Sharing Our Testimonies of God’s Mighty Works in Our Lives

This month, rather than any post for Halloween–about its evils or otherwise–I decided to share a portion of my faith journey with you for All Saints’ Day. Back in 2019, I was interviewed by Emily Gehman on the Solid State Radio podcast. I will share my notes here, but I will do what I can to add the interview since the podcast no longer has it in its archives. Click the arrow to listen to the interview.

How I Was Set Free from Perfection and Control to Live a Healthy Lifestyle
Radio Interview with Emily Gehman

You can listen here.

My notes for the interview are below.
 
Thank you, Emily, for allowing me to share my story with your audience. I am honored to be part of your program today.
 
Background
As a teenager, I felt ugly and fat, with a poor understanding of my own value. My family life growing up was tainted with alcoholism and abuse. People I should have been able to trust and find security hurt me while withdrawing their love from me quite often. I felt like I had no control over my life or my body because of what happened to me. One day, I thought I should lose some weight because of the comments some of my classmates made. I really wasn’t fat, but I was a little chunky. Maybe if I were thin, they would like me and think I was pretty. So I began losing weight by dieting, but I didn’t stop.
 
Anorexia: Starving for Control and Perfection
My weight plummeted to around 87 pounds from 115. My family, boyfriend, and friends were worried about me. My collarbones stuck out, my ribs were visible, and my hip bones showed through my jeans. My face was very narrow, with my cheeks sunken in. All the telltale signs of anorexia were there, but I was the only one who couldn’t see it. While I was a freshman in college, my boyfriend had me stand in front of a mirror one day to look at myself and tell him what I saw. While I told him I saw a girl who was fat and ugly, he began telling me he saw a beautiful young woman he loved was slowly killing herself. He was worried, afraid I would starve myself to death. We both cried.
 
Physical Healing: Just the Beginning
 I couldn’t stop starving myself. Anorexia is a type of addiction called a reverse addiction. We were involved in a college student ministry as part of their music outreach. Each student in the group was tasked with leading a devotion on a music performance outing. One day, I was convinced by the Lord that it was my turn and I should confess my sin issue with anorexia. I wasn’t a born-again Christian, but thought I was because I went through the church membership class, i.e., I felt I had to be accepted. God gave me 1 Corinthians 6:19-20, “Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own;  you were bought at a price. Therefore, honor God with your bodies.” to share.

On that evening, I was to share the devotion. I read the passage and confessed my sin of damaging my body, which God had made. The room suddenly got very quiet. One woman in the congregation got up from her seat, came to the front, and asked everyone to come up and surround me and pray. She led the prayer as tears streamed down my face. From that day forward, I gained weight even though I struggled to stop starving myself. God never let me go below 100 pounds. Little by little, over the course of two years, my attitude about food changed. God revealed Himself to me in a real, tangible way. He healed me physically, but spiritual healing was yet to come.
 
Emotional Healing from Childhood Trauma
The birth of my third child was a major turning point in my life. Keep in mind that I had lived with alcoholism and abuse as a child. At that time, I felt that I had no control over what happened to my body.  In the obstetrics operating room, the anesthesiologist made a mistake in what should have been a textbook-perfect C-section delivery. The anesthesia went to my brain, causing uncontrollable crying, ringing bells, and a horrible spinning sensation. When my doctor checked to see if she could begin surgery, I wasn’t numb enough for her to do the incision. She had to get the baby out right away so my baby wouldn’t be adversely affected by the anesthetic. Suddenly, I found myself pinned down by the doctor and nurses. They put a gas mask on my face, which I found out later I had fought to keep off me. My husband was horrified when he saw me in the recovery room with blood spattered all over me from my I.V. pulling out during the fight. I began a long road to recovery through Christian counseling. I was diagnosed with postpartum depression and PTSD.
 
Spiritual Healing through Salvation
God used all of these experiences to draw me to Himself. I heard the gospel several times at church.  I knew the plan of salvation and that I needed to accept Christ as my Savior bounced around in my head. One morning, I felt a strong tug-of-war for my soul while my husband was on a business trip. His mom came to help me with the kids while he was gone. I realized that I was sitting on the fence about my salvation. I didn’t want to let Satan win that tug of war. Romans 10:8-10 came to my mind, that if I confess that I was a sinner and call on Jesus to save me, He would.  So I prayed to accept Jesus as my Savior, as I heard people should do to spend eternity in heaven with God. The moment I prayed, a warm, tingling sensation started from the crown of my head and washed over me. At first, it scared me, so I hurried downstairs where my mother-in-law was resting on our sofa. I told her what happened. She smiled and said that Jesus had come into my life, and the Holy Spirit had protected me. My life changed tremendously that day. I felt an amazing peace and healing of my soul.
 
Learning to Live Healthy Led to Overconfidence
When I was married with young kids at home, my weight rose to around 150 pounds at 5’1′ from 110, which I had kept for quite a while after my miracle healing. I was definitely overweight. My doctor told me I had borderline high cholesterol, which was a wake-up call for me at 30 years old! My diet reflected my upbringing. In that unhealthy home environment, I learned to eat food that “stuck to my ribs”. Those foods were considered healthy to them, but I knew otherwise. This startling reality was the beginning of my healthy lifestyle journey. My diet slowly changed.  I was also led to a Christian martial arts ministry in our town, initially for our son, but my whole family was invited to join. I began to exercise, but I also learned that I didn’t have to be a victim anymore through the discipline of Bible study and martial arts. I became quite good at karate and felt more confident about myself. The days of being the last kid picked for a team were behind me. I became overly optimistic about my abilities.
 

Beginning to Serve Christ in Ministry
My husband and I attained our instructor’s rank, striking out on our own to teach karate from a Christian perspective. At one point, we discovered from another instructor in a nearby martial arts school that we had the largest karate school in the area—55 active students with 10 on the waiting list. We met in a small church’s sanctuary where we could move the chairs out of the way. We also built quite a following online because we wrote blog posts about Christian martial arts as a ministry. This concept for ministry was in its beginning.
 
While in martial arts, I took a kata (series of karate practice movements) that I put together for a tournament. At first, my thoughts were, “There are only two of us. Either I win or lose.” I came in second—I lost to the state champion. I was bummed, but, for some odd reason, I thought to ask her if we could compare our scores. Being the type of martial artist she was, she hesitated at first. Then she pulled out her score card, holding it beside mine: only 1/10 of a point difference! She was absolutely amazing in her performance, flawless. I was shocked I scored so close to her. My confidence level soared.
 
Exercise Instruction and Personal Training—Perfection is Tough to Maintain
Martial arts was the beginning of working and ministering through health and fitness. I found myself in a YMCA—a God appointment—working in aquatics by teaching water aerobics, swimming, and arthritis exercise. Later, I became a personal trainer there. In my late 30s, I could keep up with many lifeguards in their twenties, swimming laps and performing practice rescues. My body fat was at a sleek 14%, athletic level. My muscles were strong and defined. I felt like I had “arrived”. The kids who groaned about taking me on their team in elementary school would be shocked at the transformation. But one morning in November 2002, everything changed.
 
A Lesson in Humility: Plunged into Chronic Pain and Fatigue
That morning, I woke up in excruciating pain, absolutely exhausted. Just lifting my arm felt like lifting a heavy weight. “I must have the flu,” I thought. It was all I could do to haul myself out of bed to call off sick. After three days in bed like this, I saw my doctor. To make a long story short, I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia. At first, they thought I had lupus and started treatment for it, but concluded that the allergic reaction I had to a medication for an infected lymph node in my neck triggered this chronic illness. This was a tough lesson in humility. I could seriously relate to the people in the arthritis classes I taught. My strong athletic body felt like it was turning to pain-filled mush.
 
I had to work for a living, so I learned to adapt. My boss, who had been in a car accident, was instrumental in helping me through this long road to recovery. I finally reached a level of physical ability that others with fibromyalgia would cringe at the thought of doing. Over time, I became certified to teach HIIT, Russian-style Kettlebell, and functional training, including some tough exercises with tires, sledgehammers, a rock climbing wall, and more. I learned to manage my fibro symptoms through diet and exercise with low-dose medication. I was eating clean and feeling lean again. I would never be able to be where I was before this illness took over, but I was happy to be where I was. It was certainly God at work, not me.
 
Greater Humility– Learning to Follow Jesus’ Lead
While working as an exercise instructor and personal trainer, I was also a pastor’s wife, working alongside my husband.  I was grateful for what God enabled me to do, but He had different plans. He took my husband home after a long battle with cancer at 50 years old. At that time, He called me to write.
 
When I remarried, I tried to get a job in a gym, but the only jobs I could get were over an hour away from home. I ran into a silent Ohio-Michigan prejudice. It really was a “thing” there. At any rate, I kept up with a Christian health and fitness blog I started before my second husband and I were married. I answered the call to write two years into our marriage. During the past five years, even though I have eaten healthily and exercised regularly, I have come down ill once more. This time I was diagnosed with Mixed Collagen Vascular Disease that may have been triggered when I was exposed to environmental allergens for a lengthy period of time. Although I’ve kept my certifications current and write from a Christian health, fitness, and wellness perspective on my blog, I could not even consider working in a gym.
 
Incredibly, even though I ate healthy and exercised as best as I could with chronic fatigue and pain, I had a heart attack in 2017 due to coronary artery spasm that escalated.  Landing in the hospital for a heart attack wasn’t on my radar! The good news from that event was that I had redeemed my body’s health from the previous bad eating practices and lack of exercise when I was told I had borderline high cholesterol. My arteries were clean! Eating healthy and exercising paid off!
 
However, I was frustrated with being “tied down” again. I developed a Healthy Lifestyle program for my Be Totally Fit for Life! ministry. God has taught me during this time, that I had been a slave all along to perfection and control. It wasn’t up to me to control my life, nor would I ever be perfect. That was up to God.
 
I transitioned from overconfidence in my abilities and appearance to struggling to take a walk in my neighborhood. My heart rate plummeted to 42 bpm with a blood pressure of 87/56. On one of these walks, I prayed for God to heal me. I thought it must be spiritual warfare because of what I was writing then. A famous theologian and writer contacted me a week before this walk through a Twitter private message, asking me how strong my faith was. At first, I didn’t recognize the name. On this walk, I got a reply on my smartphone to my half-hearted answer to his message. Once I realized who it was, I was so embarrassed!  I told him what I was going through and he prayed an amazing prayer and blessing over me.
 
Perfection and control were nowhere on my radar. I’ve had to reassess how I understand beauty, health, perfection, and personal value. It felt like a cruel punishment at first, but now I see how God shows me that being totally fit for life isn’t the same as the world’s view.
 
Being fit means doing daily activities easily, regardless of disease. It challenges the world’s idea of fitness because people expect a perfect, toned, athletic body, whereas fitness and health are conjoined. Our appearance when we live a healthy lifestyle will be much better than that of those in our age range who don’t live a healthy lifestyle, but it shouldn’t be our focus. Good stewardship of our bodies for the glory of God to serve Him and others more effectively means doing ministry, or whatever God has called us to do, with greater ease. It isn’t about us; it’s about Him and those around us.
 
We need to fuel our bodies with the foods God intended us to eat in the first place. When we get appropriate exercise for our ages, abilities, and stations, we can do much more with our loved ones and neighbors and make a difference in their lives. As much as we would like to think, we may not be able to remain disease-free, but we can avoid lifestyle-related diseases. Changing our attitudes about ourselves, others, and God makes all the difference!
 
What Now?
My ministry, Be Totally Fit for Life!, offers classes from a Christian perspective called Healthy Lifestyles. They run in two six-week segments. I also offer Christian Wellness Journal Groups, using the journal I created to help Christians integrate the mental, physical, social, and spiritual aspects of life. I also speak at women’s ministry gatherings, retreats, workshops, churches, and civic events. As for exercise classes, I plan to begin teaching ChiRho Flow online soon. Watch for updates on my website.
 
I teach people their value to God and how to care for themselves to honor God and serve others. The theme verse for Be Totally Fit for Life is Ephesians 2:10, “For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” You can contact me at [email protected]. I would love to have a conversation with you. You can also find me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, X, and Pinterest. My website is www.charlainemartin.com.
 
How about you? Do you know Jesus as your Savior? Have you witnessed amazing things God has done in your life? Share your testimony of salvation and other amazing works God has done in your life by emailing me or posting in the comments below. Note: I reserve the right to edit or not include anything malicious, that doesn’t honor God, or is deemed inappropriate for any reason.
 
Watch for updates to this in my next blog post.