Letter Lesson 8

Letter/Lesson # 8

Dear Member,

Cutting Off My Arm Would Have Been More Humane

During my childhood years I had countless severe sore throats. By the time I was fifteen, I’d been given so many penicillin shots I became allergic to that very powerful antibiotic. I remember after the last shot I was ever given, my feet felt like baseballs were glued to the bottom of them. Unsightly, itchy, red spots appeared all over my poor, afflicted body. I don’t think there are enough adjectives to describe the horrible agony I was forced to endure because of this common “childhood illness.”

As soon as she discovered I had another sore throat, my mother would drag me to our small town hospital to see the doctor. Once at the hospital, I’d always go directly to the lab. Windy was the lab technician. He was a strange-looking man who had very bad breath. Before I could blink, Windy would stab my right index finger with a razor blade. The objective, of course, was to retrieve a blood sample from me. I think cutting off one of my arms would have been more humane! If you’ve ever had blood taken from one of your fingers in this manner, you know what I’m talking about. It sounds like it shouldn’t hurt, but it does. Kind of like someone dragging fingernails down a chalkboard; the noise shouldn’t be unbearable, but it is.

At Least a Cousin to Gasoline

After Windy was through torturing me, it was the doctor’s turn. No matter what the blood test showed, I always got a double penicillin shot. (That is, until I became allergic to them.) The doctor would spear me with an over-sized needle, injecting me with the penicillin that seemed as thick as syrup. For a moment the brutal shot would render me totally paralyzed. What a sensation!

Then came the really good part. The doctor would proceed to swab my flaming red, raw throat with a long, skinny, wooden stick that had a ball of cotton on the end of it. The cotton had been doused with a solution which I’m sure was at least a cousin to gasoline. He would swab and swab and swab some more, paying no attention whatsoever to my frantic gagging. Finally, just before I was ready to pass out, he’d stop. What timing!

Then—and this is the really crazy part—the doctor would smile like he’d actually done something wonderful for me and say, “Now, Bob, I don’t want you to drink or eat anything for an hour. After an hour you can have all the milkshakes and ice cream you want.” Can you imagine how long that hour of waiting was? What compassion!

Later on in my life, the Lord led me to learn about nutrition. Even though my childhood doctor had the best intentions, in my opinion the only good thing to come from that entire medical experience was material for this letter/lesson.

What Does this Story Have to Do with Anything?

In some of the past letter/lessons I’ve shared with you some very strong strategies you can use to prevent your child from overeating, even overeating counterfeit/fast foods. Well, we used those strategies on our son and had great success except for one thing. Jon was like me in the sense that, even though he didn’t have a weight problem, he developed sore throats just like the ones I’d had. By the time Jon was four years old, his doctor told us Jon needed to have his tonsils removed and tubes put in his ears. To many parents this wouldn’t have been any big deal, but to us it was, because by this time the Lord had given us understanding about the reasons I’d gotten sore throats and how to avoid them.

Toxins

Toxins are poisonous substances produced by chemical changes in plant and animal tissue. The reason I had gotten sick was the same reason Jon was getting sick. We were eating the kinds of foods that created more toxins in our bodies than our bodies could handle or detoxify. At some point and in some way the toxins had to come out.

Suppose you never emptied the trash in your house and just let it build up. After a few months the trash would create massive problems for your house and your whole household, and the trash would somehow have be eliminated. That’s the way toxins function in a human body. The elimination of these toxins works in different ways for different people. Not every person has severe sore throats like Jon and I had, but the body will deal with the problem in some way.

Back to Jon’s Doctor

Jon had a very understanding doctor. He listened as I explained that Jon was eating some of what I referred to as “Genesis 1:29 foods,” and because of that strategy he was not overweight. But I further explained he was eating too many of the counterfeit/fast foods which were creating toxins that his body couldn’t handle. I said I definitely believed that was the reason he had the recurring sore throat and stopped-up ears.

The doctor argued with me and stated outright that he didn’t think what I was saying was true. After debating for a while with the doctor, I asked him if we could have time to test and prove the validity of my belief without causing any permanent damage to Jon. His words were, as nearly exact as I can remember them, “Okay, I’ll tell you what. Go do whatever you think you need to do. But in two weeks, I want to see Jon again, and if he isn’t better, we operate and remove his tonsils and put the tubes in his ears. Also, if he gets any worse before then, you bring Jon back and we operate. Is it a deal?” I agreed.

The Incredible Power of Genesis 1:29 Foods

“Then God said, ‘I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food.’” (Genesis 1:29 NIV)

For two weeks Jon ate only Genesis 1:29 foods. After the two weeks we took Jon back to the doctor. Upon arriving at the doctor’s office, Jon was taken to a room to have his ears tested and his throat examined. Over an hour went by, and all kinds of things raced through my mind. I must admit not all my thoughts were positive. I even imagined that the doctor slipped Jon out the back door and took him on to the hospital for surgery, leaving instructions for the nurse to call the mental hospital folks to come and get me, put me in a strait jacket, and throw me in a rubber room.

Finally, a nurse appeared and asked if I would follow her. (I prayed it wasn’t a trick to get me in that strait jacket!) She took me into the doctor’s office and asked me to have a seat, saying the doctor would be with me in a moment. (I prayed about which doctor it might really be!) After a few minutes that seemed like hours, Jon’s doctor entered.

The doctor just sat in his chair for a moment staring at me. I thought, “What now?” Then he leaned forward seriously and practically exploded as he exclaimed, “I don’t know what you did to this kid, but I want you to tell me every detail because Jon is perfect. I’ve never seen anything like this, and I’ve got to know what you did!” I shared with the doctor all about Genesis 1:29 foods, and I told him that’s exactly what Jon had eaten for the past two weeks. We talked for almost an hour. At one point the nurse interrupted us to tell the doctor that some of his patients in the waiting room were getting quite impatient. The doctor told her not to worry; he’d be through shortly. Then he kept pumping me for information.

Time Moves On

It’s been a long time since our family experienced that true-life adventure of healing and health. Since that time, Jon’s former doctor has changed his entire medical field and has become a practicing nutritionist. And Jon has learned how to balance Genesis 1:29 foods with all the others. Praise the Lord!

The Point of this Letter/Lesson

Socrates has been quoted as saying, “Let your food be your medicine and your medicine be your food.” Since Genesis 1:29 foods have the incredible power to heal, don’t you think they also have the power to control your child’s appetite?

Please let this letter/lesson reinforce your efforts to “train up your child” to “go the way” of eating Genesis 1:29 foods not only to control his or her weight, but also to provide for your child’s lasting good health. This doesn’t mean your child won’t eat and enjoy other types of foods. It does mean you can help your child find a balance.

Moving on to the Next Letter/Lesson

In the next letter/lesson I’m going to share with you how God answered another part of my “waiting room” prayer—that special prayer for our son I told you about in the initial presentation to the “Tomorrow’s Heroes Letter/Lessons.”

I prayed for our child to be really, very, very smart concerning school and education, with the following special requests:

To love school and love to learn
To love to study
To make good grades in school but also to have fun
To get along well with his teachers and for them to enjoy him, too
To be well-liked and respected by other students
To be a positive leader, not a follower
To have a great personality
To have a burning desire to go beyond high school and to choose a college that would lead him to his life’s work

God Did Indeed Answer My “Waiting Room” Prayer!

I’ll also share a very specific strategy you can use to “train up a child in the way he should go” (Proverbs 22:6) to insure that this same answered prayer blesses your child like it has ours.

Until then, please email me at [email protected] with any questions, comments, thoughts, or suggestions you may have.

God bless,

Paw Paw

P.S. You may want to print this and future letter/lessons to form your own “Tomorrow’s Heroes Library” for you and your family. Beyond this, you may want to consider adding your personal notes, thoughts, and insights to customize this program to fit your family.

Edited by DC

Unless otherwise indicated, Scriptures quotations are from

the New King James Version.