Week 40

Take time to smell the roses, and the lavender, and the basil and oregano and thyme and....

  

Herbs and plants have incredible healing powers just by smelling them or breaking some off and rubbing them in your hands to release their life force - their essential oils.  You may be familiar with the amazing properties of pure excellent quality essential oils (not the cheap imitations sold at the local grocery store) and you may know that they are very expensive. 

Well you can have free access to many of these same oils through the plants you grow.  I don't think I have emphasized enough the importance of adding fresh herbs at the very end to your healing soup.  This is a large part of the healing power.  You don't want to cook them in the soup and destroy the properties of the essential oils within these plants.  In fact, just working with these fresh herbs will bless you as you inhale their fragrance and handle them with your fingers.  I find learning about the healing properties of these plants that God has given to us fascinating.  If you do too, educate yourself and read about each one's special properties.  For example, this site has information about basil and the anti-bacterial and anti-inflammatory properties of its essential oil which is obtained from its leaves.

God's truths do not change with time (unlike man's knowledge that is constantly being corrected and updated), thus what I wrote below on the subject of the healing power of herbs and plants is still true today!  So from last year's post:

"I love what my friend, Lynn, wrote to me this weekend on this very subject.  I had written to her and told her that I had gone out to the garden and cut some lavender, then rubbed it in my hands while inhaling the fragrance.  What a wonderful, wonderful, experience this was and uplifting to my spirit.  She wrote back,

'I believe God gave us our five senses for us to discover what He made, and Him ultimately.  Smells from what the Lord has made are life giving (herbs, oils, flowers, ocean, ETC) by increasing the frequencies of our bodies and reaching deep into the recesses of the mind vs. man-made smells which are imitators and lower the body's frequency making it susceptible to disease (think Plug-Ins, pollution, carpets, ...).  I love fresh herbs.  They are easy to grow in north Texas.  I had peppermint and cilantro in the greens we ate Friday.  And the egg salad I once had at your house with fresh herbs was the best! I love rubbing my hands on the rosemary growing in the backyard....'

I think this is a wonderful word picture of what going 100% means.  Experiencing the life-giving forces from our foods and the plants around us.  Lynn fixed me the most delicious dinner last Friday night, shown in the photo above.  She had a wonderful salad with grilled pineapple and red bell pepper (plus the mint and cilantro she mentioned) with 100% grass-fed burgers and sauerkraut.  She always accompanies her meals with fresh cut greens or sauces containing fresh herbs.  I was feeling a bit under the weather by the end of last week, and wanted to just rest at home Friday night.  But God had other plans in mind for me.  Instead, Lynn fed me this wonderful dinner and we went to a presentation on the healing powers of essential oils. 

Inspired, I used a lot of fresh herbs in my meals on Saturday.  I had eggs with green chili salsa and my herbs for breakfast, and a large dollop of homemade sour cream with fresh herbs on my bowl of chicken sausage gumbo for dinner.  Plus I cut some lavender (on my breakfast plate) and rubbed it in my hands and inhaled the wonderful fragrance as I prepared the meal. 

By Sunday, I was feeling incredibly energized and renewed.  Remember that you must be intentional about what you are doing - just thinking about what you want to do is not enough.  Did you master the challenge from Week 14, to plant and use fresh herbs?  I hope so."

This week, go out and smell those herbs you have planted.  Smell those roses you have in your yard (and stop using pesticides and herbicides which pollutes our senses and weakens the plant).  If you have not bought any herbs yet, get some this week (basil is a warm weather annual so don't plant that outside at this time of year). 

If you already have some herbs and flowering plants, add something new to your yard, garden or patio collection of pots.  Think about what essential oils are available and get a plant of one of these.  The fresh healing herbs in the healing chicken soup all have excellent anti-bacterial, anti-viral, and anti-fungal properties.  The basic ones to start with include rosemary, oregano (and/or marjoram), thyme, parsley, and basil.  I also love having lavender in my yard (it does not like receiving much water) and it is an herb that is good for alleviating allergies and headaches to name just a few of its abilities.

So go outside this week and smell the roses and other life-giving plants that God has provided for us in His creation and praise the King of Kings for His provisions.

"...nard (lavender) and saffron, calamus and cinnamon, with every kind of incense tree, with myrrh and aloes and all the finest spices." Song of Solomon 4:14