After experiencing acute or prolonged suffering, particularly in conditions like PTSD, the brain and body become locked in survival states. What neuroscience describes as dysregulation, Scripture describes as the condition of a wounded or hardened heart. But the Gospel does not simply invite us to cope with our wounds. It offers us freedom from all the parts of our hearts that are hurting, through promising us a new one.

When I tell people that I no longer battle with the endometriosis that shaped the first 15 years of my young adult life. And that while I spent years trialling every current treatment on offer to ‘manage’ the ‘incurable disease’, including surgery, it was extended water fasting that healed me. It often begs the question:

"How could fasting heal endometriosis?"

Short answer; Yes. And I am living proof.

Fasting changes the internal environment of the body in ways that support healing, reduce chronic inflammation, kill bacteria through autophagy, and improve many of the physiological processes that become disrupted during long-term illness.

While fasting was the tool that cleansed my body of toxicity, it was faith, prayer, and surrendering my life to God completely, that restored my heart and mind, strengthened me, and gave me new life.

Explaining what chronic Lyme disease feels like is almost impossible. Some people can comprehend the physical symptoms to a degree, the crushing fatigue, violent pain, migraines, nausea, ect, but the haunting sense of invasion, a kind of warfare with some invisible force, is not easy to articulate, not without questioning my sanity anyway.

It took me a long time to realise this wasn’t melodramatic or metaphorical. There is a reason chronic Lyme, Bartonella, and Babesia feel like a physical, psychological, and even spiritual assault….

Bible verses about being tested, not as silver-linings or coping mechanisms, but surrender mechanisms I and others I know have found truth and solace in through the battle with chronic Lyme disease ….

In the shadows of solitude, You were there,

your light broke through the trenches of despair,

in the anguish of illness, frail and worn,

you were my anchor, in the eye of the storm.

Grief is not a prison, nor a chain,

it is a passage, a rite, a necessary flame,

and when it burns through, the heart remains-

not as ashes, but richer to have lived in its name.

Beneath the soil, where light can’t reach,

an ancient web threads its weave,

a silent pulse, a wordless speech,

where roots and mycelium, astute, perceive.

In a world of neon lights and digital deception,
where we are free to roam, eyes glazed,
seeking, pursuing, our own crafted truths,
weaving, dreaming, each inside our own maze.

The stillness is arresting,
and I melt,
into the quiet,
where even the sharpest edges soften,
and the world sheds its weight.

Endometriosis is a complex inflammatory, estrogen-dominant disease. It has been compared by researchers to cancer in the way it creates its own blood and estrogen supply, which creates a vicious cycle that makes it challenging to control estrogen dominance once it has begun to spread.
Before it was labelled endometriosis, it was known medically as ‘The Carreer Woman’s Disease."‘