Recently, I was a guest on the “Read and Write Podcast” with host Natasha Tynes. She asked me what my book was about. “Journey of a Celiac’s Soul: A Second Chance at Life” is my personal journey of living for twenty years with an undiagnosed autoimmune disease called Celiac disease. When I finally received my diagnosis, my doctor told me that I was within five months of being six feet down in the grave. As a patient, you are told by your doctor that you have a medical disease, yet the public is calling it a fad diet.
Initially, I wondered where people were getting this crazy idea from. Perhaps it was the word “diet.” The Celiac diet is meant to help one maintain their weight and not lose it. Consuming foods containing gluten, the protein found in wheat, rye, and barley, continues to damage the small intestine. When your body can’t receive vitamins and minerals from the food you eat, your body starves. Trust me, having a medical disease that causes physical starvation is no fun way to lose weight.
Natasha inquired why I wrote this book. I wrote this book not only for those with this disease but also for their family members and friends who can’t quite grasp what this disease is truly about. If family or friends want to help someone with Celiac disea
se, they must see this autoimmune disease as more than just a fad diet but as a real threat to their loved one’s life. They must realize the profound loss of the most universal joy in anyone’s daily life—the act of everyday eating—is now forever changed.
Natasha then shifted the conversation from the physical side of Celiac disease to the spiritual side. The grain of wheat had followed me into my Church, taking up residence on the Church Altar in the wheaten Communion host. Back in the 1980s, there was only a wheat host, and even today, the low gluten host still causes physical reactions in many people when ingested. Due to cross-contamination issues of wine with wheat, I don’t take the wine. As a Eucharistic Minister, I have witnessed priests mistakenly pouring wine from their Chalice, which contains particles of wheat from the host, into a Communion cup offered to the Laity. Sadly, the Catholic Church hierarchy no longer sees this as an issue because they have their low gluten host. However, for any Catholic who has lost access to the Eucharist, this is a monumental spiritual loss. What would Jesus do?
To hear the full episode, CLICK HERE!
