Health as a Gift to the People You Love

Why do you really want to be healthier?

For years, my answers sounded like everyone else's.

Lose weight.
 Lower my blood sugar.
 Have more energy.
 Feel better.

Those are good goals.

But somewhere along the way, my motivation quietly changed.

I realized the healthiest version of me isn't something I get to keep for myself. My husband experiences her. My children experience her. My church family experiences her. Every conversation I have is shaped by the way I steward the body God has entrusted to me.

In this episode, we explore a different way of thinking about health—not as a pursuit of perfection or a guarantee against suffering, but as an opportunity to remain present for the people we love.

We'll talk about:

• Why health is really about participation, not perfection. 
• Watching illness slowly shrink someone's world. 
• Why taking care of yourself isn't selfish. 
• Learning to return after setbacks instead of starting over. 
• How gratitude can become a healthier motivation than fear. 

None of us knows how many years we've been given.

But each of us has an opportunity to steward today.

And maybe that's where real health begins.

Extended Show Notes

For much of my life, I thought health had one destination.

Lose the weight.

Reach the goal.

Then finally begin living.

Over time, I've discovered something much different.

Life was never waiting on the other side of perfect health.

Life has been happening all along.

In this conversation, I share how living with Moyamoya disease, diabetes, watching my dad's world slowly become smaller through pulmonary fibrosis, and years of learning through my own health journey completely reshaped how I think about stewardship.

This isn't a conversation about chasing the perfect body.

It's about protecting the ability to participate in the moments that matter most.

The older I get, the more convinced I become that the people we love aren't asking us to become perfect.

They're simply hoping for more ordinary Tuesdays.

More holidays.

More vacations.

More laughter.

More conversations around the table.

More opportunities to simply be together.

We'll also explore why health isn't a guarantee against suffering, why faithful stewardship looks different from fear, and why returning after setbacks may be one of the healthiest habits we ever develop.

Whether you're managing a chronic illness, rebuilding after a difficult season, or simply trying to care well for the life God has given you, I hope this conversation reminds you that your health isn't simply about you.

It's one of the many ways you continue showing up for the people you love.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:19

Hey friends! A few years ago, I watched part of a seminar that has stayed with me ever since. The funny thing is, I can't remember who was speaking. I can't even remember the exact formula he was using. I've searched for it more than once and still haven't found it again. But I remember how it made me feel. He had lost one of his grandparents, and he was talking about the difference between simply living longer and having more healthy years to enjoy with the people that you love. His point wasn't really about adding birthdays, it was about adding participation. The idea was that if you could slow the effects of aging enough that your final years weren't spent mostly confined to a bed, a chair, or managing preventable illness, you'd won. Not because you'd escaped growing older, none of us gets to do that. Because you remained present. That thought has never really left me. Not because I'm afraid of getting older. Truthfully, I hope I do get older. What I hope is that many of those as many of those years as possible are where I'm still able to participate. To sit on the floor with future grandchildren someday, to travel with John, to laugh around Thanksgiving tables, to serve at church, to take walks, to keep recording conversations like this, to keep showing up. Because the older I get, the more I realize something. Health isn't really about adding years to your life. It's about adding life to the years that we've been given. And maybe that's the conversation I actually want to have today. Because somewhere along the way, I stopped asking, how do I lose weight? And started asking something entirely different. Who benefits when I become healthier? That answer surprised me. It had faces. For a long time, my reasons for getting healthier sounded like everyone else's. I wanted to lose weight, lower my blood sugar, have more energy, feel better, wear different clothes. And those are all good reasons, don't get me wrong. But they weren't the reasons that eventually stayed with me. Years ago, when Tyler and James were little, around four years old, I was living with Moya Moya disease. At the time, I didn't fully understand everything that was happening inside my body. What we eventually learned was that the blood simply wasn't getting where it needed to go, not through my brain and not to my body. My body was working incredibly hard just to do ordinary things. I remember being exhausted, not the kind of tired that comes after a busy day with two little ones, the kind that makes you feel like your body simply can't keep up with what your heart wants to do. And when you have two little boys, your heart wants to do a lot. I want you want to chase them, you want to play with them, you want to carry them, keep saying yes. And looking back now, I don't think the hardest part was the diagnosis. The hardest part was feeling like I couldn't fully participate in the life I wanted to live with them. That experience never really left me. It quietly changed the way I think about health. Because today, when I make a healthier choice, I'm rarely thinking about a number on a scale. I'm thinking about moments, conversations, vacations, ordinary Tuesday afternoons. The healthiest version of me isn't something I keep for myself. Everyone around me experiences that version of her. John experiences a wife with a little more energy. My boys experience a mom who's more present. My church family experiences someone with a little more margin to serve. The people listening to this podcast experience someone who's able to keep showing up every week. Health stopped being about improving my life. It became about participating more fully in the lives of the people that I love. That lesson became even clearer as I watched someone else I loved walking through illness. One of the hardest things about getting older is that life doesn't usually change all at once. It changes little by little. Slowly, so slowly that sometimes you don't even notice it while it's happening. I watched that with my dad. For as long as I can remember, he loved to travel and go and do all of the things. Some of my favorite memories with him involved getting in the car and driving through neighborhoods while he pointed out homes, talked about construction, or stopped at model homes. That was his world. He was curious, always looking, always exploring. But after pulmonary fibrosis became part of his story, I watched his world slowly become smaller. Not overnight, little by little. There came a point where flying simply wasn't a good option anymore. It wasn't worth the strain on his lungs. So vacations that once would have taken a couple hours suddenly became long road trips. I remember that when Jimmy passed away, Dad and some of our family were getting ready for a trip to Mount Rushmore. They still went, but they drove. Flying wasn't as realistic anymore. As the years passed, more and more decisions had been had to be filtered through one question. Can Dad physically do this? Again, that's nobody's fault. It's simply what illness does. It quietly changes the size of your world. And looking back, I don't think what grieves me the most is that he couldn't get on an airplane. It's that I watched opportunities slowly become limitations. Trips required more planning. Certain places became too difficult. Some experiences quietly disappeared altogether. And watching someone you love lose the ability to participate, it changes you. Not because it makes you afraid, because it makes you grateful. Grateful for the walks that you still can take. Grateful for the vacation you still can enjoy. Grateful for the ability to get down on the floor or carry groceries or spend the afternoon chasing grandchildren someday. Those ordinary moments don't seem extraordinary until they become difficult. I don't share that because I think I can control my future, because I know I can't. None of us can. Healthy people still get sick. Faithful people still receive difficult diagnoses. Accidents still happen. Cancer still happens. Life in a broken world doesn't come with guarantees, but I can choose how I steward today. I can choose to preserve as much strength, as much endurance, as much mobility, and as much health as I'm able to. Not because I believe I'll somehow avoid suffering, but because every every healthy day is another opportunity to participate in the life that God has given to me. Another opportunity to travel, another opportunity to laugh around a dinner table, another opportunity to serve, another opportunity to create memories with the people that I love. Maybe that's all stewardship really is. It's not trying to control tomorrow, but gratefully participating in today. That realization also challenged something I've quietly believed for years. Because if I'm honest, there were seasons when I thought taking care of myself actually felt selfish. And if I'm honest, there were a lot of years that taking care of myself even felt optional. Not because it I know it didn't it I didn't know it mattered, but because there was always something or someone that seemed more important. The boys needed me, the church needed me, work needed me, family needed me, there was another meal to cook, another email to be answered, another errand to run, another person to help. And somewhere along the way, I quietly started believing that if everyone else was okay, then maybe I could think about me. Maybe. I don't think I ever said those words out loud. I definitely live lived like I believed them though. Maybe you've done that too, especially if you're a parent, or if you're caring for aging parents, or you're the dependable friend, or the person everyone calls when life falls apart. It's easy to convince ourselves that taking care of everyone else is noble while quietly negle neglecting ourselves in the process. I don't think anyone intends for that to happen. It just does. And then one day you wake up and realize you spent years pouring from a cup that you never stopped to refill. I think that's one of the reasons my thinking has changed so much, because I realize something. Taking care of myself isn't just about me, it's about everyone who experiences some version of me. One of the things I've noticed over the last few years is that when I intentionally care for my health, the benefits rarely stop with me. When I'm sleeping well, John gets a more patient wife. When I'm eating in a way that fuels my body instead of leaving me exhausted, my boys get a mom who's more present. When I consistently manage my diabetes, I'm protecting opportunities to keep saying yes to life. When I make movement part of my week, I'm not trying to impress anyone. I'm trying to preserve the ability to keep participating. Sometimes that looks incredibly ordinary. It looks like making my protein coffee in the morning. And if you had told me 10 years ago that I'd become the kind of person who actually looks forward to protein coffee, I probably would have laughed at you. But now it isn't really about the coffee. It's one small choice that helps me start the day well. One quiet way of saying, this body matters. Not because it's perfect, it certainly isn't. Because it's carrying me through the life that God has given me. The same is true when I get on my walk pad. There are days when I don't feel like walking, days when I'd rather stay on the couch. But almost every time I finish, I'm reminded that the walk was never really the point. Sometimes those walks become conversations with God. Sometimes they're simply quiet moments where my mind settles after a busy day. Sometimes they're the place where an idea for this podcast shows up. What started as exercise quietly became space. Space to think, space to pray, space to breathe, sometimes space to watch a guilty pleasure show. And I never expected that. And I think that's true of stewardship in general. It rarely announces itself with something dramatic. Most of the time it looks like small, faithful choices, repeated time after time after time. Choosing to go to bed instead of scrolling for another hour, making the doctor's appointment that you've been putting off. Get your screenings, friends. Taking the medication your doctor prescribed instead of pretending everything is fine, drinking that other glass of water that you should, going for a walk, asking for help, none of those choices make headlines. But together, they quietly shape the kind of life we're able to live. I've also realized something else. Jesus never modeled himself or never modeled running himself into the ground to prove his love. He served with incredible generosity, but he also withdrew to pray sometimes. He rested. He accepted hospitality. He slept. He understood something I think that we sometimes forget. Caring for the body that God gave him wasn't separate from his calling. It supported it. And maybe that's true for us too. Maybe stewardship isn't a distraction from loving people. Maybe it's one of the ways we prepare ourselves to love them well. Of course, knowing that doesn't mean we suddenly become perfectly consistent, if only it were that easy. Because life has a way of interrupting even our best intentions. If there's one thing I've learned about health, it's that life refuses to cooperate with our perfect plans. You can have the best intentions in the world, and then someone gets sick. Work gets busy, the holidays arrive, you go on vacation, you lose someone you love, you have emergency surgery, or maybe you simply wake up one morning and realize you've drifted away from the habits that once helped you feel your best. I've lived every one of those seasons. There have been times when my blood sugar was beautifully controlled. There have been seasons when it wasn't, times when I've felt stronger, times when I felt discouraged, times when healthy choices seemed almost effortless, and times when they felt incredibly difficult. For years every setback felt like failure. If I got off track, I felt like I had to start over. And maybe you felt that too. One difficult week becomes, well, I blew it. One vacation becomes, well, I guess I'll start again on Monday. One holiday somehow convinces us we've erased months of faithful choices. But that's not how life works. And thankfully, I don't think that's how God works either. Somewhere along the way, I stopped thinking of health as a finish line. Because there really isn't one. There isn't a day when you finally arrive and you never have to think about your health again. There isn't a moment when you say, Well, I did it, I guess I can stop now. Health is much more like a relationship with than a destination. It's something we keep tending to, we keep nurturing, we keep returning. That word has become one of my favorites, returning. Not because I enjoy starting over, because I've realized that I'm rarely actually starting over. I'm simply returning to something that has always been good for me. Returning to movement, returning to better sleep, returning to managing my diabetes faithfully, returning to choosing foods that help my body instead of constantly fighting against it, returning to prayer, returning to hope, returning to the person that I'm becoming. One of the biggest lies I've ever believed was that one difficult season erased all of the good that comes before it. Because it doesn't. Life isn't lived in straight lines. It's lived in seasons. There are seasons of growth, seasons of grief, seasons of incredible consistency, seasons where survival takes more energy than we'd like to admit. God isn't surprised by any any of them. He's simply inviting us to return again and again and again. Maybe today your return looks like taking that walk, even though it's a billion degrees outside. Maybe it means scheduling the appointment that you've been avoiding. That colonoscopy is not going to schedule itself, friends. Maybe it's taking your medication consistently this week. Maybe it's getting back to into the routine that helped you to feel more like yourself. Or maybe your return has nothing to do with health at all. Maybe today your return is simply believing that one hard season doesn't get the final word. I've stopped asking myself, can I do this perfectly? Instead, I ask, what's one faithful step I can take today? Because I've discovered something beautiful. The people I love aren't blessed because I have the perfect habits. They're blessed every time I choose to come back. Every time I choose not to quit, every time I choose hope over discouragement, every time I remember that today's choice doesn't have to carry the weight of my entire future. It only has to be today's faithful choice. And over time, those ordinary choices quietly become a life. And as I've thought about this, I've realized that maybe health was never really the destination. Maybe it was always preparing me for something even greater. To love well, to serve well, to be fully present for as long as God allows me to be. I think one of the biggest shifts that's happened in my life is that I no longer see health as the finish line. For years I thought it was. You lose the weight, lower the blood sugar, fit in different clothes, reach the goal, and then your life begins, or you go back to the way that you were before. But somewhere along the way, I realized life was happening all along. Health wasn't something waiting for me on the other end of the journey. It was helping me live the journey I was already on. That's a completely different way of thinking because if health becomes the destination, you'll always feel like you're chasing it. There's always another goal, another number, another milestone, another thing to improve. But if health becomes a tool, everything changes. Suddenly health isn't competing with your purpose, it's supporting it. I don't just want to be healthier so that I can say I'm healthier. I want to be healthier because God has given me work to do, people to love on, conversations to have, encouragement to offer, a husband to grow old with, children to cheer on as they build their futures, a ministry to build, a story to tell. Health doesn't replace those things. It helps me participate in them. That may sound like a small distinction, but I don't think it is. I think it's everything. Because the goal isn't simply becoming healthy. There will always be another mountain to climb. But if the goal is loving God and loving people well, health quietly becomes one of the ways we prepare ourselves to do both of those. That's why I don't think movement is punishment anymore. It's preparation. Rest isn't laziness, it's preparation. Nourishing my body isn't restriction, it's preparation. Managing my diabetes isn't about chasing perfect numbers, it's preparation for another Tuesday, for another podcast recording, another church service, another conversation with someone who needs hope and healing, another vacation, another birthday, another memory. And I realized something over the last few years. Almost everything I treasure most requires my presence in it, not my perfection, my presence. And health at its best helps me to keep showing up, not flawlessly, but faithfully, which brings me back to where we started. That seminar, that formula, and the question that stayed with me all these years. Not because I remember the formula, because honestly, I have no idea what it was. I don't. What I remember was the question that it left behind. How do I want to spend the years that I've been given? Not how many, but how do I want to spend them? Because none of us knows how much time we have on this earth. Some people receive decades they never expected. Others lose someone they love far too soon. And I've lived long enough to know that life doesn't always unfold the way that we've planned. So I've stopped trying to make bargains with tomorrow, and instead I've started asking God to help me be faithful today, to care well for the body that He's entrusted to me, to love the people that He's entrusted to me, to use whatever strength I have today for something that matters. Because maybe that's the real invitation, not to become obsessed with your health or numbers, and not to become fearful of illness, not to spend our lives chasing a number on a scale, but to become good stewards of the ordinary gift that we've already been given. This body, this breath, this day, this opportunity. I think back to my dad, his world became smaller because of illness, not because he lacked faith, not because he did anything wrong. If anything, he lived the healthiest version of himself for years. It was simply the chapter that he was given. And I think about Jimmy, the legacy of the world. That he left wasn't measured in years. It was measured in people, in traditions, and laughter, in the relationships that he had with people all over the state, and memories that still gather our family around a table. I think about my boys when they were little and how desperately I wanted my body to keep up with my heart. And I think about where I am today, still learning, still growing, still returning, still becoming. And maybe that's all any of us are doing. We're becoming the kind of people who keep showing up with whatever strength we've been given for today. Some days that strength feels abundant. Other days it feels very small. Both kinds of days matter though, because faithfulness has never been measured by perfection. It's been measured by willingness, by taking that next step, by loving the person in front of us, by receiving today's gift without demanding tomorrow's guarantee. The healthiest version of you won't be the version with perfect lab work or the perfect weight or the perfect routine. The healthiest version of you is the version that is available to love God and love people. That looks different for every one of us. For some people, that means recovering from surgery. For someone else, it's faithfully managing a chronic illness. For another, it's simply taking a walk after dinner. We're not all called to the same health journey. But I do believe we're all invited to steward the journey that we've been given. Not because we're trying to earn more life, but because we're grateful for the life that we've already received. So maybe this week, don't ask yourself how much weight do I need to lose? Or how far behind am I? Instead, try asking a different question. What would help me show up more faithfully for the people that I love? Maybe that answer is getting more sleep. Maybe it's making the doctor's appointment you've been putting off. Maybe it's taking a walk. Maybe it's finally accepting some help. Maybe it's simply deciding that today is worth caring for. Whatever that next step is, don't take it because you're trying to become someone that's worthy. Take it because you already are, friend. Because the people who love you have never needed the perfect version of you. But I have a feeling they'd be grateful for every opportunity they get to enjoy the healthiest version that you're able to become. Not so you'll live forever, none of us will. But so you'll be able to keep showing up, creating memories, sharing laughter, serving faithfully, and loving well. For however many years God graciously gives you this side of heaven. I don't know how many years I've been given, and neither do you, but I do know this. I'd like to fill as many of them as possible with participation, with presence, with gratitude, and with love. Because when my story is finished, I don't want people to remember how healthy I was. I hope that they remember that I was there. If today's conversation caused you to think differently about your health, I hope you'll stay with me because this journey has never been about perfection. It's been about becoming one faithful step at a time. If you'd like to continue exploring conversations about identity, grief, relationships, faith, and health, I hope you'll or you'll find every episode and every resource that we've created at HealerHopegiver.com, one word healerhopgiver.com. I'd love to continue the journey with you there. Thanks for spending this time with me today. If this conversation stirred something in your heart, I hope you'll resist the urge to judge yourself. Instead, just be curious. Maybe ask yourself what's one small step I can take this week that helps me show up more fully for the people I love. Not because you're trying to earn your worth, not because you're chasing perfection, simply because your life is a gift. And the people around you experience that gift every single day. As always, thank you for letting me part be part of your journey. If today's episode encouraged you, I'd be honored if you shared it with someone who came to mind while you were listening. Sometimes the greatest gift we can give another person is simply reminding them that they aren't walking alone. Until next time, take good care of the life you've been given so you can keep showing up for the people you love. Keep becoming, and keep remembering, healing rarely happens all at once. It happens one honest conversation, one faithful choice, and one ordinary day at a time. I'll see you on Thursday.