Levi’s Story

Why I Teach Nutrition the Way I Do

“Behold, a son!” (translation of the Hebrew, “Reuben”)

Levi Reuben was born in March 1994, our seventh child and first son. From the moment of birth it was clear satan wanted to steal life from this child as he had 2 of our others. We’d come to peace with the presence of the others with the Lord, but we weren’t letting this one go too. We were prepared to wrestle for him. He was born in the sack of waters and didn’t breathe for over 5 minutes. Our primary doctor was a great blessing in those moments. It was our first home birth, and a perfect pregnancy, labor and delivery. And after those scary first moments, all was well. But a month later he was still having occasional trouble breathing–actually he was waking up about 3:00 every morning struggling for breath. We’d get him upright, pray, and he’d be O.K. The doctors said, “It’s probably an allergy to something.” A voice inside said, “Could it be dairy products?” He was totally breastfed. I was eating a whole foods diet which included animal/dairy products.

The opportunity arose for us to attend an all-day seminar by a Christian nutritional doctor with degrees behind his name for, what seemed to me like, every medical field. We set out in a blizzard, my one month old, me, and my newly licensed 16 year old daughter behind the wheel. The car behind us rolled over an embankment, and I took over the wheel. satan had made strike two. The two and a half hour trip took somewhere between four and five hours; but surprisingly, turning around never crossed my mind. At the seminar I tried to balance jostling a colic-y baby and listening to information I hadn’t learned in my 16 years of nutritional study. I went up to ask a question at the end of a session and Dr. Joel said, “You’re on dairy aren’t you? I’ve been watching your baby this morning. Get off of it and he’ll be fine.” It worked. I radically changed my diet (again), even more than it already was from the American “norm”, and within 30 days Levi’s problems had totally disappeared.

Until two and a half years later, Levi seemed to have no problems at all, just like all his older sisters. He and I remained dairy free, and continued a whole foods diet with some meat. Then Levi got chicken pox. He got sicker and sicker, and paler and paler, and weaker and weaker until he couldn’t stand and his lips were white. Our family physician had said it’s harder on some than others, but a friend and I took him in to his office on our way to a church conference. His blood counts were 2.6 (should be 14-15 – and death occurs often at 6 or lower) and 6% (should be 30-36%). He was immediately sent to a larger hospital ER and admitted to ICU for blood transfusions. It didn’t matter that I didn’t believe in them, I had no choice, and my husband was four hours away, on his way home. satan makes strike three. After three days in ICU with a diagnosis of a perfectly healthy boy except he didn’t have any red blood cells and his body wasn’t making any, the transfusions raised his levels to normal and he was released. Every other day blood checks would reveal if his body restarted making red blood cells on its own. It was a rare complication of the chicken pox and corrected itself after the transfusions. But. . .

Two weeks later he got a severe urinary tract infection that was resistant to nearly all antibiotics. After the antibiotic treatments the “specialist” decided his kidneys were malfunctioning. They decided they needed to run serious tests (ie. medically beyond my comfort range on a child with such compromised health), and put him on antibiotics for the rest of his life. satan makes strike four. Not acceptable to me! We recontacted the nutritional doctor, 2 states away, for a second opinion. He confirmed our hopes that there was another way to deal with this. A two week fresh juice diet and consultations with a Christian nutritional councelor and no more meat. Now the relatives truly thought we’d flipped! It was bad enough to not let him have dairy. They were waiting for the day he’d “outgrow it” so he could grow “big and strong”, and now no meat, surely he’d die. But die he didn’t! Within the two weeks of fresh, raw juice only, he not only put back on the weight he’d lost from being ill, but also more and was filling out.

In the past two years Levi has been in perfect health with rarely even as much as a 24 hour sniffle or upset stomach. I’ve spent that time in even deeper study of nutrition, both medically and biblically, and of those with cancer, heart problems, and other life threatening diseases that have chosen this “old path” and seen complete healing. We thank God for bringing these servants of God, that know the supremacy of eternal life, into our lives to instruct us in ways of health here on earth also.

[Update: This story was written in 1998. Levi continues to be healthy at age 20 in 2014. Levi has had no health issues since those above, and continues to eat Good for You-Naturally!™ (Although he does occasionally digress, like all of us, he remains in good health.)]