For most of my life, faith felt like endurance.

Endure hunger.
Endure pain.
Endure unanswered prayer.
Endure a body that would not cooperate.

I thought that was what devotion looked like: staying faithful while my body screamed, cramped, locked, vomited, dissociated and eventually went quiet.⠀I learned very young that it hurt less to be empty than to eat.⠀Less to be numb than to feel.⠀Less to ask nothing of my body than to be betrayed by it again.

What I didn’t know then, but am learning now, is that God never asked my body to endure in order to prove faith.⠀He asked it to receive.

And that changed everything.

When the Body Learns That Food Is Dangerous

During treatment for Lyme disease, digestion became violent. Eating meant cramping, nausea, diarrhea, constipation or vomiting—sometimes all of it in the same day.⠀The pain was so constant yet unpredictable that my nervous system did the only thing it could do to survive:⠀it adapted.

I learned to override signals and suppress hunger in order to stay empty.

By my late teens, this wasn’t a diet or a choice.⠀It was a survival strategy.⠀A brilliant one, honestly.⠀I was fifteen pounds underweight for nearly a decade, not because I hated my body, but because my body felt safest when it didn’t ask for anything.

That strategy didn’t stay confined to my gut.⠀It showed up in my jaw.⠀TMJ dysfunction, clenching, locking, facial pain—these are not random.⠀The jaw is where consent lives.⠀Where hunger enters.⠀Where trust is negotiated.⠀My jaw learned to brace the same way my gut did:⠀If I don’t open, nothing can hurt me.

For years, I prayed through that pain.⠀I believed through it and endured, but nothing healed.

The Faith I Practiced Was Disembodied

I believed God was good.
I believed He could heal.
I believed suffering had meaning.

But my body did not believe it was safe.

And here’s the uncomfortable truth I’m only now able to say out loud:⠀my faith asked my body to comply with theology it had not experienced as true.⠀I demanded belief through endurance.⠀I thought that was spiritual maturity.

Now I know it was survival wearing a halo.

“Taste and See” Is Not a Metaphor

Scripture says, “Taste and see that the Lord is good.”
Not believe and see.
Not endure and see.

Taste is physical.
Oral.⠀Visceral.⠀Pre-cognitive.
It can’t happen at a distance or by willpower.

I must receive.

Somewhere along the way, I realized something radical:⠀God does not ask the body to trust before it experiences safety.⠀He creates safety first, and then He invites trust.

He feeds Elijah before He questions him.⠀He frees Israel before He gives them the law.⠀Jesus multiplies bread before He teaches.⠀Resurrection always follows incarnation.⠀I had reversed that order in my own body.

Responsive Trust (The Turning Point)

Here is the sentence that now sits at the center of my testimony:⠀responsive trust is letting God demonstrate His goodness through my body instead of demanding that my body prove faith through endurance.

Incarnation means God chose flesh.
Not as an object lesson.⠀Not as a temporary inconvenience.
But as the place of encounter.

Jesus ate.⠀Rested.⠀Needed.
He received.

What I didn’t understand at first was that this kind of trust doesn’t move in a straight line.⠀It moves in a loop.

Safety leads to experience.
Experience leads to peace.
Peace strengthens faith.
Strengthened faith makes trust easier the next time my body needs to receive.

Healing, I’m learning, happens through a positive feedback loop, not willpower.⠀The body acknowledges the experience of God’s goodness, the body relaxes, faith deepens and trust becomes less risky the next time around.

When my healing began—not with belief, but with nourishment—it rewrote my theology.

When Hunger Came Back (And Why It Scared Me)

Three weeks into gut healing, hunger returned.
Real hunger.⠀Sharp and urgent.
The kind I hadn’t felt since childhood.

At first, it terrified me.⠀It felt excessive and out of control.⠀I thought something was wrong until I realized something else was happening:⠀my body was learning that it could ask again.

Long-term restriction, trauma and ketosis had silenced my hunger hormones and blunted my vagal tone.⠀My fascia had learned that sensation meant danger.⠀Hunger had been muted for survival.⠀Now that safety was returning, the signals were loud, not because they were wrong, but because they were new.

Hunger isn’t a threat.
It is a testimony.

Emotional Vulnerability Around Eating

As I began eating regularly, something unexpected happened.⠀I felt exposed.⠀After meals, emotions surfaced.⠀Grief.⠀Tenderness. Fatigue.⠀Sometimes tears without a story.⠀Sometimes a deep need to lie down, for quiet, or to be held by God.

This wasn’t weakness.⠀It was regulation.

Food lowers cortisol. ⠀Lower cortisol unmasks what survival once suppressed.⠀Eating removed the emotional anesthesia, and for the first time, my body wasn’t braced.

That vulnerability used to scare me.
Now I understand it as sacred.

The Jaw, the Gut and the Vagus Nerve

Jaw healing taught me this before theology ever did.⠀The jaw does not open when it feels threatened.⠀The gut does not digest when it feels unsafe.⠀The vagus nerve does not activate on command—only through experience.

Trust is not a decision.
It’s a physiological update.

Every time I eat now and nothing bad happens, my body relearns that I am allowed to need.⠀Every time my jaw softens, my gut settles, my breath deepens—I am tasting and experiencing goodness, not just believing in it.

Communion Was Always About This

Jesus didn’t say, “Remember me abstractly.”
He said, “Take. Eat.”

God chose digestion as a place of encounter.⠀That means:⠀God enters the gut.⠀He consents to breakdown and absorption, literally infusing us with Himself at the physiological level.
God makes His life present within us.

For someone whose body learned that eating was dangerous, this reframes nourishment as worship.⠀Every meal becomes a micro-communion.⠀Not a test.⠀Not a performance.

A receiving.

Faith That Feels Like Safety (and Becomes a Positive Feedback Loop)

I no longer measure faith by how much I can endure.⠀I measure it by how much I can receive without fear.

Daily bread.
Predictable nourishment.
Rest after eating.
Gentleness instead of control.

When my body experiences safety—real, embodied safety—something subtle but unmistakable follows.⠀Faith doesn’t disappear into comfort.⠀It deepens.⠀Again and again, God meets that safety with what I can only describe as otherworldly peace.⠀Not emotional hype.⠀Not adrenaline.⠀A quiet, settling confirmation that I am aligned, held and seen.

Peace that arrives without effort and stays without explanation.

That peace strengthens my faith, not because I forced belief, but because my heart and mind witnessed God’s goodness inside of my body.⠀And from that place, something changes.⠀I find myself wanting to live for Him more.⠀Not out of fear.⠀Not out of obligation.

But out of resonance.

Trust grows because it has evidence and obedience becomes a love-response, not a strained attempt.
Surrender feels like relief, not loss.

And then the loop continues…

The more I experience safety, the more my faith is bolstered.
The more my faith is bolstered, the more I trust.
The more I trust, the more I embody peace.

This is the positive feedback loop no one taught me to expect:⠀embodied safety⠀→⠀faith⠀→⠀trust →⠀deeper embodiment.⠀Faith no longer begins in my head and trickles down.⠀It starts in my body, is confirmed by peace, and then rises—strengthened—into belief, devotion and action.

This is not passive faith. It is faith activated by and experienced through interoception—not proven through endurance, but multiplied by encounter.

Why This Matters (Especially If You’re Afraid to Trust Your Body)

If trusting your body feels dangerous, you’re not weak.⠀You’re learned.

Many of us were taught—explicitly or implicitly—that faith means overriding bodily signals, disciplining hunger, silencing pain and pushing through.⠀For bodies shaped by illness, trauma or chronic stress, that message doesn’t produce holiness…It produces dissociation.

Responsive trust offers another way.

It says your body does not need to be conquered to be faithful.
It says sensation is not the enemy of belief.
It says God is not waiting on your endurance—He is offering encounter.

If you are afraid that listening to your body will lead you away from God, I want you to know the opposite has been true for me.⠀As my body learned safety, my faith didn’t shrink.⠀It strengthened.

Peace confirmed what nourishment began.
Trust grew because it had somewhere to land.

If your body has gone quiet to survive, God is patient enough to wait for it to feel safe again before asking it to trust.⠀That patience is not permissiveness.⠀It’s Love.

The Loop Completed

For most of my life, faith felt like endurance.

Now it feels like safety.⠀Not because my body never struggles, but because it no longer has to prove devotion through pain.⠀I don’t believe in God despite my body anymore. I believe with my body.

I am still healing.⠀Still eating.⠀Still opening my jaw.⠀Still learning how to receive daily bread without bracing for loss.⠀But now, when hunger rises—when need returns—I no longer see it as a threat to my faith.

I see it as the place God has chosen to meet me once again.

I am not enduring my way toward belief.
I am “tasting and seeing,” and trust is following.

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