
blow-up that happened toward one of her teacher friends at school (something
she doesn’t do) I had to laugh a little bit inside because I knew how she felt
and I knew that it would likely pass as mine was. But it also taught me something else… I felt
like I knew the reason why all those people had quit trying to follow a candida
cleanse. We both had first hand experience
at what we would like to call the candida 2-month slump—and ours was a doozy.
Our expectations were set and not met at 60 days and then I
think there was an adjustment coming off the program. First, we are not keeping up on all the herbs
we had been taking (it would be far too expensive to continue at that degree),
and second, we were dealing with the reality that all our symptoms weren’t gone
and we are now facing the very real possibility of this lifestyle creeping into
at least 6 months and maybe longer… YIKES, why are we doing this, what are we
thinking, is it even worth it?
As I’ve thought about this I’ve realized that it doesn’t
matter how many blogs we read out there or even what others say will work for
us because it worked for them. The truth
is we don’t know what will work for us and it may not be anything that worked
for anybody else. I tried the sinus
flush last week to try to help with my sinuses and felt like it may have been
doing something, but then had a HUGE step-back which correlated to the exact
timing of the flush so I stopped, but it didn’t feel like it had been working.
That’s what made us decide to have the dinner we had
tonight. There has been a lot of talk
about pure maple syrup being no better than sugar, but as we thought about the
amount we’ve had during the cleansing process we realize that our bodies were
still progressing during those times we were eating the most maple syrup. So… we decided to have pancakes with pure
maple syrup. I’ve also decided that it
does seem like carrots don’t agree with me so that’s something we’re staying
away from as well.
The bottom line is the last 4-5 days or so have SUCKED and
have made me (and my wife) feel like all this is not worth-it. But as we pushed through the frustration,
using every ounce of will power we have not to cheat, things seem to be getting
better once again so our candida cleanse journey continues. As things work for us we will continue them
as they don’t we wont but we will continue this crazy journey… at least a
little longer…?
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