A Natural Remedy

I do not claim to know very much about natural healing in the least. However, after some experimentation and casual research and accidental discovery, I think I've found a way to greatly lesson the length and hurtiness of fever blisters and canker sores.

Fever blisters are just dreadful! They hurt terribly and are so ugly. They feel like a volcano on your lip. I rarely get these but whenever we in stressful situations I watch out for them and usually am terribly disappointed but not surprised when they show up.

Well, not surprisingly, two popped up on my lips a couple of weeks ago. These were a bit different, they were on the inside, so perhaps they were not really fever blisters but canker sores, also brought on by stress. I also got a sore on my tongue and the roof of my mouth. :( On top of emotional strain, I had been doing a lot of baking for a tea I had, involving lots of sugar that I don't normally eat. So had my mother, who sent us a batch of goodies, and my mother-in-law, who brought a batch of goodies for Christmas. So here is what we had in the house - ginger snaps, fudge, a chocolate torte, snickerdoodles, white trash, turtles, graham cracker delights, a graham cracker cereal chocolate bar thing that we loved, a homemade batch of cinnamon rolls, and homemade Chex mix. If you know me well, you know that this is way more sugar than I ingest in a year, really! We started eating it and didn't quite until it was done. In the midst of eating all of this was when the sores popped up and boy did they hurt!

I pulled out a remedy I had tried earlier in the year and it worked again so I wanted to share it with you. I use Burt's Bees lip balm on my lips as often as I can remember, even on the inside, though I don't know how well it goes on. It needs to be the kind with mint. Also, this time around I drank mint tea a lot. It really helped to soothe it. Also, I eat a lot of yogurt when they pop up. And, almost the next day that all our goodies were gone, one of the worst sores was virtually gone, no doubt stopping all the sugar combined with the other remedies helped tremendously.

So, if ever you find yourself with one of those nasty, unwelcome visitors to your lips, get out the yogurt, invest in Burt's Bee's lip balm and pure mint tea, and stop eating sugar, at least for a while.

The picture is from this website - http://whatscookingamerica.net/mint.htm

A Blanket of Snow

The other day as Eric and I were driving to church, the Sunday after disappointing adoption news, a fresh covering of snow lay on the ground. The sun shone brightly and the day was just gorgeous except that it was 10 degrees outside. In the summer this place is so beautiful, one shade of green melts into another as huge trees grow into others and flowers bloom in beautifully landscaped yards and city squares. However, because there are very few evergreens here, winter is rather bare and gray. I've never really liked winter because of its bareness and chill, but as we rode through town, the soft blanket of snow warmed me to the season a little more. It truly did seem to cover up all that was ugly about winter.

I started to think about winter in regards to the seasons. I've always just viewed it as a season of deadness and dreariness compared to the others. Last year, as you all know, was the winter like no other. It snowed here so often and so much. We had snow on the ground continuously for a month, a short break and then for weeks again. The temperatures were bitter! Wind chills in the negative numbers. However, when the temperatures rose, the snow melted and life reawakened, the landscape was more beautiful and more green than ever. Plants grew like crazy! It seems that the snow acted to protect a lot of growing things from the bitter cold and served to water the earth when it melted.

In our lives we all hit seasons of great joy and amazing spiritual growth and sometimes life seems blah or dark and dreary and cold. Then there are some, like fall and winter that are a little of both extremes. As I looked at the snow laying so quietly on the ground, I felt encouraged that God's grace was like that snow, covering over us in these discouraging, dark days, protecting us in unforeseen ways, and that these hard days aren't just random days meant only for dreariness and frustration with no meaning but that they do serve a purpose, to promote the continuance of great growth in the Lord and for Him to exhibit His beauty in our lives, even in the midst of the winter seasons of our life.

We don't live in a world, spiritually speaking, where it is "always winter but never Christmas" like in Narnia before Aslan's victory. Christ did come in our spiritual winter to bring hope and life to our desperately needy souls. Though I don't like having to drive 30 minutes to church, I am grateful for that day's thoughtful drive and the beauty and hope and light that the Lord showed me that comes out of the deep darkness of a long winter and why I should rejoice even on the coldest, hardest days. Without winter, how could there be beautiful Spring?