In which I get serious about health and diet and fitness and exercise (really) | Anita Mathias: Dreaming Beneath the Spires

On Yoga and Following Jesus

I returned home from boarding school in Nainital in the Himalayas, aged ten, to find everything in my father’s life had changed. He, aged 56, had taken up yoga. And so our mornings became dramatic with simhasana, the lion’s roar, which punctuated the hour long yoga session, which was precious to him, and soon became indispensable to his peace, mental wellness, ability to cope with stress, and, of course, to his physical strength and flexibility.

His hour of yoga, to which he added an hour-long walk, brought mental calm and physical strength, and changed the texture and course of his life. He worked a demanding job as Controller of Accounts at Tata Steel and after his retirement worked as Financial Controller at Xavier Labour Relations Institute, XLRI, Jamshedpur, the local Business School, retiring for the second time at 68. He continued daily yoga and walking for the last 33 years of his life, until he died close to his ninetieth birthday. (It was only in the last few weeks of his life, when he was crushed and burdened by clearing out and selling his in-laws house which my parents had inherited—along with a lawsuit from disgruntled family members who wanted it–that he abandoned these disciplines, a parable for me on not bequeathing clutter, and never abandoning exercise).

For most of my life, I did not exercise. As a Christian, I observed that the Bible was silent about it, referring to running and walking as metaphors, not injunctions. Shouldn’t the fitness developed by the tasks of our life, and maintaining our homes and gardens give us the strength we need for our lives? Do we need the extra fitness developed by running, lifting weights, or yoga? Each time I see super-fit people grunt as they lift super-heavy weights in the gym, I still wonder if we really need that high degree of fitness.

However, I am not physically strong, and becoming stronger would give me the physical strength and mental energy necessary for the many sedentary hours that I would love to spend reading and writing. Also, the 10,000 to 13500 steps I aim to walk every day is transforming my life as it gives me the opportunity to explore so much more of this green earth.

In The Joy of Movement: How Exercise Help Us Find Happiness, Hope, Connection, and Courage psychologist Kelly McGonigal says “being active increases all the other joys in your life: it improves your relationships, it helps you focus, it improves your mental health, it can help people recover from depression and grief. People who exercise on any given day have better social interactions with other people, and being physically active reliably increases your optimism, your hope, and your sense of energy,” (in Gretchen Rubin’s summary.)

Though I have lost 81 pounds over the last few years by pretty much cutting out sugar, chocolate, wheat, rice, potatoes and other starchy carbs, and more recently fruit, beans, lentils, milk, and starchy vegetables ( I know, I know, but it’s a short-term thing), I have more pounds, more stone, to lose. And so, I exercise some.

And yoga has been as much of a blessing for me as it was for my father. Not being naturally coordinated or athletic, I am not a gifted yogi; however, yoga classes provide me a quiet space for an hour to move my body, stretch, think and even pray. And the thinking is better for the movement.

I started yoga with a Can’t-Do list. Holding Down Dog was tiring, and adding a Three-Legged Dog seemed a step too far, and then adding “Knee to Nose,”— outrageous! Holding planks was excruciating, side planks were nigh impossible. And Wild Thing… are you kidding? Tree, Eagle, Floating Half Moon, forget it.

However, I have been doing Yoga for over three years now, two or three times a week if possible, in classes at the gym. I often shyly go up to the front (though, sadly, the yoga class convention is that the inexpert hide at the back and imitate, while the skilled go in front). But up front, close to the teacher, I can watch carefully and imitate. I realise how I have unconsciously been taking short-cuts and not been pushing my body to the full reach and strength of the pose. And I realise that if I take my time, and am perhaps a few seconds behind everyone else, I can, I really can, get my body briefly into the poses I thought I was too weak or balance-challenged for. Hello Side Plank, Tree, Wild Thing, Floating Half-moon, Malasana: Yogic squat, and “Warrior Three.”

And, since when it all fades away, what I am through and through, the most essential thing about me, is that I am a Christian, a stumbling Christian, as faltering and bumbling a Christian as I am a yogi—as I do yoga (you probably saw this coming!) I sometimes reflect on following Christ.

When, aged 17, I started my zigzagging adventure of trying to follow Christ, there were things I thought I could never do. Forgive the sociopaths in my life—are you kidding? Keep my temper when those around me were losing theirs? Nah. Consistently practice the empathy required to treat others as I would like them to treat me? Think before speaking or writing when I am angry? Keep my eyes on Jesus and check in with him in everything I do? Live in love? Be gentle. How?

I am not a good Yogi, and I am a limping Christian. However, as I follow the teacher as precisely as I can, I find my body becoming stronger and more flexible, and my mind more calm and more peaceful. And as I read or listen to a chapter of the Gospels every day, as I try in small things to do what Jesus says, as I increasingly decline to do what he specifically tells us not to do (“do not judge,” “do not worry,”) I find my life more blessed, more guided, more open to his inspirations, more happy, and more peaceful. The progress in both these areas is, of course, probably only visible to me, and to God, and that must suffice.

* * *

The best book I know on using exercise to improve our ability to think, read, write and create fast is

Spark: How Exercise will Improve the Performance of Your Brain, by Harvard psychiatrist, John Ratey on Amazon.com Amazon.co.uk

And if you have extra reading time, perhaps read my art-inspired illustrated story Francesco: Artist of Florence on Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk. I am very fond of it.

I am doing Yoga with Adriene during lockdown, but normally do yoga in real life with Lisa Cuerden.

Image source: Pixaby Creative Commons, CCO Public Domain

The Spiritual Practice of Bible-Walking

By Anita Mathias

A neglected corner of my garden

I have loved the Bible for most of my life. When I skip time at play in the fields of the Lord, skip time with the Bible—that fresh, startling way of viewing reality—for even a week, I miss it. My life feels a bit flat and wearisome.

I knew the Bible well even as a child in a Catholic boarding school in the Himalayas run by German nuns, and I have learned it better since. Learned it in the way of a scholar—concordances, word studies, study Bibles, commentaries… I have led many Bible studies and been in many more.

However, most people, most women, through the four millennia that we’ve had books of the Bible, have been illiterate, and yet the Word has survived and borne fruit. It’s the WORD, as powerful when spoken and heard as when written.

Over the last few months, since Easter, I have been primarily engaging with the Bible as if I were illiterate, engaging with my ears rather than with my eyes.

The fields just outside our house

This is my new spiritual discipline: prayer walking, or Bible-walking. Four chapters a day (which means I’ll listen to the whole Bible in a year), listened to on my phone (without headphones, for I walk in lonely places), listened to slowly, with a pause to meditate on anything that speaks to me, and to pray it into my life. To repent, to revise my life, to praise, to thank, to expand my mind, to be happy. To learn wisdom from Jesus.

I love this new spiritual practice of prayer-and-Bible-walking. It is a new way of engaging with the Gospels, through the ears and muscles rather than through the eyes. I am constantly finding new depths and wisdom in a text I have known all my life, and it’s changing the way I think… and even, slowly, the way I live.

Will I do it forever? No, because we are commanded to love God with our minds. The bookish and scholarly are to love God in their bookish, scholarly and boffinly way for that’s how we are made.

But we are quadripartite beings; our emotions, minds, spirits and bodies are all important. And my body is the weakest part of me. And so I need to pray and walk, listen to Scripture and walk, until the Word becomes flesh and muscle and sinew in my body and life as it did in Israel all those centuries ago.
I am building the physical strength I need, even as I build spiritual strength, and the mental and emotional strength that comes from contact with Jesus’s startling mind and with the vast, astonishing love of God.

Links (Affiliate)

People have asked in comments and on FB which apps etc. I use.
Well, I use Audible https://www.audible.co.uk/ or https://www.audible.com/

And I love David Suchet’s narration of the NIV (Amazon.co.uk) or on Amazon.com. He’s an English actor with the most gorgeous voice.

And, of course, I love Eugene Peterson’s Message. On Amazon.com and on Amazon.co.uk.

Listening to your Body, Listening to your Life

By Anita Mathias

Buttermere, Lake District

God speaks to us, guides us, and shows us his will through the circumstances of our lives.

And sometimes, through our bodies.

“Pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our consciences, but shouts in our pains. It is his megaphone to a deaf world,” as C. S. Lewis put it.

And for me, the pain that shrieks most loudly, insistently, in a voice which cannot be ignored is physical pain.

For almost a year, I had a mystery pain, which was first diagnosed as sciatica, and then as moderate-to-severe arthritis, and spondylolisthesis. It made walking unbearable, and led to a series of expensive visits to physiotherapists, osteopaths and masseurs, first NHS and then private. (Interestingly, it lifted, unbelievably, and miraculously, after a spine surgeon, and Oxford Professor of Orthopaedic Surgery… get this… PRAYED for me in church, and prayed for me with absolute faith!!)

But for a year it dominated my life… ruling out running, and affecting my long walks, my sleep, my travel, my exercise, my happiness, and my usually sunny temperament!

* * *

Bassenthwaite, Lake District

“Everyone is a house with four rooms, a physical, a mental, an emotional and a spiritual. Most of us tend to live in one room most of the time but, unless we go into every room every day, even if only to keep it aired, we are not a complete person,” wrote Rumer Godden, (a favourite writer of mine, when I was a teenager).

For most of my life, until my early thirties, the intellectual room predominated… I ignored the physical. Then through my thirties and forties, I probably spent the most time and energy, thought and passion in the spiritual room. But last year, pain shouted, the body first.

* * *

Brothers Water, Lake District

The body first? Yes, for it is the home in which mind, spirit, and heart live. And if pain or dread diseases grounds the body in their imperative way, then the other dimensions of a full human, the spiritual, the intellectual and the spiritual are usually similarly crippled.

So for the first time in my life… I am prioritising health, learning about the best nutrition for my body (food as medicine!!). I am doing my sciatica exercises… and yoga. I am doing some meditation too, which as Jon Kabat-Zinn has shown mysteriously reduces physical pain, perhaps by reducing the flight-or-fight response, perhaps by promoting relaxation.

I am paying more rigorous attention to what I eat, and have shed a total of 46 pounds.

* * *

Crummock Water, Lake District

The impressive mega-church founder, Rick Warren, whose success in ministry and evangelism and writing is matched by his legendary generosity, writes

“If you want to change Your life, start with your body.

For change to happen in any area of your life, whether it’s financial, vocational, educational, mental, or relational, you have to begin with the physical.

Why? Because your body affects your behaviour. Your muscles affect your moods and your motivation. Your physiology can actually affect your psychology.”

It’s ironic that it took the megaphone of pain, and an inability to exercise without pain, to decide to put the body first!

Jesus talks of the steep and narrow path that leads to life. I love the Lake District which I visited last year, the Himalayas, and especially the Alps. The gasping, sometimes tedious effort on the steep and narrow paths lead to fabulous wild views we could not have seen any other way. The trick is to enjoy each step, each view on the journey. “Trust what is difficult,” the German poet Rainer Maria Rilke wrote; trust the process, trust that the steep and narrow path will lead to joy.

And so I will continue prioritising changing my body… as a prelude to positively changing all the things that my body affects… my often tired mind, my sometimes cantankerous, and sometimes soaring spirit, and my sometimes cranky and sometimes sanguine emotions!

Wish me luck!

(All photographs taken by me, on my iPhone 6S, in the Lake District, earlier this month).

Some (affiliate) links which helped me, and might help you.

Meditation tapes. I particularly recommend Jon Kabat-Zinn on Amazon.com and on Amazon.co.uk

Mark Williams meditation tapes on Amazon.com and on Amazon.co.uk

Rick Warren’s Daniel Plan includes the spiritual elements of weight loss, as well as offering a helpful practical plan, which includes exercise. On Amazon.com and on Amazon.co.uk

Weighted blankets have almost magically improved the depth, quality and length of my sleep. I use this one… on Amazon.com and on Amazon.co.uk

My Fitbit HR helps me track my steps, my active hours, my sleep and many other things. On Amazon.com and on Amazon.co.uk

On Prayer-Walking, Seeking the Kingdom and Getting it All Thrown in

By Anita Mathias

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Lake Bled, Slovenia where we were last summer

A friend describes her passion as: exercising and travel and exercising when she travels. The last phrase made me feel wistful because I never used to exercise when I travel. I found spending all day on my feet challenge enough. But then, on my return, it took me several weeks, a couple of months, to recover the distances and speed I had achieved before I went travelling–those personal bests.

On our last trip however, I exercised–ran for half an hour one day, walked a mile as fast as I could on the next, and, oddly, had plenty of energy for everything else.

I thought of what Annie Dillard says of writing, “One of the things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now. The impulse to save something good for a better place later is the signal to spend it now. Something more will arise for later, something better. These things fill from behind, from beneath, like well water. Similarly, the impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful: it is destructive. Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes.”

What’s true of writing and blogging is true too of hoarding strength, as I did on holiday (or of hoarding money!). “You open your safe and find ashes.”

* * *

My own favourite thing is not so much exercising when I travel, though, as praying when I walk, and walking when I pray. I came back today from doing a German presentation at the class I am taking “for fun,” (which is proving far more challenging than I expected). And I walked and walked, all the cobwebs and adrenaline leaching from my mind, my spirit quietening down, turning naturally to prayer.

Worries surfaced and I took them to Father, for had not Jesus said, “Do not let your hearts be troubled, and neither let them be afraid,” and I prayed for his eyes to see. My lane has changed its character in the ten years I’ve lived here; five new people–four of them Traveller families–have moved in on what was undeveloped green belt land; my peaceful rural retreat has suddenly become noisy.

I had counted myself blessed to be able to buy a one and a half acre garden in Oxford. I love my garden, but I cannot maintain it in the eight hours a week I have budgeted to work in my garden. Perhaps—heresy—I would be happier with a smaller garden, .50 acre; .75 acre?

I am always driving across town to North Oxford, to church, to small group, to visit friends, to the German class at Oxford University, to Writers in Oxford meetings, to walk in the University Parks, or by the river. The centre of my life in Oxford is there. The thought of moving there and walking everywhere is powerfully attractive.

I remembered a pastor saying that God guides us through a kick from behind, and a pull from the front. Is this it? Is it time for a move? Yes, I think so. If God is in an idea, it clarifies and strengthens through time. I think this is from him…

* * *

I brought my tired mind to God, and asked him to place his giant hand on it, and heal it. I brought my spirit to him, and asked him to breathe, breathe, breathe on it. For is this not the greatest inheritance we have, that Jesus promises us his Holy Spirit, that Jesus breathes on us, as he breathed on the disciples? I placed my worries in God’s hand, and let the Father sing over me, and quiet me with his love.

When I looked at the time on my Runkeeper app, I had got my fastest times for a mile. Three years ago, I so despaired of my fitness that I (don’t laugh) got a walking coach to teach me to walk fast. Joanna said that I would not improve fitness, unless I pushed myself to walk as fast as I can. And I do push myself a bit every day, a fast mile on one day, and a half hour run on the next. However, since I got a Fitbit in January, I have faithfully walked 10,000 to 11,500 steps every day. And now with the increased endurance, I get personal bests without the bursting lungs, straining heart, aching muscles and sweat-drenching that it took before.

The sweetest things in life come while we are focused on other and usually better things. He was seeks to save his life will lose it, and he who seeks Jesus first will also get the things the rest of the world restlessly seeks for. (Matt 6:33).

* * *

In my first decade or two as a married woman, I was dismayed by the weight of domesticity (especially with a rather messy and absent-minded husband). All that shopping and cleaning and cooking and laundry and child-amusing; how on earth would I ever get any writing done, writing which I felt was my one call from God? So I grabbed and fought for and stole writing time, ignoring the mundane tasks of domesticity (though I loved the reading to children part), but I did not complete the big project of my heart. Perhaps God did not let me complete it then, for I had not yet learnt the lessons he needed to teach me.

More recently, I have revised my sense of calling. I am called to be a writer, yes, but that is not my only calling. I am also called to live in relationship with my family, to run a house and keep a garden pretty, and to be a friend of Jesus and to my real-life friends. The intensity about writing has vanished. Writing is part of my worship of Jesus, as is running a house and garden, and being a friend to my family and friends, and loving Jesus through prayer and studying his beautiful Words.

And as the intensity about writing leached away what I had wanted, time to write, is being given to me without angst and conflict. The pages are piling up on the big project of my heart.

Seek to save your life and you lose it. Seek first the Kingdom and all the things the Pagans run after will be added to you.

C. S. Lewis writes, “The principle runs through all life from top to bottom: Give up yourself, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in.”

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Slovenia

Biggest Losers, Grace, and Silver Linings

By Anita Mathias

I read the New York Times’ distressing account of The Biggest Loser show.

Because of their rapid weight loss, the participants’ metabolisms dramatically slowed down, as happens with any diet. Researchers discovered that, six years on, the metabolism of the contestants continued slowing down, and they continued gaining weight disproportionate to their calorie intake, their bodies intensifying efforts to keep them at their highest weight. “The body will fight back for years,” against dramatic weight loss, the researchers discovered.

Following post-diet weight loss, leptin and four other hormones which signal satiety vanish almost completely so one feels ravenous all the time. Similarly, levels of ghrelin, which signal hunger, shoot up.

Becoming overweight is a kind of vicious circle. The more foods you eat that give you a dopamine rush—sugar, chocolate, cakes, cookies, the less sensitive the dopamine receptors in the brain become. Some actually die, according to an amazing book I am reading Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain by Harvard psychiatrist John Ratey.

“It’s like hearing you have a life sentence,” said worship leader, Sean Algaier, who entered the show at 444 pounds, got down to 289 and is now 450.

* * *

Yup, a life sentence indeed, but a life-sentence to what?

A life sentence to long walks, so that your mobility is never as affected as that of Danny Cahill, the biggest loser of all time on the show, who was 485 pounds. “He began sleeping in a recliner because he was too heavy to sleep lying down. Walking hurt; stairs were agony.” That is no life!

Working on reasonable fitness is a life sentence to the glory and ecstasy of nature in spring, in summer, in autumn and winter. A life sentence to walks in parks, forests, fells, mountains and by the sea.

A life sentence to discovering forms of exercise which are fun so as to prevent further weight gain, and, perhaps, (inevitably?) to lose some weight. Yoga? Hiking? Running? Weight-lifting? Walking listening to books like David Sedaris, who began walking 25 miles a day, 60,000 steps, which took 9 hours. He listened to audiobooks and podcasts as he did so, which would mean getting through a book a day most days. Not a bad use of time, if you have it, for saturation reading is the quickest way to improve as a writer, and, of course, has its own joys.

A life sentence to meals rich in nutrient dense fruits and vegetables. A life sentence to restricted sugar, chocolate, white flour (and in my case, as a colon cancer survivor, red meat)—addictive stuff which does not bless the body. A life sentence of discovering ethnic foods which are fruit, vegetable, lentil and bean based. A life sentence to learning to eat in a way that blesses your body. Not too bad is it?

A life sentence to having to learn to practice discipline, though you may fail often.

The goodness of God remains constant whether you have an illness which is random or genetic, like MS or MND/ALS or illnesses caused by your own actions as well as by your genes, like obesity or alcoholism. There is grace—silver linings in every cloud.

* * *

We are actors in a great, great story. We do not get to choose our roles. We do not get to choose the plot of the story.

It is our job to act in the story as well as we can, as cheerfully as we can. To see the silver lining in the blackest cloud.

Obesity is not really a completely incurable disease, any more than cancer is. (And anyway, most diseases are not incurable because there is a powerful God who flung the stars into space). I lost 25 pounds in late 2012 after beginning to cut back on sugar and floor and eat more fruit and vegetables, most of which has remained off, though I have more to lose, of course, of course).

Of course, becoming fit and strong is going to be a challenge for me, for life. Challenges may not make our hearts leap with joy, but they make life worth living. Those of us with health problems have a difficult road–a road of humility as we come to terms with our weaknesses; a road of learning discipline, better late than never; a road of dependence as we realise that constant prayer for grace is one way out of the maze.

Yes, our weaknesses may even teach us to pray constantly, which is something well worth learning, even if it takes struggle to learn it.

On Not Despising Deliverance

By Anita Mathias

“Do not despise prophecy,” the Apostle Paul says, somewhat surprisingly.

Why would we despise it? Because we tend to suspect what we do not understand? Or because prophecy can attract fools, charlatans, the unstable, and conmen seeking to gain power over others—as well as, of course, those who can genuinely tune into God?

I no longer despise prophecy because of personal experiences with those who genuinely had the gift of prophecy.

* * *

What about deliverance ministries? In the first church I attended as a Christian, in a small American town in the South, an individual gained power by labelling everything untoward as a curse or demon-caused–infertility, miscarriages, ear pain, a fear of flying–and exorcizing people. He offered to baptise me to mark my adult commitment to Christ, and when I spontaneously resisted total immersion (I was afraid, having only learnt to swim as an adult) he halted the baptism for an exorcism. (But I remained nervous!)

Eventually that person left the church, taking the best tithers with him, and founded his own church, heavily based around deliverance—a spiritually unbalanced church which, fortunately, did not survive

So I had question marks about deliverance.

* * *

Around that time, however, I picked up a book by Billy Graham, which surprisingly claimed that 90% of Christians are “demonized,” (as opposed to possessed). A dark power, what Paul calls, “evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world, mighty powers in this dark world, and spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places,” controlled aspects of their lives. They were not entirely free when it came to their inability to forgive, perhaps; their out-of-control spending, addiction to sugar, alcohol, porn, anxiety, or negative thoughts.

* * *

What happens in deliverance? Someone with greater faith or spiritual authority uses their faith to expel dark powers from areas of your life. Uses their intimacy with God to implore God’s protection, a hedge, a strong tower in that area of your life.

You find freedom. Your sleep becomes deeper and more restful.

* * *

I have been married for 26 years. Anger used to be an issue in our marriage, and we’d get all histrionic and historical, and have time-wasting fights. And since life was short, I no longer wanted to waste time on stupid fights. I wanted to use wisdom and intelligence, stepping back, thinking rationally about the issues, acting using my mind and spirit, not my agitated emotions.

I eventually decided no more. No more fights. I have had enough. I will act with wisdom. It takes two to fight, and I will not be one of the two.

In the Old Testament, people marked important junctures of their lives— a major decision, an encounter with God–by building stone pillars. I wanted to mark my decision. When I visited a worship festival which had a deliverance ministry, I signed up for one on one prayer. The prayer minister was not slick, or well-educated. He called the little area of my life which was out of self-control and Spirit-control “a critter.” He prayed with me to expel it. I sighed and sighed as I physically felt relief, sensed something leaving, something generational, felt a huge sense of relief, lightness and freedom.

Harriet Lerner calls marriage the dance of intimacy. If one partner had strong emotions they cannot process, they can press their partner’s buttons, and start a fight. So they get to avoid dealing with their own discomfort. Eventually, couples get addicted to the adrenalin of anger.

After prayer, I found less anger in myself. I might yell a little, and then find I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t summon up the anger, the passion. I realised that to act out would be acting like a fool.

It was as if God had erected a hoop, an invisible boundary around me that I could not cross. I was experiencing the paradoxical freedom of being possessed by God’s spirit… I did not have to retaliate, angry word for angry word, historical accusation for accusation, all that foolishness. I could be still and quiet and write. I could go for a run. I could have a nap.

* * *

The other deliverance was equally astonishing. I was having coffee with a Christian friend, a woman a couple of years older than me, whom I respect and like for many things…her love for people, her spiritual wisdom, her warm heart, her bounciness and cheerfulness. And, since as Thoreau says, “Every man is the builder of a temple called his body to the god he worships,” I admire her too for her body; she’s all muscle. She swims, plays tennis, and runs half-marathons, faster than most men. I once did a run with her, and she did 3 miles in the time I did one. Oh well!

My friend asked, “So how are you really?” And I said, “It is well-ish with my soul, but…” (choose the path of humility, Anita, I said to myself) “I have been told to lose weight for my health and immune system, and, well, I haven’t been hugely successful.”

And then she told me a story I would never have guessed at. This slim attractive woman had been a binge-eater in her twenties. She binged, then purged, so that though she had been twenty pounds overweight, nobody guessed at her secret sin. But she knew. And she could not break her addiction to binges. One day, she cried out to the Lord in her distress, and, she said the only way she could describe it was—she was delivered. She no longer binge-ate; she got a job which required physical activity, and for her to be at her goal weight, and, within the year, she was.

I sighed, and knew that this was a moment for humility. This was a moment of destiny. So I said with simple intensity, “Will you pray for me to be delivered?”

She prayed. Listening to someone pray I can often tell whether they have entered the Throne-room, whether they have connected with God, and, often, I can intuitively tell if the prayer will be answered.

I knew I had been delivered from an addiction to food. I had to wait to see whether the deliverance would work out as the blind man was healed, first by seeing men like trees walking, and then seeing them clearly.

* * *

My daughters noticed the change first. We were on holiday in Tuscany, which has some of the best comfort food on the planet, morish food which releases addictive dopamine, and I found myself eating some of my spaghetti alle vongole, spaghetti and clams; linguine gamberetti, zucchini e zafferano, linguine with shrimp, zucchini, and saffron; spaghetti carbonara; or ravioli with spinach and ricotta, noticing that I was full, and then offering tastes to anyone who wanted them. “Mum, whatever diet you are on, we like it,” Zoe said.

But I was not on a diet. I had begun to find it physically difficult to continue eating once I was full! There was a force within me, reminding me to stop once I had had enough.

The Spirit is a remind-er, Jesus says, an internal reminder, bringing things to our remembrance.

* * *

And then I returned home, and would reach for a snack, and Someone, a kindly Someone, asked, “Anita, are you hungry?” And I would say, “No, but I am sad. I am bored. I am agitated. I am stressed; I am feeling hyper. I need a snack to help me settle down before I write. I need a reward after I write. I need a snack to help me transition between two activities.”

And the Spirit would say, “Ask Jesus to fill your Spirit.”

I would remember: I could ask the Holy Spirit to possess my spirit. Or I could eat a bar of chocolate. I prayed; desire for the stress-relieving snack receded. (And sometimes I succumbed. Sometimes, you see men like trees walking before you see clearly.)

It kept happening. Someone would say something sharp or cross or stressful, and my blood sugar would plunge, and I would think, “I need chocolate. I need a slice of fruit cake.” And then I would think, “Anita, you are not hungry. Might the Holy Spirit do it? Invite him in.”

Voila, 100 calories saved.

I realised that I was rarely physically hungry, so much so that I almost wondered if I were getting ill again, but then I truly skipped a meal, and real hunger returned.

When I was hungry, Someone kept reminding me to ask, “Anita, what will bless your body?” And I would basically cook up a skillet of vegetables, toss in some shrimp or fish, and some noodles or brown rice or pasta. Good for my family, good for me.

And freedom too, to eat the odd bit of chocolate, the odd slice of pizza…

Simple changes, prompted by the Spirit’s reminders: Don’t eat when you are not hungry. Stop eating when you are not hungry. Choose what will bless your body.

I stepped on the scale today. A cumulative weight loss of 24 pounds, the easiest ones after that prayer. (I have more to lose, of course, but, by the grace of Jesus, want to keep my eyes on Him through the process).

On a Shortcut into Happiness

By Anita Mathias

When we sleep, I have read, the unconscious begins to process, resolve, and heal the buried emotions of the day. That little inadvertent thing which seemed so massively embarrassing, but which everyone else has forgotten. The awkwardness, the stresses, the misunderstandings, the little buffetings of the heart.

Anxieties, shame, fears, tensions, and triumphs–we relive them, and often resolve them in our dreams. Often, I reconcile with people I haven’t been able to reconcile with in real life, and wake with a sense of relief.

Sleep deprivation is a form of torture. Some psychiatrists say that depression and bipolar disorder are at root sleep disorders! Sleep is cathartic. God, or our unconscious, resolves many of the day’s niggles. “The night belongs to the Lord,” I have heard it said. And so “he gives to his beloved sleep,” and we awake with fresh energy and resolve for the new day.

* * *

You know what else gives me the same sense of resolving the unresolved by a subconscious process? Of resolving tensions, dissatisfactions, minor anger, and irritations?

Exercise, aerobic exercise, working at the outer limit of my comfort zone.

* * *

I was very ill last November, too exhausted to leave my bed for a couple of weeks, and if I had not had surgery for Stage III colon cancer, with nine lymph nodes affected, that fast growing “rabbit cancer,” would have metastasized, and I might have died.

In a Spirit-guided decision, I declined chemo and as part of my chemo-free recovery, I have been trying to walk as fast as I can. My one year check-up showed entirely normal results, for which I grateful

I have never been strong, so at present, it takes me 20 minutes to walk a mile, and I can do three or four miles. But, let me embarrass myself, because I was so unwell, because I’ve never been strong, walking a 20 minute mile takes focus. I break a sweat, oh yes; I gasp at times, I feel the strain in my lungs and heart. If I lose focus, I won’t break my speed goal (I am currently trying to break a 20 minute, 23 second mile)– so focus I do.

But while my body is working, and my conscious mind is focused on my walking speed, my unconscious is working too.

When I come back from my walk sometimes just a mile, sometimes over three, I feel purged, cleansed. It was cathartic. Many of the anxieties, irritations, question marks and worries have been resolved, who knows how? I am now ready to settle down to work, with calm of mind and clear focus. It’s as every cobweb has been vacuumed from my brain.

* * *

A book I reviewed earlier this year, Stress by Simon Vibert says that one way to deal with stress is to do something so demanding that you can’t consciously think of anything else while you do it. At present, trying to walk a mile faster than 20 minutes and 23 seconds does that for me.

If you are stressed at this season, perhaps do that? Find your baseline, your comfortable pace, and try to walk faster than that for… a mile? Or the 10,000 steps which are the minimal requirement for good health, according to Britain’s NHS (about 3.5 to 5 miles depending on your stride). Dr. Andrew Weil, my favourite medic who works with alternative medicine says walking 4 miles a day at 15 minutes a mile will revolutionize your health, a goal I am shooting for.

I will probably get there, but meanwhile, I am enjoying the journey. Those little bursts of 20 minutes 23 seconds make me significantly happier every day, and that is never to be underrated, that little thing, happiness. Through so easy a means, walking shoes, and a mile, or three. Perhaps four

On Cancer, Declining Chemotherapy, Healing, and Future Plans

By Anita Mathias

B0006844 Colon cancer cells Credit: Lorna McInroy. Wellcome Images images@wellcome.ac.uk http://images.wellcome.ac.uk Cultured colon cancer cells showing the nuclei stained with DAPI in blue, the actin cytoskeleton in red and plectin (isoform 1k) in green. Plectin interacts with cytoskeletal actin, affecting its behaviour. This subtype of plectin promotes the migration of cells and may affect metastasis. Confocal micrograph 2005 Published: - Copyrighted work available under Creative Commons by-nc-nd 2.0 UK, see http://images.wellcome.ac.uk/indexplus/page/Prices.html

Human colon cancer cells

So hi there, I am back…back to regular blogging, back to health– physically, emotionally, spiritually and creatively.

So, news of my world: I had surgery for colon cancer on November 25^th, 2014, which now feels very long ago—like a bad, surreal dream.

I was offered chemotherapy, which would increase my odds of being alive in five years by 10%. The side effects as explained by my oncologist: Anaemia, progressive tiredness which persists for some weeks after the treatment ends. Depressed immune system and risk of infection: the treatment reduces white blood cell count. Bruising of nerves, peripheral neuropathy, numb hands or feet, which may make typing hard, and which sometimes is permanent. Nausea, diarrhoea, mouth ulcers. Temporary hair loss. Eye problems. Headaches. Muscles, joint and stomach pain. Abdominal pain. Changes in liver function. 1 in 200 die.

The adjuvant chemotherapy recommended supports surgery by killing any cancer cells which may (or may not!) remain. It’s like an insurance policy, and is potentially over-treating, the oncologist explained. Colon cancer does return for 40 to 50% of patients—i.e. hey, cancer is not a joke (or, at least, a very bad one!). Adjuvant chemotherapy reduces recurrences by 10%.

As I prayed, I became convinced that toxic chemotherapy which often causes permanent physical, emotional and intellectual damage was not the path for me. Not the path through the dark woods on which I would meet the Father, Son and Spirit whistling as they stroll.

Might anything besides chemotherapy give me a 10% survival benefit? My oncologist said that research shows that exercise increases survival after colon cancer. As does Vitamin D and aspirin. People know what they know and don’t know what they don’t know. Could there be evidence-based research that my oncologist had not yet looked at, did not know of?

“Oh God!” I prayed. “There are 298,000 species of plants. Surely, surely, some of them would zap any remaining cancer cells without the havoc wrought by toxic chemicals. Is it possible that God who placed dock leaves near stinging nettles did not create even one plant which would bless the body while neutralising cancer cells? Even one plant which would strengthen the immune system to “fight” cancer so that it would not spread? Surely God will lead me to such plants.”

In the Parable of Weeds in Matthew, Jesus recommends leaving enemy-sown weeds in the field lest, in uprooting them, good plants are uprooted as well. When I thought about chemo, there was no light in it. I felt sure chemo, for me, was not the way of the Spirit, that the Spirit would guide me to non-toxic therapies that might strengthen the immune system, rather than weaken me body, mind and soul in the process of zapping renegade demon cells.

* * *

As I called out to the Lord in my distress, the title of a book a friend had recommended popped into my mind: God’s Way to Ultimate Health by George Malkmus, who watched his mother rapidly grow ill and die from toxic cancer treatments rather than the disease. (A common experience, apparently!) Declining chemotherapy, he cured his colon cancer by aggressive doses of nutrients through juicing. A raw food diet. Supplements. Exercise. My friend recommended Chrisbeatcancer.com, who inspired by Malkmus used these strategies to heal his own Stage III colon cancer without chemotherapy.

Diet and exercise had been my Achilles’ heel, and so I had some of the lifestyle risk factors for colon cancer. So while I have not changed as drastically as I would have liked, over the last eight months I have changed what I eat, and I intend to continue, respecting my body as a gift God gave me, which I need to keep healthy for my intellectual, spiritual, emotional and physical life to flourish.

Malkmus recommends a discipline which he says will change your life, and might possibly save it. Walk a mile as fast as you can, write down the speed; then, each day continue walking as fast as you can until you can do a mile in 15 minutes. Then walk two miles as fast as you can, until you can do 2 miles in 30 minutes; then 3 miles in 45 minutes, then 4 miles in an hour. I was walking a mile in 30-33 minutes after surgery, and am now down to a 21 minute mile (and walking 3.5 miles, over 10,000 steps) and am loving the increased fitness—especially because I can now be on my feet, exploring all day on holiday. I still need major improvements in fitness, but am optimistic, since I have been steadily improving my pace.

Other changes: Carrot juice. Green juice. Salads. A lot of vegetables, steamed or roasted. No meat. Less diary. Fish and salmon every day, since Seventh Day Adventist studies show that eating oily fish protects against colon cancer. A handful of supplements, some recommended by my younger sister, Dr. Shalini Cornelio who has worked in cancer research at Sloan-Kettering Memorial Hospital in New York City: Resveratrol (grape seed extract). Sulforaphane (broccoli sprout extract). Turmeric. Aged garlic. Probiotic supplements. Fish oil. Vitamin D. Aspirin. Calcium. Multivits.

So rather than a path of passivity, submitting to a toxic regimen, I took a path of positivity and challenge—exercise, and mega-doses of nutrients through juices, salads, and supplements to strengthen the immune system against errant cells. In eight months, it has left me stronger than I have been for years, perhaps decades, rather than significantly weaker.

* * *

I put out of my mind the fear of death. And any irrational fear of cancer. I told God I was making the best decision I could with the light given to me and if I had mis-read his will, and the days ordained for me were up before I had done my life’s work, well then, okay. He is the Lord of my cells. I will trust him with cancer and my life and death as with everything else. As I said, “Okay, Lord, I’ll leave the date of my death up to you. You choose,” fear and anxiety drained out of me and I could think clearly.

Chemo? No way.

And, oh me of little faith, after researching natural ways to strengthen my immune system to neutralize cancer cells, I also—repeatedly– asked Jesus to reach out his mighty hands and zap any remaining cancer cells in my blood stream.

Do I believe in the efficacy of prayer for physical healing? That’s one of the frequent questions I’ve been asked as a blogger over the last five years. Of course, I do…just as I believe in the efficacy of any prayer. Physical healing is not a special subset of prayer; miracles occur here, as in any realm we pray for with faith.

I like to read the Gospels taking Jesus at his word. I like to read the Gospels as if Jesus is alive today, and can reach out his hand and heal me as he healed so many two thousand years ago.

I prayed as Jesus commanded with a mighty mustard seed of faith. So why act as if Jesus hadn’t heard me, couldn’t hear me, would meanly not hear me, and take toxic drugs too? What’s the point of praying, and then acting as if God surely has not heard your prayers?

* * *

At my check-up on June 19^th, the colonoscopy, blood tests and chest/abdomen/pelvis scan showed no evidence of disease.

In her documentary, “Crazy, Sexy Cancer,” cute presenter Kris Carr says, “I would not call cancer a gift because I would not give it to you, but for me, it has been a gift.”

I would echo that.

I feel like one who has crossed over from death to life.

And I have, physically.

The Apostle John gives us a spiritual sign that we have crossed over from death to life…and it is not the absence of cancer cells. We know that have crossed over from death to life because we love one another, he says

Love, the spiritual gift before which eloquence or tongues, prophecy or scriptural insight, faith or generosity, count for nothing. For too a long a time in my Christian life, I have privileged these–effective prayer, faith, scriptural insight, prophetic gifting. I considered them my spiritual gifts.

I am coming like Christina Rossetti to believe that “all is small save love, for love is all in all.”

* * *

Oh, all sort of gifts came with crabby old cancer.

Living in the moment, free and bird-like. A remarkable diminution of worry. If I cannot control errant cells in my body but have to trust God with them, with the days of my life and the date of my death, why not trust him for everything else?

A freedom, a lightness came as I left my life, finances, career and death in God’s hands. I am practising not worrying about anything at all.

A wry coolness and lightness with whether I achieve my dreams or not.

A greater desire to write beautiful things that might last, things with some significance, that might actually bless people.

Momento Mori. Remembrance of Death. In the Middle Ages and early Renaissance, the thoughtful placed a skull upon their desk as a reminder to focus because life was short and death was certain.

* * *

So here I am, back again. I spent some time deciding whether I wanted to be just a writer of books, or a blogger as well. In the end, I decided that blogging was a calling—yes, a ministry, my ministry–and that I should be faithful to it, so here I am. Back.

* * *

What sort of blogging will I do?

Honest blogging. Life is too short to be anything but honest, in one’s speech, one’s writing, and one’s relationships.

So I will blog honestly about where I am in my Pilgrim’s Progress.

Bunyan’s Pilgrim eventually reaches the Heavenly City. But while he staggers on his pilgrimage through the Slough of Despond, the Hill of Difficulty, Doubting Castle, and Vanity Fair, though he was such a very flawed character, he still had much to teach less-experienced pilgrims who had not yet encountered Giant Despair or Beelezub’s Castle, simply because he had transcended so many obstacles.

And so, though I would like my Christian story to be purely sheerly inspiring, I will tell it honestly to help such as I who struggle with the same temptations, the same spells in Doubting Castle, the same stumbles into the Slough of Despond, the same meanders into Vanity Fair.

Come and read?

Tweetables

I feel like one who has crossed over from death to life. From @anitamathias1

What’s the point of praying, and then acting as if God surely has not heard your prayers? From @anitamathias1

I prayed as Jesus commanded, So why act as if Jesus hadn’t heard, and take toxic drugs too? From @anitamathias1

“All is small save love, for love is all in all” New post from @anitamathias1

“He is the Lord of my cells.” New post from @anitamathias1

* * *

Yup, a life sentence indeed, but a life-sentence to what?

anita.mathias