Celiac.

I woke up around 3:30 AM today and was lost in my thoughts. It is not often that I wake up so strongly with things specifically on my mind, so I took it as an invitation to get myself out of bed and enjoy a few minutes of quiet time and matcha. I’m tired, but it was worth it.

Yesterday my friend asked me if I was grieving my new celiac diagnosis. I honestly was too elated to finally have answers to even think about what I would be losing. I lived as a celiac for about a year a few years ago when I was suspicious of a potential celiac diagnosis. I felt better, stopped having autoimmune attacks to gluten (or so I thought), and figured I must have just needed a reset because the biopsies were not showing celiac. I reintroduced gluten and made myself a level of sick I don’t know how to explain. I landed in the ER with excruciating pain/sickness, elevated white blood cell counts and walked out only given a cup of mylanta with hot tears dripping down my cheeks because I felt bad for wasting my family’s time—again.

So this morning, what I’m finding I’m grieving is not the loss of fluffy glutenous baked goods, but I’m actually grieving the pain…the gaslighting…the “You’re just not trying hard enough” conversations I’ve worked my body to the BONE trying to measure up to.

I would have had this probably my entire life (which explains my childhood—again). Which means I never could have measured up to the impossible standards being forced upon me.

Today I’m grieving the hell I put my own body through, when she was begging me to heal her. To hear her.

The answer was never going to be to “try harder”.

Try harder to lose weight.

Try harder to absorb vitamins.

Try harder to drink more water even though you feel like a dried up fish and your skin looks like you’ve never drank a cup of water in your life.

Try harder to workout and just try this fad and this one.

Poor Nikki’s body.

I’m not grieving the loss of bread, or the changes I’ll need to make to be extra careful about cross contamination—at least not yet.

Right now I’m grieving the loss of a lifetime. I’m sad for the life I lived, when, had I known about this, my life could have been vastly different. I feel like I wasted a lifetime worrying about my body when I could have been LIVING my life instead.

But you know what is stronger in me?

Hope.

Because with an answer (one that feels insanely simple compared to what it could have been), I know how to move forward.

I’m celebrating that there is a forward! For the last few years I have felt so helpless in my health journey. Searching for answers, following bunny trails, discovering how interconnected my health issues truly are. All while people declared loudly, “To be healed! Have more faith! Trust Jesus! Don’t speak what you have, just move on!” All while my body is slowly killing itself because it sees its own self as a threat. (Yes, untreated celiac can lead to death by malnutrition, cancer, and so much more.)

I believe in prayer and the healing power of Jesus!

AND I believe that He heals through medical professionals and the doorways that diagnoses can provide. I may be a spiritual being having a human experience, but I am still a human, and I deserve to have an abundant life too. These answers set me back on that path. If Jesus wasn’t healing me, then it meant He had another path for me to walk. Now I understand it.

This diagnosis is not a grave for me—this diagnosis is the doorway to LIFE in abundance! Hallelujah!

Seems so simple…just stop eating gluten. That’s the answer in all its fullness. Stop eating gluten and let the healing truly begin.

The interesting thing about this journey is that to reverse the damage, it will come down to one word: trust. I’ll have to tend to my body in such a way that it will trust me again to not poison it with a substance it cannot process. I’m not necessarily going on a journey to stop eating gluten—I’m going on a journey to build trust inside myself so that I can heal. So that I can live.

What a glorious redemption.

No more “try harder”…now it is time to rest.

It’s time to put to bed all the lies I’ve believed for so many painful years.

It’s time to heal. Inside and out. Through and through.

It might mean the allergic reactions will stop and I’ll finally get my voice back. After years of not being able to sing, and barely being able to talk, just the thought alone brings me to joyful tears.

I’m grateful to Jesus today. Not necessarily for the diagnosis itself; who wants to live with a crappy condition? But I am grateful for it because it provides a direction to heal. And I choose to partner with Him to bring this healing. What an honor to be able to wrap my fingers around His and let Him lead me into a place of deep rest. Deep gratitude. Deep forgiveness. Deep healing.

He is faithful. He is the answer and my Savior, not a diagnosis. And I trust Him to lead me through it all.

Amen.

-Nikki