By: Janelle Dunn
As a young girl, whenever someone asked me how many children I wanted to have when I grew up, I would answer “eight.” I have always wanted a big family with a house full of children. Well at age 44, life hasn’t exactly turned out as I had hoped. I didn’t get married until I was 33. That was only part of the challenge. The amazing news is that I have been blessed to have been pregnant eight times. Getting pregnant was never the problem. I ended up having six miscarriages and the last three were all in my second trimester.
As my empathetic OB/GYN would disappointedly share the news with me that I had yet again lost another baby, she would follow it up with the same consoling words, “This isn’t because of something you have done. It is probably because of your age.” At this point in my life, my age ranged between 37-42 years old. Her final words were usually, “. . . and this has nothing to do with something you ate.” Each time she said that, the Spirit would say, “This has something to do with the way you eat.” I didn’t know what this meant, but I began praying about it. God quickly told me to break my addictions to chocolate and sugar. So with much prayer and fasting, I covenanted with God to give up chocolate and sugar. It was a painful first year without chocolate. With the Lord’s help though, I can say that I have not had any chocolate now for three years, and I no longer feel the addictive craving for it. This was only my first hurdle, unbeknownst to me at the time.
In the interim, I spent way too much money on specialists, genetic testing, and other options to see if I could find a solution for my miscarriages in hopes of having another child. No specialist seemed to find anything obviously wrong with me. They found some thyroid levels that were slightly off and that I had endometriosis. This was not enough to convince any of them though that it was the cause of my miscarriages, and the blame usually fell back on my age. I just wasn’t satisfied with that response.
Around the same time, my mother read a book called Discovering the Word of Wisdom. My mother has always been a righteous thought leader in our family. She read it and immediately gave up eating meat. She would mention a few things to me here and there, but I still wasn’t awake enough to get what she was trying to tell me.
Several months down the road, my father called me on the phone. He started telling me about an 80-year-old man who walked into his dental office and started sharing his secrets for great health and vitality. This man had run three miles that day, and he told my dad he eats two large salads every day. He attributed his youthful athleticism and his clean diet to a book he read called Eat to Live by Dr. Joel Fuhrman. My dad ate the Standard American Diet at the time, but this man caught his attention enough that he wanted to tell me all about him. I wrote down the name of the book, and I immediately got it on Audible. I did not know what the book was about or what I was getting myself into, but I knew it would be a good idea for me to eat more salad.
In February of 1990 I was 49 years old. Here I am with my wife Betty (left) and daughter Cindy (center) just days before serious cancer detection, surgery and treatment work began. Far exceeding 250 pounds (I stopped getting on the scales out of embarrassment and denial) and no longer feeling like I was the invincible, unstoppable, independent entrepreneur and functional man I had labored to be for decades.
By Michael Crowley
By: Brandon Berrett
By: Jessica Peterson
By: Cassidy Gundersen
By: Teresa Starr
By: Charles Cranney
By: Christine Wilkins
