Finding Faith Through Nutrition
- Bonny Acres Farm
- Aug 8
- 7 min read
The Catalyst to Our Family's Faith
Our story begins very early on in life when Emily grew up struggling with digestive health issues despite growing up with a pantry full of healthy food. But the writing was on the wall just after we got engaged in 2016.
The Rough Start (2016)
While we prepared for our wedding and life together, Emily was suddenly nearly bedridden, struggling to do much of the basics of self-care, let alone hold a job. She would struggle with what we would eventually learn to be called Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome (POTS), which meant that her autonomic system would not communicate correctly to keep her heart running the proper pace based on what she was doing physically, e.g., sitting up would result in a reduced heart rate, lying down would feel like jogging.
On top of this, her digestive health was another problem altogether. Her symptoms were indicative of malnourishment, and she suffered from immensely painful bouts of gastritis attacks that she would later say she preferred the pains of childbirth over, "at least I have a reward on the other side of contractions." For all the gritty details of these symptoms, listen to this episode of Proverbs 31 Mamas where Emily describes everything.
Chasing Symptoms (2017-2020)
Through chasing one symptom after another, doctors would volley treatments, but nothing cured the illness. While we're grateful for modern medicine, we knew a cure was what we vied for. Aside from the fatigue already felt, the fatigue of chasing that cure was compounding. And embedding in the chronic illness community only made things appear more hopeless, as many people have pursued their own answers for decades, in some cases. Fortunately, Emily discovered a name for her poor gut health: Small Intestinal Bacterial Overgrowth (SIBO), which helped explain the POTS. SIBO was responsible for a persistent pressure against her vagus nerve, which was responsible for regulating many functions, including heart rate and blood pressure.
With a diet that targeted SIBO and a holistic medical approach, Emily was able to relieve her symptoms to a degree that made us comfortable with starting to try for kids. After suffering two losses of our preborn children while trying to start our family, we finally had our first daughter, Florence. Not only did Emily have an endoscopy and colonoscopy revealing severe inflammation and three stomach ulcers, but it was also when Florence was exposed to food around 6 months old up until she was 18 months old that symptoms began that lined up with Emily's. The lightbulb flipped on.
Taking Back Health (2020-2021)
Once the thread led Emily to food through Florence's own health problems, she cleaned up our pantry in a seemingly drastic way. Note that we thought we were doing all we had to to be healthy at this time; we bought the organic or natural versions of our favorite snacks, ate plenty of fruits and veggies, opted for the plant-based alternative to the animal-based originals, we avoided high-cholesterol and saturated fat foods, chose gluten free options when given the choice, etc. On the outside looking in, we were healthy as could be. But Emily and Florence's symptoms were not indicative of great health. Because of this, Emily set out on the path of a new diet.
Some of the ingredients and foods we were already avoiding include: artificial dyes/flavors/sweeteners, preservatives, nitrates, conventional foods known for heavy pesticide use, etc. The short version of how she cleaned up what we eat: we started to skip the middle aisles of the grocery store where the bags and boxes of processed foods await. Where even the bag of organic potato chips is still full of less-than-desirable cooking oils and seemingly harmless "natural flavors". She focused on reintegrating animal products as our main source of nutrition, animal fats and proteins, dairy, skipping most oils that are liquid at room temperature and inflammatory due to being ultra-processed. Emily ended up being very choosy about what produce we bought, and not just organic vs conventional. Some vegetables just weren't meant for our family and led to a defensive response from the body, which translated to inflammation and a distracted immune system. She also eliminated corn, soy, and cane sugar. We'll break down our current diet in future blog posts.
This shift seemed extreme at the time, but very quickly Emily's and Florence's sickness turned around, and they were on a path of true healing. Emily felt mental clarity she hadn't felt in a long time. She was also thrilled to hear that her three ulcers had healed without any treatment and that her inflammation in her gut was almost nonexistent. Florence was also showing great improvement in her digestive health, which gave us peace. Now it was Cody's turn.
All Aboard! (2021-2022)
Emily was so relieved to be able to heal so many symptoms she'd experienced all her life that she challenged Cody to follow the new diet for just two weeks to see if anything improved for him. It took some very strong suggestions, as one would expect from their loving wife, but eventually Cody committed to the two-week challenge. To preface, Cody was healthy according to his doctor. His BMI, cholesterol, blood pressure, etc. It was all in the green, so he wasn't sure why he would need to make the change. But after two weeks, he was free from chronic acid reflux that often led him to reach for a TUMS on the nightstand in the middle of the night. By six months into the diet, he had lost 40 lbs, his seasonal allergies were waning in intensity, he had a mental fog lift off of him, and a spiritual clarity that wasn't there before. That last point was crucial for our growth as a family.
The charge on our lives since then has been to seek and share the greatest health-giving food that God has to offer, and we knew we were meant to do it on a homestead of our own. Up until this point, we were based in Southeast Michigan, 45 minutes north of Detroit. Yet, we had a strong pull to Northern Michigan, specifically in the Traverse City area. So we started the hunt for future homestead property, which led us to Benzie County.
We found a property that was larger than we were originally seeking, cost more than we budgeted for, and needed a lot of attention to make it livable. But on our drive home, Cody, who was spiritually agnostic up until this point, prayed for the first time seeking clarity on this big decision, and God answered almost immediately. He stretched a rainbow over M-115, and Emily agreed it was our sign. But Cody prayed again the next morning before sending in our offer, and God answered again ten minutes later with a halo rainbow around the sun. In November of 2021, we put in our offer, and it was accepted! We set our goal for TEN YEARS to have a homestead started on our raw land. But that would all change in December 2021.
Cody had been applying for remote jobs for a while and interviewed for a remote job at TwitchTV as a project manager, which felt like a fantasy, but he was offered a job in December 2021, and by February of 2022, we flipped from a raw land loan to a construction loan. All along the way, Cody and Emily would pray to God for clarity on this path being laid before them, and He answered with a rainbow every time. From book covers to poems, to more rainbows in the sky, God was always answering these two needy new Christians. But with Cody's new job and Emily's art business picking up steam, we flipped our TEN-YEAR goal to a TEN-MONTH goal, all by the grace of God.
We had a target move-in date for our new home by October, but couldn't keep our downstate house at the same time, so we sold our first house, bought a camper, and planned for a summer of moving between campgrounds while we waited for our modular home. But when our truck, which we also bought from the sale of our house, broke down, we realized we weren't meant to travel to glamorous campgrounds all summer. We ended up stranded on our property with no water or electricity. We felt God was telling us to get to work on the homestead infrastructure, and get into our new community and find a church. So we did both!
We put in our initial garden and our first chicken pasture, and we found our church without any hunting around. A community like no other we knew downstate absorbed us in as their own. We settled into our new home in October and had our second daughter, Willow, in December of 2022.
Therefore, Go! (2023 and on)
All of this spiritual growth would not have happened if not for facing an illness that demanded physical healing. We give thanks that the Lord has brought us to know Him through this experience and given us the blessing to be the earthly parents of now three sweet girls with the birth of Bethany in 2024. And we're even more grateful that we can point our children to Jesus, knowing how challenging it was when we weren't raised to know Him.
Thank you for reading our testimony! God Bless!
We've come a long way since the summer of 2021, when our diet started to pivot. Obviously, homesteading for the sole purpose of growing our own produce and raising our own meat is an extreme measure to take. But you don't need to run out and buy a dairy cow and learn how to process your own pigs to achieve great health. Our family's healing started when we eliminated processed foods and specific ingredients. We plan to share more on all that here on our blog. Stay tuned for more!
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