I want to share a story of God’s good, slow, tender healing in my life.
Not only how God has healed my body, but how he has made me WELL.
A story of how God taught a flower who desperately wanted to BLOOM the importance of putting down ROOTS into living, abundant water.
Oh, I had roots. But they were in all the wrong places, drawing from water the world offered—water that I thought would make me bloom like all the other flowers around me.
I wanted to BLOOM! To be seen! Celebrated!
I wanted to be beautiful.
Because, to tell the truth, I saw very little beauty in myself from a very young age.
I really didn’t like what I saw in the mirror. I saw no flowers in my reflection.
I only saw them elsewhere, in everyone else. Was it my soil? Or was it just me?
I felt so…
not enough.
Not pretty enough.
Skinny enough.
Liked enough.
Wanted enough.
Accepted enough.
I wanted to BLOOM. To be beautiful. Desirable. Worthy.
So I did what it seemed like other girls around me did in order to be beautiful. I sunk my roots into whatever water would make me thinner, smaller, lighter, lesser—because that’s what beauty is, right?
Isn’t beauty a number on a scale, on your jeans, or in your app tracking your calories? The smaller the better—the more beautiful, right?
If that’s what other girls were drinking up, I wanted to drink it up too. And I did. I drank of that water deeply.
It all began in fourth grade—fourth grade—when someone told me I was getting a pot belly.
It’s amazing what power a few words have to change someone’s life.
To change what they see in the mirror.
For the next 12 years, I ran. I dieted. I excessively worked out. I obsessed over numbers, weight, calories, pant sizes.
And it eventually paid off—the depriving, shrinking, and decreasing finally got me to where I wanted to be.
Or did it?
I thought it did. Because I heard those words I’d been craving to hear:
“Wow, you’ve lost weight! You look great! You’re strong! You’re fit!”
“I’m proud of you.”
But little did they all know how being “beautiful” felt inside.
Little did they know I had lost so much more than weight.
I had lost joy. Contentment. Delight.
Little did they know how much DEPRIVING it took me to get to here.
How much shame and hatred fueled this false image of beauty I worked so HARD to attain.
But I was beautiful, right? I was blooming like everyone else, right?
My arms were toned, I didn’t have to suck in all the time, and my legs had very little cellulite.
I was beautiful, right? I had bloomed!
Right?
If this was blooming, it didn’t feel very beautiful. It didn’t feel like thriving..
What it really felt like was barely enough to survive.
And really just left me deprived.
That’s how I felt with my roots in this inconsistent, stale, toxic water of the world.
Deprived. Scarce. Confused.
THIRSTY.
Damn thirsty.
Well, what else should I expect? All I had been doing for SO LONG was depriving myself, starving myself, and hating myself. That’s bound to leave anyone thirsty.
Just leave a young flower in the blazing sun for a few days with maybe just a drop or two of water and see what happens.
It wilts. Fades. Thirsts.
That’s how I felt. Not very beautiful. Just thirsty through and through.
And my body was telling me so—
Horrible digestion, thinning and dying hair, unsatisfying sleep, fatigue, brain-frog, anxiety, addiction to the cortisol and exercise, disordered eating.
I was really blooming, huh?
Not exactly.
I so deprived myself all those years that my body actually became fruitless. Barren. Literally.
As in, I never got a regular period. Ever! That’s when I really knew I was not thriving. That this couldn’t be beauty if it had made me.. barren.
Now, I had a lot of girls tell me how lucky I was that I didn’t have to deal with menstruating. Periods are “gross, painful, and just inconvenient”. But that didn’t make me feel better. I really just felt more broken.
Because I was a woman. And God has this incredible design for women to bear life. Not only to bloom, but to be FRUITFUL. Women are designed to menstruate each month with the potential to grow new and beautiful life.
That’s what a period is. And it’s amazing.
What many others saw as an inconvenience, I saw as a sign of wholeness. Of potential. Of Blessing.
But I didn’t have it. And because of this, I just saw further brokenness. Further failure to bloom. I thought something was wrong with me. Something was broken.
At about age 22, nothing had changed. I still had no cycle, and was still living out of a scarcity, depravity mindset. I felt pretty hopeless, honestly. I had been on and off birth control for three years to try and “regulate” my cycle—three years of dealing with depression, hormonal mood swings, heat flashes… and at the end of it, my body still would not menstruate.
I never had the thought that maybe all this shrinking, under-nourishing, and skinny-ing was depriving my body of what it needed to have a period. To THRIVE. To really bloom. I never connected the way I treated my body to my menstrual cycle, or my anxiety, or my poor sleep and addiction to stress.
And what’s so ironic is that I hated my body even more than I did when I began this pursuit of “beauty.” I never even thought my body was something I could delight in. Befriend. Love.
Until God, in His perfect time, transplanted me right into the most beautiful, well-tended, flourishing community called A Rocha Brooksdale Environmental Center.
It was at this incredible place that I started seeing the connection between my soul and my body. It was at A Rocha where I learned to listen to my body. To feel. To steward. I began to have this deep-down knowledge that my body wasn’t broken. That maybe if I decided to partner with my body, rather than rage against it, my body might respond positively.
What about A Rocha led me to this new perspective? The people. They all seemed to bloom there. Their beautiful lives were inspiring. Eye-opening. Life-changing. They delighted in each other, the world, and themselves.
I could see the true beauty and abundance in their lives that I had been chasing after my whole life.
At Arocha I experienced rest. Abundance. Fellowship. Stewardship.
And I really started to hope and believe that flowers could bloom in my dirt.
But how?
The Master Gardener knew exactly how.
“Roots, Emily. It’s about your roots. You’re not broken. If you would tap into MY water—my living water, you’d discover that flowers will indeed bloom.”
Oh, that sounded so good. Because I WAS so thirsty. And I WANTED to bloom to like people here at A Rocha!
But I was also really scared. Scared of the abundance that God offered. I had gotten so used to scarcity. And scarcity is what kept me thin. Small. And.. beautiful?
No.
I had to remember. This was not beauty. It was depravity. Surviving. Barren.
But I was scared. If I drank DEEPLY of his abundant water, then I would grow. And I had worked so hard all my life to shrink.
Should I really “let myself go?”
That was the question I felt like I was asking myself. And I was so scared to let go of the “me” I had poured so much effort into growing (or rather shrinking)
because if I wasn’t thin…
then I might not be desirable, and if I wasn’t desirable…
then I might not be loved. And if I wasn’t loved, then…
who was I?
Well, I was ready to take the risk to find out. Because all I knew was that I sure didn’t love the person I had become. I hated the thirsty me. And I was ready to not be thirsty any more. So ready to see this barren wasteland bloom.
Over the next few years, I really started to dig. Ask questions. Listen to podcasts. Read testimonies of healing. And I started doing what any gardener knows she should do in order to see her flowers bloom—
I started nourishing myself.
Tending to myself.
Caring for myself.
Appreciating the beauty that was there.
And it wasn’t easy. And it isn’t easy. Because the world’s water is always right there.
At the surface. Easy to access. Easy to sip from.
But I kept focused on the Gardener. Trusting that He made only beautiful things. I focused on the beauty in others and the beauty in me. And God lovingly, knowingly transplanted me close to beautiful people and communities who were clearly drinking from the Living Water. People who were blooming themselves.
People like Emma Buchanan Rodriguez , Noah and Katie Elhardt, Cara Herzberg, Kate Tresize, Lynsey Meissner, Chloe Brown, Cate Kandle, my twin Katie, and of course my incredibly supportive husband, Hawken—just to name a few of the many.
Places like ECHO, Beersheba, and 12 Seasons Farm.
These people and places showed me again and again that I was beautiful, and showed me the true meaning of stewardship and beauty:
That healing and delight and abundance ARE beauty.
They taught me that if I would see and appreciate and steward the beauty that was already within me by nourishing myself, listening to the wisdom my body offered, tending to my body’s needs, new life WOULD grow. It’s my design. It’s HIS design—the Gardener’s.
Then in September of 2021, by God’s grace, I came across some life-changing podcasts that really opened my eyes to how AMAZING God has designed our bodies. And I really started to hope and believe for full healing. God had slowly been teaching me what I needed to do (nourish, rest, delight), and these incredible women in these podcasts (Fallon Danae, Kori Melloy, and Amanda Montalav) taught me the practical ways to do it. They are heroes of mine and I can’t thank them enough for equipping me to further embark on this journey of healing that God began at A Rocha.
I learned that all the depriving, overexercising, and starving I had put myself through for most of my life had indeed put my body in a state of survival. There was little chance my thirsty body was going to give me the chance to create life if I hadn’t shown it I knew how to care for it. Nourish it. Tend to it.
If I wouldn’t care for my body, how would I care for another body? A body within mine?
My body wasn’t broken. It was smart. It was protective. It was surviving. And it knew it couldn’t support another life unless it was thriving.
The process was slow, as all gardening tends to be, but as I drank of the Living Water and continued on this journey of reviving my thirsty body with key minerals and nutrients that these podcasts taught me about, I really started to grow.
Literally.
I grew in size. In weight. In the number of calories I consumed because my body was so hungry—and I actually nourished it.
My body was tired, so I rested.
My exercise was too intense, so I dialed it back.
And I grew. And it was hard. It still is! Because the world says less is beautiful. But the more I grew…
the better I FELT.
The better I slept.
The better my hair grew and shined
The better my skin glowed.
The better my energy levels were.
The more resilient I became to stress.
The more I delighted in food.
I was blooming.
From my head to my toes.
And then..
Last year December 2021, at age 25, after years of barrenness, depravity, and feeling broken, I started menstruating. Each month.
No hormonal birth control, no surgery, no meds.
Just Love, attention, delight. Nourishment. Care. Support.
And surrender. Surrender to the Gardener’s way of living, growing, blooming.
I couldn’t believe it! All this time I thought I was broken. And I was! But it wasn’t that I couldn’t bloom. I could!
I just needed to let myself go, and let myself grow.
By putting my roots where true life was found.
By drinking up the water that told me I was beautiful. That I was worthy of attention. I was worthy of nourishment. I was worthy.
I was beautiful.
Once I did this—once I let my HEART heal, and my roots sink DEEP, the true blooming followed.
It was, and still is, a long and hard journey, full of tears and backslides and re-tasting of the worldly water, but I have tasted and seen the Lord’s goodness and abundance, and I have bloomed.
There are still times I look in the mirror and resent the kinds of flowers I see—God forgive me.
And God forbid that I ever go back to feeling LESS than. Unworthy. Unacceptable.
The important thing, the truth to celebrate every single day, is that there are flowers. And they are uniquely, beautifully, mine.
And not only are their flowers.
But there is fruit.
Yes, FRUIT. I’m not just blooming, but I am bearing new life inside this beautiful body that used to be barren.
That’s right! When I look in the mirror today, I see a belly that is bigger than it ever was before and it’s BEAUITFUL.
Because it’s evidence of life. Abundance. Healing.
That’s what can happen when we drink of Living Water.
Life begets life, beauty begets beauty.
We are all made to bear fruit.
But we won’t, as long as we drink from the world’s water,
As long as we refuse to appreciate the beauty that exists, and move towards it, and steward it.
We all have those barren places.
I had mine.
It was my body. And I wanted God to heal it. And so did He.
But my Gardener wanted to do more.
He brought me to places and people who were not only thriving themselves, but who taught me how to delight in the flowers that bloomed in my garden, not just in everyone else’s.
He wanted to make me WELL. He wanted me to thrive—to not just bloom, but to bear fruit.
And now fruit grows in my womb today.
And I recognize full well that bodily healing is not a guaranteed outcome of heart work, or that if one struggles with physical barrenness in some way, it is not automatically because something is not well with their soul. Infertility is a long, hard, complicated journey for many. I see you, I know what it’s like to feel broken, angry, and confused, and I’m deeply sorry. I can only encourage you to trust the Gardener and receive whatever He gives to you in His time, no matter what the fruit is.
And I also recognize that thin bodies are also beautiful bodies—especially if you’re designed to be thin! But God gave me thunder thighs and that’s how my legs WANT to be. That’s the size they choose when I give them what they need. If it takes starving yourself to be thin, maybe your body wants to be something else. Listen to your body, give it what it needs, and let it be how you were designed to be.
This is my story. My bodily brokenness pointed to soul brokenness. Heart brokenness.
A deep feeling of unworthiness, of fear, of scarcity. Not enough.
And it’s a beautiful story to tell of God’s desire to turn us from barren wastelands into blooming gardens.
Well-watered gardens.
Abundant.
Fruitful.
Delightful.
Well-watered.
As in watered from the deep, gushing, living Well of water found in our Creator.
Are you well-watered?
Or are you thirsty? Sinking your roots into water of the world that only makes you more thirsty, more ashamed, more deprived, more anxious, more.. barren?
Taste the living water, and see what flowers begin to grow in what you may think is only dirt.
Look for the beautiful places and people who are bearing fruit. Go sink your roots down next to them and see how they tend to draw up the Living Water closer to the surface, making it more accessible for you to taste of it.
Then drink deeply.
Trust the Gardener.
And grow.
He’s gentle. He’s attentive. He’s faithful. He’s patient.
If you tap your roots into Him, you WILL bear fruit under his loving care.
We don’t get to decide what blooms, and it will often be a surprise. Unexpected.
But it will be beautiful.
Baby Boy Sawyer coming February 2022 ❤️
