My journey so far

How experiences in the healthcare and church lanes have guided me here

Photo by John Karlo Mendoza on Unsplash

Welcome, and thank you for joining me for this first post! I am excited to launch this Substack and start exploring topics that integrate faith and health.

Before we jump in, let’s start by examining the path I’ve traveled to get here, some problems I’ve encountered along the way, and how this has shaped my perspective.

The healthcare lane

I received a Bachelor of Science in Biology, then went directly into getting my Doctorate in Physical Therapy. I was fascinated with the machine-like functioning of the body– how molecules, tissues, and systems work and repair. I excelled at my coursework and became an “expert” in the musculoskeletal system of humans. Then I started practicing.

Discrepancies between my expectations and reality

Turns out, patients didn’t always present as textbooks predicted. At times, they did, which served as a nice confidence boost to a new PT. But more often than not, there were variations. And sometimes the presentation of symptoms didn’t correlate at all with any specific tissue dysfunction or injury that I had read about.

Two patients would come in with the same injury; one would improve and be discharged in six weeks, while the other would still be struggling at six months. Painful conditions would pop up out of nowhere, and symptoms would frequently persist beyond the “normal” timelines for tissue healing.

There were obvious factors, such as age, overall health, and substance abuse, that contributed to how easily a person got injured and would recover. I also began to see the significance of lifestyle factors such as stress, sleep, and activity level on pain perception and healing times. But there seemed to be even more at play…

Patients who failed to improve under our care

I learned the most from patients who did not progress, or even worsened, with our treatments. The individuals who, on the surface, appeared to be great candidates for physical therapy. Patients such as:

• The middle-aged man with knee pain, who lamented his inability to return to work and doubted his ability to learn a new job

• The woman with neck pain that flared up every time her husband underwent cancer treatment

• The combat veteran with back pain that spread all over his body, and pain episodes that would cause him to breathe rapidly, shake, and sweat

One of my favorite “PT failure” stories was the twenty-something-year-old man whom I saw with moderate shoulder pain. We made no progress over several sessions until he came in one day, completely healed. I asked him what changed. Finally, a breakthrough with our rehab program? No. He had gotten a puppy. I discharged him home to interact with his new, more effective therapist.

I could give countless other real-life examples… But clearly, factors such as loneliness, fear, trauma, and grief also have profound impacts on our bodies.

My education taught a biopsychosocial health model (recognizing the interplay of biological, psychological, and social factors). However, this was underemphasized and did not provide practical tools to deal with the complexity encountered in real life.

There seemed to be something off about our understanding of pain perception and the underlying causes of many of our health diagnoses. I felt limited in my role as a physical therapist and saw countless patients fall through the cracks in our medical system.

Health in the church lane

I’m a lifelong Christian. I was raised non-denominationally and have experience with various Christian communities and ministries. Currently, I am active with a local church and meet regularly in a small group for fellowship.

Just like I was attempting to stay in my lane as a PT, the Church generally tries to stay in its lane by focusing on spiritual advice for health. Much of this provides a solid foundation for our faith and can extend into healing other aspects of our lives. But what happens when emotional, mental, and bodily ailments persist? The following are a few ways I’ve seen the Church deliver unhealthy or incomplete messages.

Asserting the primacy of Scripture without careful interpretation

If we believe that the Bible is the inspired, infallible word of God, then it must have the final say over everything in our lives.

Yes… But how we apply that to our lives depends on how we read and interpret Scripture. Though we are seeing a shift towards a more nuanced understanding today, much of the Christian culture I encountered growing up had a very literal and comprehensive view of reading the Bible.

Literal, in that it was read and interpreted with the same assumptions that we would apply to modern-day writings. And when we encountered any discrepancy with scientific or historical findings, the Church would double down on its inferred veracity.

Over time, this has created skepticism and distrust between the Church and secular institutions that can prevent members from seeking, or even cause them to discount, beneficial medical advice.

Comprehensive, in that it was often viewed as an all-inclusive, step-by-step manual for everything you need to know and do in life. When I was growing up, there was a popular acronym for BIBLE: Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth. This seemed to imply that if we read deeply, the Scriptures could be mined and we’d get all the answers. Easy enough.

Unfortunately, it’s not that simple. If we view the Bible as a rulebook, we become susceptible to listening to the loudest or most confident voices that interpret it that way. I have sadly seen Christians turned away from non-spiritual therapies, or even misdirected towards a niche treatment, through erroneous interpretations.

Emphasis on salvation and miracles overshadowing gradual transformation

While salvation and miracles are both integral parts of our faith, our traditional definitions of them offer limited guidance on how to live in the here and now.

Growing up as a Christian, my primary understanding of salvation was believing in God so that we could have eternal life – aka go to Heaven when we die. If that is the focus of our faith, then our response would be to evangelize others and rest in the comfort of our escape plan. Earth and my daily circumstances are pretty rough, but it will all be overshadowed one day when I get to Heaven.

Emphasis on miracles, signs, and wonders can also foster an incomplete understanding of our purpose and daily actions. If prayer, worship, and faith are all I need to usher in a miraculous transformation, then what do I do with the rest of my time? Do I just pray harder, believe more, and keep waiting for a divine intervention?

We are both spiritual and physical beings. When religious guidance or ideas prevent us from taking care of our physical minds and bodies, it can be harmful to our overall health.

My next steps

These observations and experiences in both science and religion have motivated me to continue searching and learning.

In my healthcare lane, I completed a professional certification program to become a Therapeutic Pain Specialist in addition to focusing on other continuing education in the field of neuroscience. I continue to read books and listen to podcasts focused on integrated approaches to health and wellness, as well as keep up with our evolving understanding of how humans function.

In my Christian life, I began to focus more on spiritual formation as a daily, life-long process, and also deepening my understanding of Scripture by recognizing my cultural baggage and learning from ancient historians and literary scholars. Through this growth, I’ve come to see the Bible as more creative, more cohesive, and more compassionate than ever before.

A new perspective

Surveying this all through a wider lens, there is an evident intertwining of the physical and non-physical, the seen and unseen, the body and the spirit. Our life is not a wide road with multiple lanes that we operate in one at a time, and I’m done oversimplifying and discussing it that way.

Our life, and therefore our health, is like a river with currents pressing into and carrying us downstream. We don’t signal, then smoothly change lanes between our body, mind, and spirit. No. We’re constantly tossed about and inundated with water from all these sources.

We aim to acknowledge the complexity of these interactions, learn what we can do that is beneficial, and with God’s guidance and timing, take the appropriate steps to walk it out. Wherever we are in the river of life, whether being violently tossed or floating gently downstream, we all have a next step we can take, and we can all encourage one another.

Please say hi in the comments below. I would love to hear your thoughts about discussing our health and faith in a more unified way - excited, concerned, TBD? Are there any specific topics you would like to see covered?

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