In the Bible, God reminds us again and again that we are to remember. Deut 8:2 And you shall remember that the Lord your God led you all the way these forty years in the wilderness, to humble you and test you, to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep His commandments or not. Deut 8:18 And you shall remember the Lord your God, for it is He who gives you the power to get wealth, that He may establish His covenant which He swore to your fathers, as it is this day. 1Cron 16:12 Remember His marvelous works which He has done, His wonders, and the judgments of His mouth Psalm 77:11 I will remember the works of the Lord; Surely I will remember Your wonders of old Remembering what He has done for us, where we have come from, what He has taken us through, and how He has been faithful to His word helps us keep a proper perspective on life. I believe we forget to remember these things too often, and as time goes by, we begin to believe that we are responsible for getting ourselves to where we are in life. I also believe it is for this reason that God has been prompting me to write my journey so that I can remember what He has done, and not forget to praise Him and thank Him daily for His goodness. The Background Since becoming a CPA in 1975, I had worked as a staff accountant, been a partner in a growing business, branched out on my own and developed a thriving CPA practice, moved into being the Controller for a local furniture company, then re-established my sole practice and eventually became the controller for a large Texas corporation based in Austin. During this time, God also blessed me with an ability and love for computer programming and systems analysis. I married my best friend on March 2, 1974 and we had our first (and only as it turned out) child on September 19, 1975. Life was good, prospects were looking up, and I was in control of my own destiny or at least that is how it appeared at the time. Due to some workings that I now know were God s doing, my wife and I began attending Allandale Baptist Church in 1979. She received Christ shortly after we
began attending, and I simply moved my letter of membership from my former church to there. After all, I had been a Christian about as long as I could remember. (Here we are remembering again.) Much time passed, and during that time, we became very involved in many aspects of the Church. We sang in the choir, we taught young married adults in Sunday School, we moved to working with the youth, and even took our vacation each year to attend youth camp to help with the security team. I worked hard at my Christianity during that time. I became very dissatisfied with where my life was going. Things of God did not hold my interest, although I never quit going through the motions of doing them. On Sunday night, August 11, 1996, I attended what was supposed to be a youth worker meeting, but turned out to be a preaching service for us. As our youth pastor appealed to us that he believed there were some who were just going through the motions and did not really have a relationship with Christ. I always tried to avoid being in these situations as it made me very uncomfortable so I left the room under the pretense of needing to use the restroom. When I returned and approached my seat, he was asking any who needed to get really right with God to stand. I started to sit down when I heard a voice in my heart. It was not audible, but it was as clear as any I have ever heard. What I heard was If you sit down now, I will never ask you to stand for Me again. I stood there not knowing how to deal with that, and then I heard it again. The minute or so that passed before one of my fellow workers came to get me to go into the library to talk seemed like ages. It was on that night that I finally realized that I had played church long enough and I finally surrendered my entire life to Christ. He accepted me and the weight of my world was lifted. Hallelujah what a Savior. The day to day grind of my job was becoming boring, and monotonous. Gwen and I had been seeking something we could do together that did not involve taxes, IRS, or other accounting woes. God had led Gwen to a dear couple who were friends of ours to get help with some minor health issues. This couple had recently become involved in the natural health field. Her health issues improved quickly and stayed good. She began finding other people who needed help, but we just did not know enough to offer help. One evening, I met with this couple to discuss being of assistance to them with their business accounting. Upon seeing their situation, I told Gwen I thought I had found just what we could do. We can open an herb store and work together in it. This met with strong and decisive resistance, so I just put it out of my mind. Over the next few months, she began to see that if we were working in such a store, we could help a lot of people, so we began to explore the possibility. Shortly thereafter, we found ourselves ready to sign a lease and open a store. We knew almost nothing of
herbal remedies, but we were excited. After all, I still had a good, although somewhat boring, job that would provide for us. As the time to prepare the space for our store approached, I became more and more eager to get out and be in the store. One day as I left the office to make the daily bank run, I simply shouted at God that He had to do something to get me out of this rut. I returned to the office, and was called to the VP s office. He disclosed the company s plans to me for the controllership. I was working about 5 hours a day there, and they wanted to make it a full time position. The kicker was that these plans did not include me. That was a bit faster than I had expected, but there I was with plenty of time on my hands to do the finish out work on the space. We opened, and began learning all we could about the products, and about how the body systems worked. We embraced the belief that the body was designed to work correctly, and if given the proper nutrition and fuel, it would do just that. This became part of our life, and we quickly moved into using natural health products instead of man made pharmaceuticals. And so begins my journey. The Journey From the moment I got involved in the natural health field, we began working on improving various aspects of my health, beginning with my allergies. For as far back as I can remember, I have suffered with allergies. Sometimes these got so bad that even the strongest pharmaceutical prescription I could get would only manage to reduce the symptoms slightly. After several weeks of using herbal remedies to support and repair my respiratory system, I began to discover that I needed fewer and fewer of the supplements to keep my breathing passages open and to keep the allergic symptoms from occurring. This led to working on other areas of my health. Since my Dad had died of a sudden and massive heart attack when he was age 58 I decided to work on the circulatory system. I spent several months doing this, and noticed increased energy and overall better mental acuity. Time passed, and I began to feel like things were going pretty well. I continued taking my supplements and stayed active in church and our other social activities including square dancing and youth soccer. Then in early April of 2000 everything began to come unwound. I began having severe symptoms of intestinal distress that could not be suppressed by any of my natural remedies or by any of the OTC remedies available. This went on for several weeks until I woke up on Sunday morning, Mother s Day of 2000 in such pain that I could
hardly get out of bed. I told Gwen to take me to the hospital ER so we could try to find out what was wrong. The following days revealed that I had ulcerative colitis a degenerative disease of the bowel that produces ulcers and can lead to dehydration, bleeding, and even cancer in its later stages. When I asked how such a disease starts the only answer my doctors could give me was it just happens. They also quickly added there is no known cure either. Their solution was to manage the problem with prescribed medications that produced more ill side effects than benefits then after 5-6 years, do surgery to remove the colon. Neither of these alternatives were suitable to me, so Gwen and I began our search for a different solution. I was not, and am still not completely opposed to using prescription medications when these are necessary. My problem with them is that they do nothing to address the root cause of the problem. During the next decade, I had extended periods of improvement followed by brief periods of flare ups. Sometimes the flare ups were severe enough to require prescription medications to get it under control. As soon as that was accomplished, I chose to cease using the meds and concentrate again on the natural remedies. I believe it is better to try to build up a system that is in distress, allowing it to work the way that God designed it, rather than to use artificial means such as drugs to suppress the symptoms and do nothing to alleviate the root cause. My periods of calm between the flare ups was 3 to 4 times longer than the doctor was expecting me to experience had I been using his prescriptions. For this reason, none of the medical doctors I saw pressed me very hard to stop using the natural remedies and return to the prescriptions. One even admitted that he would not expect me to do as well on his medications. It has been almost eleven years since the diagnosis, and I have been through some very low times as well as some fairly high times with my health. I have had the benefit of having many of God s children praying for me, and I know the healing power that comes from such prayer. God has used this illness to help me get my diet cleaned up, and to keep me focused on the things that are important. The year 2010 has been the most exciting in the journey so far. God has done a wonderful work of healing during that time, but in doing so, He allowed me to experience some very low times. There were some nights during that year that I went to bed not knowing whether to expect to wake up the next morning on earth or in heaven. Those days caused me to cling to God even closer, and taught me to trust Him no matter what the situation. Today, I celebrate the fact that my intestinal health is better than it has been since before I was diagnosed in 2000. Each day I thank God for my health.
After looking back over the past eleven years, I am firmly convinced that God was directing us into this field so He could bring me out alive. I am also firmly convinced that if the only options that had been available to us during those years were pharmaceutical, that I would not be alive today to enjoy life as I do now. I try not to let even one day pass without remembering to thank God for His mercy, His comfort, and His healing that have been poured out on me. I also thank Him for giving me the opportunity to share what He has taught me about healthy living with others. Gwen and I still run our little herb store, and still get excited when one of our customers calls or comes by just to say thank you for helping them get healthy, and for giving them hope when nobody else offered any. I am one who hopes never to forget to remember what God has done in my life. Thank you Father. Jimmy Johnson