Health is an interesting concept.
Many people don’t pay much attention to it until their body forces them to, by presenting symptoms like headaches, stomach aches, or other health concerns. Sometimes, for people who experience health issues from a young age or who have been dealing with a chronic issue, they’ve come to accept it as a “normal-for-me” issue and it blends in to the background. That was definitely the case for me, having been diagnosed with an autoimmune disease at the age of 4. I never fully understood what healthy was. How could I, when I hadn’t really had the chance to experience it? And I certainly didn’t think I had any power to change it.
Now, after working on my health for many years, I know what healthy feels like and how focusing on my health makes such a difference… and how it will continue to be a prominent piece of my life. I get lots of questions about how I did it. How did I know what changes to make? How did I make such difficult changes? Didn’t I ever want to just quit, or “give in just a little?”
Each question could have its own blog post, but today I want to focus on “How did I make such difficult changes?” In honor of Valeo’s theme of the month (Harvesting Good Health), I figured the best way to do so was with a good, old-fashioned metaphor.
A Healthy Harvest
Your health is your harvest. It’s the end result of days, weeks, months, or years of labor and tending to. Sometimes, this harvest doesn’t take as much work as you’d expect – things naturally blossom and grow (yay!), but other times, especially in difficult seasons, you find yourself having to put in a lot of work to try to make sure you’ll have a successful harvest.
Of all the things you need to do to have a successful harvest, which is the most important? Is it the soil or sun? Is it what you use to fuel and nourish it? Or, is it pruning parts of the plant that are no longer thriving, so better attention can be paid to what is growing (or has the potential to grow) into something beautiful?
That’s actually a trick question on two accounts: 1) They are ALL important and 2) there is still one thing that is even more important to having a great harvest.
…It’s planting the seed!
Planting the Seed of Health Success
Without a seed, there is no harvest. You can water and fertilize however much you want, but unless there’s a seed somewhere in the soil, nothing is going to happen.
So you’re probably curious by now: what is the seed a metaphor for when it comes to harvesting great health?!
I’d argue that it is figuring out what good health looks like to you/why you want to achieve it. If great health is what you’re trying to grow, you need to have a kernel of it to begin with. That kernel can be the vision or idea of what the “harvest” means to you and how it would impact your life in a way that’s most meaningful to you.
Without this “seed” it can be really hard to people to determine the other important things, like what needs to be done in terms of soil (your surroundings, especially spiritual and social), sun (positivity, mental health, emotional well-being), nourishment (diet), etc.
This month, challenge yourself to plant the seed for your health success. Here are some questions to help get you started. Just fill in the blanks:
Good health:
- Feels like…
- Looks like…
- Sounds like…
- Allows me to…
- would change by life because…
After the Seed is Sown
If you’re familiar with the Parable of the Sower, we know that the soil is definitely important. At Valeo, we truly desire to be a part of supporting your good soil. We believe that good health includes fostering not just physical and mental health, but spiritual health, as well, which is why we pray with and for each patient who enters our clinic.
You are worth making the changes needed. Satan is such a deceiver with thoughts of “you don’t have time for that – you can’t spend that kind of money on yourself – that won’t actually make a difference.” We pray that God speaks to you and helps you to overcome those deceptions.
We encourage you to share your health goals with us so we may support you toward harvesting great health.
To schedule an appointment, call our office at 952-949-0676.
