A Sharing of The Healing Passages
Revealed to Me in The Wilderness
Bringing... "Victory for God, Health & Country!"
#2). From 1976, when I first found Natural Hygiene, I knew The Hygienic System was TRUTH; and I knew that my failure to live the Hygiene on a permanent basis was due to my own weakness and not due to a failure of The Hygienic System. But it was not until this 1st visit to Canada that I fully recognized: "Hygiene alone may get some well, but it was never going to get me well! Something more is missing." And so I came to realize that mine was not "an eating disorder" to be overcome with physical habits alone. Nor were psychotherapists going to help me in the long run. Mine was a "spiritual disorder." And only God was going to help me make the long run. Energy Enhancers #9 and #10 must be further examined. I had no idea until I got up there just how great was my darkness and how completely "poor in spirit" I had become. I was ready to surrender. My own self will had dropped me at Death's Doorstep.
And so I let go. I surrendered my self, my will, my possessions, and my very life and my body, my beating heart and each breath I took. I dropped into God's hands. The 90° water of the pool became a real-life metaphor for God's LOVE warm, comforting, supporting, loving, caressing, wooing, cleansing, healing, soothing, forgiving, saving wonderful, warm water which would never fail me and would always be there, waiting for me to come to it. And so, I committed to the work of continuous movement and light eating.
In time, the body would pull fat out of the fat reserves to burn as fuel. As of this writing, I have lost exactly 1/3 of my size since the day I started. Over the 9 months, I worked into a schedule of 8 - 14 hours of continuous movement a day for the weeks I lived in The Wilderness: ever so mild aerobics, mild non-aerobics, stretching, and mild weight-training. Physical pain has been a constant companion as I have challenged every muscle group and every joint to do more and to do more longer with each passing month. The weeks I would return to The Barn, I spent in recovery. I was 53, and had been through a heart attack and stoke in 1987. So my heart was talking to me all the time. There is a fine line between overdoing and a health-building workout. My body was so challenged by the increased movement, increased blood circulation, increased lymphatic motion mild though it was at first that I lay in bed at night jiggling and shaking inside with a revved up metabolism and oxygen debt, while my weary body accommodated itself for the next day. I call it "the semi-truck effect": the bed feels like it's bouncing, as if a semi-truck is rocking the road "Old Blue" sits on but I'm the only one camped in a resort that holds 300 R.V.s, and there's no traffic on the road for miles!
And I prayed for The Fruit of The Holy Spirit to fill me up so that I could rise to God's Perfect Will for my life. Primarily, at first, I prayed for OBEDIENCE. Quite simply, what I have learned is this "While Hygiene
teachings alone may be all some Health Seekers needs to get well and stay well, for some of us, without our obedience to the Perfect Will of God, Living Hygiene is impossible."
The day that the pieces of Scripture "Faith without works is dead" and "With God, all things are possible" hit home in my soul what a glorious day that was!!! I contemplated those 2 pieces, joined together in my heart and mind and in accordance with God's Perfect Will. And I knew then, I truly could do this: I could get well and stay well, and I would be used by God mightily all the while. It was the huge turning point. Now, my FAITH expanded with a burst!
The first week in Canada was so intoxicating, regardless of my over-the-hill condition, that my HOPE soared with the eagles! WOW-eee! The darkness that had oppressed me at The Barn was totally absent at The J & N. (Still, I knew I was not merely escaping I had work to do.) Bird nests 3 feet in diameter sat atop tall evergreens. Herds of deer and elk grazed along the side of the roads, like you see driving through Yellowstone Park. Bear and coyote were frequently spied and meandered along in no particular hurry. And best of all The J & N Trail Ride Ranch. I was safe in the arms of that which I had first learned to love growing up in the violent and Godless Bidwell Family I was once again with nature and animals. I was so traumatized by a lifetime of events, it took me a few weeks into that 1st month to realize that I was not there just to lose weight but to ask God to heal me from a lifetime of disobedience and consequential, painful, poor choices and to put my FAITH to work. God, in his infinite mercy and loving kindness, had brought me to "The Perfect Place to Heal," a place that could not have pleased my inner child more! My breath was taken away that first morning I awoke to greet HighJoy with The Kootney Mountains as the backdrop. HighJoy was looking contemptuously at the resident male peacock, with his long plumage draped to the ground in all colorful glory, while he perched on the uppermost railing of the corral. HighJoy looked at him as if to say: "How dare you? I thought I was the most beautiful creature of them all!"
I lived on The J & N from August to December. Alfred had just turned the petting zoo loose, deciding: "It's pointless to try to control the animals." Goats and sheep and geese and ducks and chickens and llamas and peacocks wandered about and strutted around with their delightful sound effects and curious personalities. And HighJoy was in "Horse Heaven" with 40 new equine friends! Each night, I lay looking out my window from a cozy, little bed, with wilderness stars enough and wilderness peace enough to dazzle my soul with God's LOVE; and I knew that I would get well here in The Kootenay Mountains of The Canadian Rockies. Such a twist... She who had been proclaiming The Great American
