A Miracle In a Bottle

Seven months ago my family started using Young Living Essential oils.  A friend from church had some pretty amazing life changing healing take place for her son’s asthma  This boy, whom was severely restricted by his disease, was able to complete his first 5k last Father’s Day.  God is good! They got started using Young Living’s Thieves cleaner because with her son’s asthma, they were unable to clean using your conventional household cleaners because the toxic chemicals and fumes exasperated his symptoms.  Soon, they began using Young Living’s essential oils to treat his asthma and his healing was miraculous.  Hearing their story piqued my interest. 

Prior to trying essential oils, I dabbled in home herbalism.  It didn’t go so well. I love herbs, well the concept of them at least.  I really enjoyed making ointments and salves (and still do) but had a hard time with the delivery method of herbal tinctures, decoctions, and teas.  I found that teas and decoctions were inaccessible, unpalatable, and hard to administer.  Have you ever tried to force feed a quart of agrimony tea to a toddler?  Yea…that didn’t go over so well.  So then we tried garlic lemonade.  One of my friends said her kids actually liked the taste.  NEVER. AGAIN.  My poor children.  I shudder…  Another friend suggested something called “yucky honey”.  LOL.  If your friend hands you a recipe card with the word “yucky” in the title, she’s no friend of yours.  Just in case anyone is wondering, “yucky honey” is 10 drops of GSE in 1 tbs of raw honey.  (For the record, we still endure that one on occasion :: Shudder :: )  We all decided we’d rather be sick or just eat it and go to the doctor for antibiotics than suffer through ANOTHER herbal remedy.

It took me a while to pull the trigger for buying my first kit of essential oils.  I was still traumatized by my failed attempts in becoming a home herbalist.  I wasn't sure my children could endure anymore pain.  But man, am I ever so grateful.  Using Young Living oils literally changed my life.  At the time I purchased my oils, I expected to be able to ease some cold and flu symptoms and replace my wax warmers with chemical free fragrances.  Never did I think that these oils could heal acute ailments.  Never did I think that God would use these oils as a medium to heal me in a miraculous way.

You see, the summer of 2012, unbeknownst to me, I suffered a stress fracture in my right foot in one of the small little sesamoid bones beneath my big toe joint.  I had been hiking, wearing the wrong shoes, and came home from a week long camping trip, in a LOT of pain.  My first thought was that I had just thrown it out of alignment.  I went to my chiropractor and had her adjust it, to no avail.  A few weeks later, I learned I was pregnant. 

It was a bit of a tough pregnancy.  My progesterone levels weren't as high as they should have been and I had some bleeding.  I had had a miscarriage a few months prior and my husband and I had been trying for a baby for more than 6 months at this point.  So when we became pregnant for the second time, life stopped- and the focus was not on the pain in my foot, but in keeping this pregnancy strong and healthy.  I was put on progesterone supplements which made me extremely ill.  Every day was a struggle to function.  I was in survival mode.  All this time, my foot pain was increasingly worse. There were some days I couldn’t walk on it.  But at the time, I just dealt with it.  My growing baby was more important to me. 

(^^^ That's what I felt like lol)

Around the middle of my pregnancy, my husband started nesting.  He decided now was better than later to begin the process to get the house ready to sell. Bless his heart…he decided to bless me….and remodel my kitchen.  If any of you have ever remodeled a kitchen while you’re living in the home, you know.  And for any of you who are thinking about doing it….dont.  I’ll save you the mental anguish.  Just light a match.  He really was trying to bless me and I’m grateful for his heart to please me.  It was just a lot at the time, being pregnant, having toddlers/preschoolers, and being sick.  Did I mention we were planning a homebirth? 

Anyways….with everything going on, I wasn’t taking care of myself and I continued to ignore my growing foot and all the pain that came with it!  My daughter was born and I hobbled about my day as usual and sucked it up.  But by the time my daughter was 3 months old, it occurred to me that this lingering foot pain was anything but normal.  At her well baby exam, I mentioned it to our family doctor.  He sent me to an orthopedic surgeon for xrays. By this time, my foot was twice the size as the other foot and walking was done very carefully and slowly. 

So when I went to the ortho doc, he took xrays of my foot.  When he came into the exam room, he had this smirk on his face, and asked me to tell him what had happened.  So I explained my story- how I’d been hiking a year before and ever since that day, my foot just hurt and swelled for no reason at all.  I mentioned to him that it felt almost like it was broken.  With that, he chuckled and said, “Your foot IS broken”.  He showed me on the xray and sure enough, there was a nice jagged line through my little sesamoid bone.  He explained to me that I was going to need surgery because a break like this doesn’t heal, it dies, and that my bone was surely in the death process at this point and would need to be removed.  He scheduled me for an MRI 6 weeks later to assess the damage, but told me that my surgery would leave me unable to bear any weight on that foot for at least two weeks, with another 6 weeks of recovery and physical therapy.  Did I mention that my dad had had a stroke a few months prior to all of this and that he was living with me full time and that we’d just moved?? (I really had my plate full).  So here I was, 3 months post partum, unpacking a new house, taking care of my recovering dad, being told I had to have surgery.  Talk about a bummer. 

I had remembered somewhere in the recess of my memories that frankincense supposedly could heal a broken bone.  I never EVER thought that it would work.  But, since I had bought myself a kit of oils for my birthday two months prior to my diagnosis, I already had a bottle of frank.  It couldn’t hurt.  So I used frankinsence, valor (nicknamed “chiropractor in a bottle”), and panaway (a EO blend used to help relieve pain) morning, noon, and night in the 6 week interim period between my initial diagnoses and my MRI.  And we prayed.  Oh did we pray. 

Within a few weeks, I noticed that the inflammation went down and then my range of motion returned.  By the time I went in for my MRI, I felt really silly to be there because my pain and inflammation had completely disappeared. 

So I get the MRI and wait the 3 days to hear the results from my doctor.  Finally, the  nurse called and said, “This is crazy, but the MRI shows that you have no break.  I don’t know what you’re doing but keep doing it! 

To this day, I have no pain! (that was 4 months ago)

Since the Lord healed me using that little bottle of frankincense, I am never ceased to be amazed at the healing He can provide using the tools and resources he gave to us in the beginning, back on day three. 

Next up: Medicine Cabinet Makeover Part 1: LEMON!!

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