Spiritual Warface, German New Medicine and UTIs.
How trusting in God has created healing in my body that expressed itself as a UTI
My name is Mallory, I am:
Author of Autobiographical Short Stories, Meditations and Opinion Pieces
Sometimes Poet & Occasional Gardener
Always Alchemist, Believer, Wife, & Mother.
I share stories about where I’ve been, where I am, and what I believe, to the best of my ability, in order to encourage for those who seek truth, hope, love and spiritual healing.
I call it “Narrated Therapy”.
Welcome!
I am no stranger to spiritual warfare.
This morning with an ache deep in my uterus.
It was early, much earlier than usual, but I was not tired. Unusual, considering the kids have woken me up multiple times over the past few nights and at least 3 of those times I was in the midst of a nightmare.
My dreams are almost never enjoyable. They are more like Grimm fairytales where, amongst the beautiful faces and ancient castles, lurk relational strife, power struggles and threats of death— a day at the beach quickly turns into a race against the elements to save my drowning baby, a night at the mall turns into a gang of masked men with automatic weapons out for innocent blood, and last night, a lovely date night turns into a mob of angry people trying to arrest and torture me.
Waking up early was more of a relief than anything.
Normally, I would look up a dream interpretation to my latest nightmare but I had a pretty good idea of what had caused it. In the past week, I have taken up a serious consideration of my budgeting and date night dream had some serious financial aspects to it, like spending $80 for a skillet of eggs and potatoes at a bougie restaurant and feeling serious buyers remorse. So I just let it be.
I got on with my usual morning routine: drink 20 oz of water, cook breakfast, steep tea, use the bathroom, make my daughter’s lunch, and wake her up for school.
I left the younger two home, asleep with my husband, to take my oldest to school and, by all means, it was the usual drive and drop off. Once I got back, however, that ache had drastically shifted. I went in to use the bathroom and this time there was the most horrific feeling at the end — a fiery sensation that made my eyes water.
I am no stranger to urinary tract infections (UTIs) but this one came out of NOWHERE! I was shocked to feel so horribly so quickly. There was blood on the tissue.
Usually, I am a home remedy queen. I just take care of them by consuming copious amounts of liquids, broths and cranberry pills.
Within an hour, I was feeling even worse and my husband was leaving for work.
In retrospect, it makes sense as to why I was having this issue. In the moment, I was feeling wrecked; my back was throbbing, I felt the urge to pee every 10 minutes and I could hardly bare the thought of actually peeing. I haven’t gone to the doctor for a UTI since college but today, I caved. After a few phone calls I made arrangements to drop my littles off at my husband’s sister’s and head to Urgent Care for antibiotics. I am vehemently opposed to antibiotics unless it is a dire issue. This qualified.
Once I got to the right place, (the internet is a wonderful thing but asking it to lead me to the appropriate Urgent Care that took my insurance was, apparently, too lofty a task) the process was brief.
Of course, I wanted to know why this was happening. I mean, sure, in the past week I had eaten more dried fruit than typical, drank two more glassed of lemonade than normal, and consumed far more bread than I usually did but it didn’t seem that should have done it. I’ve gone through waves of binge eating and dealing with the side effects but this manifested in a different way and I wanted to figure out why.
As the type of person who looks up dream interpretations upon waking, I also look into the mind body connection when I am sick.
So I opened my phone to the German New Medicine (or GNM) website, learninggnm.com. If you’ve never heard of it, it is a deeply scientific approach to studying exactly what I was curious about— mind body connections related to illnesses.
I would do such a horrific job bringing justice to how it works that I can only tell you to look into it for yourself as I explain my own findings.
The belief behind it is that symptoms of illness means your body is in the healing phase of whatever your body is struggling with. For me, this meant that my UTI was my body alerting me to something that has already taken place.
I went to the page about the kidneys and began reading. It gave me multiple options for different conflicts I could have encountered that would lead to my kidneys attempting to protect me by building up extra cells and retaining fluids in an irregular manner. Abandonment conflict, refugee conflict, or existence conflict were the options and they each contained an explanation of how they might be expressed and manifest in someone’s life.
Usually, when I have migraines or the flu, I can narrow down exactly what I think might have occurred into one conflict. Today, each conflict resonated in unusual ways.
A week ago, I spent a week at my parent’s house. My husband had to fly home early in order to get back for work which left me to drive the 6 hours home, alone, with our 3 children. Even though that was the plan from the beginning, it still triggered a sense of— abandonment. I wasn’t expecting that. My husband is loving and supportive, yet, I felt alone as the sole protector and provider during the drive across the desert, which leads me to the next conflict as a refugee.
This triggered something that actually began 3 years ago but felt fully expressed in this drive. The GNM website explained it as a feeling of being “uprooted or ‘in-exile’” like being “thrown into the desert”. 3 years ago, my husband and I drove together in our own respective cars from San Diego 6 hours into the desert to find our new home. I was 6 weeks pregnant at the time and too focused on surviving to notice the intense stress that moving from my family home and out into the unknown was in my life. Every trip we’ve made since, my husband has driven or we have flown. This past week was the first time I have made that exact same drive as the solo driver with a car full of my belongings and it resulted in an intense post traumatic trigger. I was experiencing being thrown into the desert all over again, which leads to the final conflict of existence.
Since that original drive from San Diego out into the desert 3 years ago, I have felt like a “fish out of water”. I spent 29 years living in the same home on the same street in the same neighborhood of the same city and the only times I left I scurried back so fast I barely remember being gone. It has been my whole life. My structure. My security.
For 3 years now, I’ve been working on untangling myself from that home while planting roots where we are now.
This is spiritual warfare.
In three years we have had 2 children, started new jobs, and become home owners. In the past year we have made core friendships, developed relationships with families through sports, and joined a church community.
We have experienced God’s abundance, mercy, and grace, in ways that I could have never imagined. I am able to be a stay at home mom and we live close enough to my oldest daughter’s dad that we can share our time week to week, spend major holidays and events together as well as support her in school and sports from a close proximity. My husband’s family all live nearby as well. We are truly blessed.
But we are still new. Our life here is immature. The dark forces of the world tug at me and will do anything to keep me missing the home and security that I left behind. They do not want me to establish roots and become mature and confident in God’s abundance.
When we returned home from our trip, I began challenging my scarcity. I was convicted about my financial spending and have begun cracking down on my budget.
I have begun trusting in God’s provision for our lives, focussing on rest and finding margin in all aspects of life. I have begun healing my relationship with money as it relates to my entire existence the result is a UTI— my kidneys are healing from 3 years of conflict.
As painful as it has been, I couldn’t be more relieved to come to this reminder. The more I grow, the more spiritual warfare I will face. The more I face, the more I rely on God. The more I rely on God, the stronger I will become— thus, the more I will grow.
Spiritual warfare is nothing new.
I accept that it will always be there. I will continue to research it. I surrender my side to God and allow the salvation that comes from Jesus to propel me.
Now, excuse me while I go eat yogurt and root vegetables for the next two weeks.