Dale Partridge - Christ & Chronic Illness Pt. 1： My Story - Dale Partridge

00:00:00.000 Welcome to Real Christianity. My name is Dale Parchers. Today is a special episode

00:00:24.920 with my friend Trevor West, who is here. He's a leader at our church. He's also the guy that

00:00:29.480 usually behind the camera. And we're going to be talking about my story on a four-part series,

00:00:36.540 Finding Christ in Chronic Illness. We'll talk a little bit more about why we're

00:00:42.540 having this discussion on this podcast in just a minute. But if you're a regular listener and

00:00:47.960 you've just been following along for Real Christianity, thank you. You can always

00:00:52.100 listen to these episodes at relearn.org or anywhere that podcasts are found. And if you've

00:00:58.320 been supporting us through the purchase of our books. You can find all of our books there. You

00:01:02.020 can find all of our resources. The forthcoming ReLearn app is getting ready to launch. I just

00:01:07.660 got off of paternity leave. And it's just been a while since we've been in the studio. Yes, it has.

00:01:15.240 So Trevor's here. Trevor, you're married, you're kids. You've also struggled with chronic illness.

00:01:20.620 Give us a little bit before we kind of dive in. Yeah. So I've been married for 14 years to my

00:01:26.660 wife, Julia. We have five beautiful kids, ages 11 to one-year-old. And she and I have been

00:01:36.880 on a similar path. We've dealt with chronic illness for the past 10 years now, since 2013.

00:01:45.240 I was diagnosed with Crohn's and celiac disease. And it was really a journey that the Lord put us

00:01:52.320 on and grew us closer to him. And so this is a, this is a conversation that is very near and dear

00:01:59.260 to me and I'm excited to have it. Yeah. And it's not just that we're having a conversation just

00:02:03.620 about me from someone who's never experienced some of these things. You know, Trevor and I have

00:02:09.800 also been basically around each other every single day for like a year and a half. And so he's got

00:02:15.000 to see into a little bit of our life and how that plays out. So we got five questions that Trevor's

00:02:21.200 going to ask me and we'll just be having a discussion as we go through. And I think this

00:02:27.120 over the next month, this series, I think will be helpful because there's a lot of sick people in

00:02:33.100 the church. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Okay. So the first question is, why do you think,

00:02:38.380 or why did you think it was important to have a series on chronic illness?

00:02:43.300 Yeah. So chronic illness is something that's plaguing more and more people today. I think that

00:02:50.760 I have some stats here. I think it's the 44% of older millennials born between

00:02:56.060 1981 and 1988, which is us. You're 86 85 85. Okay, we're both 85 and you know

00:03:03.860 that are in that category 44% are having been diagnosed with at least one

00:03:09.740 chronic health condition. That means like our age range almost half and I

00:03:14.600 would say arguably half because there's other studies that have showed more

00:03:17.740 right of the people in our age range have something going on yep and you know we all

00:03:24.140 look at our grandparents who you know eat tv dinners and smoke cigarettes and live until

00:03:30.980 their 90s and they're like food allergies you know what do you you know pansy you know or whatever

00:03:36.720 right yeah and so uh another poll said 50 of millennials have at least one food allergy right

00:03:45.420 I mean, look at our restaurant world,

00:03:47.700 you know, look at Whole Foods and Sprouts.

00:03:50.640 And, you know, I just, I'm not kidding,

00:03:54.440 yesterday I just spent $150

00:03:56.680 buying low histamine unaged beef

00:04:01.300 from a farm in San Diego

00:04:06.340 that essentially, well, that's at least

00:04:08.480 where their packing plant is,

00:04:09.820 that sends out this, you know,

00:04:12.060 specific health very very niche health condition yeah yeah yeah they bake meat

00:04:20.180 for people that struggle with mast cell activation syndrome which most people don't even have to

00:04:25.680 think about yeah yeah and and and so this is a weird world that we live in yeah um i always

00:04:30.520 remind people that we are the only generation that grew up without organic food i mean every

00:04:36.680 generation before us i mean maybe sure the 70s and 60s were kind of brutal but

00:04:40.180 I mean, organic didn't have to be a thing because everything that was edible was organic.

00:04:46.480 Yeah. Yeah. And so this is, we, we are certainly eating the worst food, having the worst clothing,

00:04:54.060 having the worst environments to live in and at toxicity levels than any other generation. So

00:05:02.620 there's something going on here. I think everybody knows like, why is everybody that's young sick? 1.00

00:05:07.760 Yeah. And some people talk about vaccines. Some people talk about air pollution. Some people talk about the food products. Some people talk about the pharmaceutical industry. Some people talk about air quality and environmental toxins and plastics. And so there's a lot of factors. 0.88

00:05:25.940 all play a part all play a part um you know so again back to this question like why why do i

00:05:32.760 think it's important for us to have this conversation uh there's two quotes i want to

00:05:39.640 share i don't know who said these quotes but everything is super important until you're sick

00:05:44.020 then you realize there was only one thing that was really important which is your health now

00:05:48.960 i know this is probably a secular quote so we know that that there's other things that are

00:05:54.040 important but you get the emphasis of the of the quote another one was quote a healthy person wants

00:06:00.500 a thousand things the sick person only wants one yeah last night i was um had the privilege to pray

00:06:09.540 over a member of our church his mom is in the last days of her life right and i got a chance to pray

00:06:19.480 over her and she is dying of cancer and she was in the living room of this church member's home

00:06:29.300 and she can't talk really she can open her eyes she can you know maybe whisper something

00:06:34.060 and i was praying over her and she was tearing up as she was praying she's still feeling

00:06:38.880 she's still understanding but the thing that she really wants at that moment

00:06:44.520 is just the one thing is just to be healthy again yeah we all take that for granted we do and so

00:06:51.420 there is certainly a discussion to be had around the christian um you know i'm the last guy that's

00:06:59.880 going to go i'm the advocate for self-care okay like i'm not that guy but what i am going to say

00:07:05.360 is that i believe it's important that we are stewarding our health in a way that allows us

00:07:12.760 to be productive and fruitful for the kingdom of God.

00:07:16.560 I'm not the guy that's like,

00:07:18.340 go to the gym selfies

00:07:19.480 and make sure that you're like obsessive

00:07:21.680 about supplementation or, you know,

00:07:24.580 I'm not like the fitness genre dude either.

00:07:29.080 I'm not trying to, you know, look sexy.

00:07:32.380 You know, my wife already thinks that I'm sexy.

00:07:34.540 So I'm trying to just get healthy and stay healthy. 0.90

00:07:38.640 Right.

00:07:39.560 And we'll talk more about, I guess, what that means.

00:07:42.120 Yeah. Okay. Awesome. Question number two is when did you first become sick? What was the cause

00:07:48.940 and what were your symptoms? So I first became sick in 2019, but it's, it's kind of a complex

00:07:56.860 thing, right? Because just like you, when did you first become sick? Right. You know, it's like,

00:08:00.960 well, there was, I can pinpoint some things, but it started long before I started realizing

00:08:05.940 I actually was sick. And there was like waves where you're, you're having symptoms and they

00:08:10.780 go away right and then you get better and then they get worse and then all of a sudden there's

00:08:14.380 a point where you realize i'm sick yeah and for me you know it was the when i would say you know

00:08:21.720 as early as 2005 i was having symptoms but i was young right i'm sure i'm just gonna push through

00:08:27.720 yeah you're naive muscle through yeah you're naive to those things yep and then 2019 my wife got

00:08:34.360 she got bit by a spider or something and she had this big bullseye rash the size of like

00:08:41.960 i don't know maybe a coffee cup yeah on her leg wow and a doctor was like a friend of ours who

00:08:49.840 was a doctor was like hey i think that's lyme disease and we went to the doctor the doctor's

00:08:55.100 like there's no lyme disease in oregon and so um we went to our friend who was a naturopathic

00:09:03.180 doctor and said no like that's that's like a classic sign of lyme disease yeah and so we took

00:09:11.380 her to the doctor because within like a week maybe two she was bedridden her joints were inflamed

00:09:17.860 having all the classic signs of of lyme disease right and the doctor put her on antibiotics

00:09:26.180 which you know there's two paths two lines of thinking right i i actually personally go for

00:09:33.080 more of the natural long-term slower antibiotics have their place but yeah it's not a it's not a 0.98

00:09:38.900 one-size-fits-all kind of thing no but she it happened to work for her she was on it for six 0.98

00:09:44.540 months of antibiotics and she got better now what we didn't know is that uh lyme disease is sexually 0.98

00:09:53.680 transmitted seems like every other country knows that okay but but that was sexually transmitted

00:09:58.620 i ended up showing up positive for lyme she tested positive for lyme for like

00:10:03.600 what i would say cdc level lyme disease so she was this doctor that was up there in oregon was 0.70

00:10:10.080 a complete fool for dismissing the reality that we actually had a confirmation by a test 0.90

00:10:17.820 I forgot the name of the 0.99

00:10:19.800 test, Western

00:10:21.440 blot, I think is what a test, the test

00:10:23.680 called, something like that. Yeah.

00:10:25.240 The best test to do for Lyme disease

00:10:27.560 is

00:10:29.200 oh man,

00:10:32.380 I'll get back to you.

00:10:35.480 There is, if I don't have to say it in this one,

00:10:37.520 I'll say it in the next one because I'll put it in my notes.

00:10:40.780 But I got sick

00:10:41.580 2019. I

00:10:43.140 started

00:10:45.520 getting really sick

00:10:46.400 and my body started shutting down and 2021 was the peak of me being like i feel like i was

00:10:53.440 going to die yeah 2022 was the start of healing 2023 is continuing to be chronically ill yeah

00:10:59.660 um in terms of the cause

00:11:03.480 i think it's a combination of of genetics um lifestyle sure um your current health

00:11:13.340 your environmental toxins, your viruses, your bacteria, your parasites, your microbes,

00:11:20.060 all the things that are, there's like, it's, again, people always want to think that it's

00:11:24.160 just one thing like, oh, you got sick because you got Lyme disease. Well, a lot of people get bit

00:11:29.800 by ticks and, and don't collapse on Lyme disease. Yeah. You know, a lot of people live in mold

00:11:35.820 and don't collapse on mold. Yeah. You know, a lot of people. One thing compounding on top of

00:11:40.760 another exactly and i've heard one doctor explain it that it's like a boiling pot and

00:11:47.480 you know when you get sick is the moment where it starts to overflow yeah and so you have to

00:11:54.280 turn the heat down on all the things that cause you to be sick yep yeah i know that all too well

00:11:59.640 having to uh cut out sugars or caffeine or you know any other yeah gluten for me was it was a

00:12:07.700 big one um so yeah there's just like little things that you have to hit that calm other things down

00:12:15.960 so that you can then start addressing the illness yeah yeah so it's way more complex than you think

00:12:21.880 yep i also tested positive for bartonella i tested positive for babesia which has their own

00:12:27.600 symptoms but mold seemed to be the thing that actually demonstrated or presented itself as

00:12:35.300 the main culprit to making me collapse that was that was the root cause that was the i might say

00:12:40.580 it's the root cause i'm just going to say that i was so sick already that once we started having

00:12:47.680 mold um and you know we didn't get our house tested because it's one of those things that

00:12:55.000 we figured out after we left really because i tested i took the mycotoxins uh sorry it's the

00:13:01.160 great plains mycotoxin mold test okay and they came back with basically off the charts with

00:13:09.640 aspergillus mold which is the common mold that you're going to see in someone's house and they

00:13:13.700 they told me that um that you know i thought for at first i was thinking oh that's it all i have to

00:13:23.380 do is get rid of the mold yeah out of my body and everything's going to be fine sure but that is not

00:13:29.400 the case anyone that's chronically ill and i i feel bad because there's all these mold facebook

00:13:34.260 groups and and chat rooms and things like that that people go in there and they're looking for

00:13:40.660 the one stop like they think it's something that you can just solve yeah versus it being an actual

00:13:45.900 complex robust issue with your whole body yeah and and they they just want the one stop fix it

00:13:56.660 What drug can I take?

00:13:57.900 What supplement can I take to fix these things?

00:14:02.040 So that was the main cause for me

00:14:06.860 is the mold kind of threw it off.

00:14:09.520 And we didn't know.

00:14:10.840 Dude, no one's house,

00:14:12.880 unless it's like the basement in the South.

00:14:16.700 Right.

00:14:17.520 You know, no one's like,

00:14:18.720 we like living in mold.

00:14:20.140 Like no one's trying to live in mold.

00:14:22.260 Yeah.

00:14:23.460 Not a good thing generally.

00:14:24.920 Yeah, not a good thing generally.

00:14:25.820 and if you have mold you you're generally going to fix it but but mold happens in like a water

00:14:31.860 leak that happened in your house six years ago yep sticks around you know or a thing in the

00:14:38.540 ceiling you don't know about or something behind the wall or in your crawl space under or your

00:14:42.200 washing machine right which i think was the culprit in our house in great degree yeah and

00:14:50.160 And we, all of a sudden, you know, we don't realize it, but I'm just slowly inhaling mold

00:14:57.900 spores. And a lot of people ask me, well, Dale, why are you sick? And why aren't your

00:15:04.260 kids sick and your wife's sick? And I have to remind them, not everybody processes toxins

00:15:10.540 the same way. And so you can be falling apart and your wife's not.

00:15:19.140 yeah like veronica's body detoxed much better than i did yeah but me in honor yep you know

00:15:26.020 that's what i was gonna say uh you're you know one out of three of your kids has has had some

00:15:31.160 sort of symptoms yeah so yeah you've seen it yeah um he's got pandas uh or pans it's basically

00:15:38.860 lots of motor tics neurological yeah you know you'll sometimes hear him he'll he'll be sitting

00:15:45.140 there and humming yeah and he stutters are like accompanying that yeah or you know he's constantly

00:15:51.500 moving his fingers and um the mold essentially threw off his neurological system yep so symptoms

00:16:00.980 okay again this is my story but i just want to hear just from you trevor just give me because

00:16:08.240 you're dealing with another side of this what what are your symptoms that you had in the beginning

00:16:12.420 Yeah. So symptoms for like celiac and Crohn's are just, you know, bowel movement issues,

00:16:21.620 things that where you have just major cramping in your stomach. So much for me, it was there

00:16:28.900 was so much inflammation in my gut that I could maybe eat four bites of food and then was completely

00:16:35.180 full. And then within like 15 to 30 minutes was experiencing cramps after that. And just

00:16:41.780 just major fatigue you're you're not producing energy because you're not you're not able to

00:16:49.940 to absorb the nutrients and minerals that you would normally get from from the foods and the

00:16:56.100 water that you drink and you were to the point where you were you know blood in the toilet yep

00:17:00.820 yeah it's uh it sounds uh bad because it is it was not uh a pleasant time it was not a pleasant

00:17:09.540 thing. So it's, yeah, it's, it's, it's a hard thing to watch, especially when you were like,

00:17:14.820 for me, it was, I was 27, 28, seeing that and thinking like, well, this is just something I'm

00:17:22.280 going through. I'll get better eventually to then realizing, like you said, it's, it's going to be

00:17:27.360 a lifelong or at least a decade long journey. Yeah. So, yeah. So this is for me, mine was more

00:17:37.100 total total body i listed out my symptoms but because yours was that neurological uh effect

00:17:42.960 and it was like essentially an immune deficiency yeah like my immune system was attacked and so i

00:17:49.080 this symptoms i listed out i had low body temperature raynaud's disease which is basically

00:17:54.020 cold hands and cold feet to their point where they hurt they're painful stomach pain um dizziness

00:17:59.840 constipation prostate pain i was going to the bathroom like an old man in the sense of you know

00:18:05.860 i couldn't go because there was this inflammation everywhere i started having

00:18:09.520 muscle twitches i'm talking when i talk about muscle twitches i'm talking like

00:18:13.000 thousands a day yeah like i have videos in my phone and you'd like look at my calf and on my

00:18:20.480 calf uh you could just watch like my it's like my skin was rippling because the that my neurological

00:18:26.880 system was just not functioning right um heart palpitations i had random hives around my body

00:18:34.080 for some reason kidney pain kidney stones yeah and so what you realize is that there's uh mold

00:18:42.260 is high and oxalates oxalates are the cause of kidney stones one cause of kidney stones and so

00:18:50.480 you're breathing in this stuff building up a kidney stone essentially yeah and so that was

00:18:57.240 the i literally almost passed out on the floor of the waiting room at the hospital i passed the

00:19:02.260 stone without any medicine and and i'll tell you this once it passes it doesn't hurt at all yeah

00:19:08.920 and it doesn't you think when you don't have a kidney stone as a man you think that it hurts

00:19:14.160 when it's passing through the situation right that's not what it hurts it hurts when it's

00:19:18.260 passing from what's called the uh ureters or whatever from your kidney to your bladder right

00:19:23.500 and so you just feel like someone's got a dull knife stabbing you in the side yeah brutal um

00:19:30.980 other symptoms i had were gastritis uh insomnia skin cancer i had skin cancer in my forehead

00:19:38.160 uh air hunger which is as terrible as it sounds yeah it's this idea that you can't get enough

00:19:46.320 air yeah and you've seen me have air hunger yeah um i still struggle with that symptom

00:19:50.780 here and there um i had what what i still have this what's called a patchless estation tube

00:19:57.240 it's when you lose a bunch of weight so i got sick and i lost a bunch of weight and your estation

00:20:01.240 tubes lose the fatty tissue inside of your ear and you you essentially can't keep your estation

00:20:06.200 tube closed right you want your station tube to stay closed until you yawn and it opens up and

00:20:11.240 lets air pressure out right mine will sometimes stay open and then it sounds like i can hear my

00:20:17.000 own breathing i can hear my own voice yeah i mean it's it's maddening there's a surgery to get fixed

00:20:23.320 lord willing i'll just get fat again i mean not not unhealthy unhealthy fat but i'm pretty skinny

00:20:27.780 yeah um how many people by the way do you think yawned when you said the word yawn yeah i don't

00:20:33.040 know is that a thing i know if you see people yeah if you hear i almost did i had to hold back

00:20:36.980 really if you hear the word yawn do you yawn i mean i mean i almost did so okay so um i had hair

00:20:44.320 loss i my hair starting to grow back a little bit more i had ulcerative colitis which is similar to

00:20:49.820 what trevor was dealing with i was starting to have blood in in the stool um i had liver pain

00:20:57.520 kidney pain um and then the biggest thing and the scariest thing and trevor's actually witnessed one

00:21:01.880 of these yeah is a non-epileptic seizure yep and so sat with you through that for i mean 30 minutes

00:21:10.600 to an hour yeah um and this is even after having taken a small dosage of the medication yeah that

00:21:17.320 stops them yeah that stops them so it's it's a big deal so basically what happens is my body

00:21:22.680 my neurological system starts to just tank and i start to have mast cell activation in my

00:21:30.200 neurological system and i start to convulse now like shivering kind of yeah it's the same response

00:21:39.560 as shivering but you're not necessarily cold however being warm happens to stop the shivering

00:21:46.340 yeah um it helps at least which yeah is a symptom that of of the full body experience that you're

00:21:54.080 going through yeah like my brain's there so i'm not like you know grand mal seizure like eyes in

00:21:58.760 back of the head none of that right but i'm like literally my whole body is shaking and i can't

00:22:03.660 stop it right until i take some medicine so what i'm saying is that this has been a pretty rough

00:22:11.060 road yeah i'd say so and uh i think a lot of people know that i've struggled with chronic

00:22:17.620 illness but i think people think oh he can't be that sick because look he's doing a podcast yeah

00:22:22.880 and that's the problem is that with chronic illness it's like i saw you you looked fine

00:22:28.960 right and you're like well i'm only out when i feel good yeah but at home and it's a roller

00:22:35.860 coaster it goes up and down it's it's uh you know you know the the next few hours you might be fine

00:22:41.980 and then you know a few hours after that you'll you'll tank to some degree so yeah so you have

00:22:47.200 another condition yeah in addition to the stomach thing yeah i have uh chronic headaches i've had

00:22:53.680 those since i was like 15 16 years old and it is one of the most debilitating things i think even

00:23:00.560 more so than the Crohn's and Celiac

00:23:03.200 because it's in your head

00:23:05.980 and it just is like full pain.

00:23:09.680 And when Trevor has one of these,

00:23:12.780 like his whole face changes.

00:23:14.940 Yeah.

00:23:15.480 Right?

00:23:15.780 And it's not like,

00:23:16.520 oh, just take some Tylenol.

00:23:18.180 It's not one of those kind of headaches.

00:23:19.560 It's migraine.

00:23:20.440 Yeah.

00:23:21.140 And I'll get dark circles under my eyes

00:23:24.080 and just, yeah,

00:23:26.300 like my entire countenance,

00:23:29.000 The way my body, my posture is, is just different.

00:23:33.400 It's a very interesting experience to go through.

00:23:37.420 It's almost like you can't be yourself because the pain is too much.

00:23:44.040 We've done church at Trevor's house while he was in bed nursing a headache

00:23:49.480 because church was already there.

00:23:50.740 He woke up in the morning, had a headache.

00:23:52.400 And we were all there worshiping 10 families and kids everywhere.

00:23:56.580 Which sounds disruptive, but in all honesty, it was one of the most uplifting times that I've had to experience during a headache.

00:24:07.320 Yeah.

00:24:07.780 Because you're getting to hear people worship the Lord and pray and know that they are specifically praying for you in that gathering at that time.

00:24:17.720 And you haven't had like 40 of these things.

00:24:20.180 You've had like 4,000 of these things.

00:24:22.280 Yeah.

00:24:22.680 Or 400 of these things.

00:24:24.040 Exactly. It was at a point a few years ago where it was maybe two to three per week.

00:24:31.540 And a lot of them happened on weekends because my body would build up toxin over the course of the week.

00:24:41.160 And then when Saturday hit, it would essentially overflow and my body responded through headaches.

00:24:48.480 And you couldn't take ibuprofen because it would destroy your stomach because you were trying to heal.

00:24:54.040 Yeah, because of the gut issues, I couldn't take Advil. It has, you know, chemical compounds within that that strip the gut lining. And so there's, you know, there's obvious an attachment there from me dealing with headaches for so long to, you know, the gut issues that I experienced.

00:25:13.440 So I haven't had any medication on a regular basis in, I don't know, five, six years for like the headaches and things like that.

00:25:25.120 Yeah. And for me, I don't have any medication except I have...

00:25:29.460 When it gets extreme.

00:25:30.460 I have a rescue med.

00:25:31.860 And it's, yeah, it's like a kid's dosage.

00:25:34.160 Yeah. I take basically a kid's dosage. It's a rescue med when I need it.

00:25:39.920 Because I just don't want to have anything, be dependent upon anything.

00:25:44.440 I'm constantly on the natural path as you are.

00:25:46.640 Yeah.

00:25:46.860 The same thing with chronic illness.

00:25:49.760 It's not just the illness we have to deal with.

00:25:52.920 It's the recovery from it after you're done going through that experience.

00:25:58.520 And all the things that go on with your family, which I think is the next question.

00:26:03.300 Yeah.

00:26:03.740 Next question.

00:26:05.020 How did your chronic illness affect your life, family, and church?

00:26:08.860 so which we've kind of already touched on a little bit yeah so i'll tell you a couple things i mean

00:26:14.340 when you're chronically ill especially in the beginning yeah this is new to you if you're on

00:26:19.840 this journey right now it's it's constant stress and worry in the beginning because you've just

00:26:24.180 never had to fight this battle before and especially when you start to see that it could

00:26:28.180 be serious you don't know what it is you have i'll tell you what like not having a diagnosis

00:26:32.060 is more stressful than having a diagnosis

00:26:35.880 because I thought I had cancer.

00:26:39.660 I thought I was dying.

00:26:40.600 I thought I had MS.

00:26:41.700 The wondering about what's going on is just as bad.

00:26:46.400 Any research, I mean, it's just like in my brain,

00:26:49.580 I've been diagnosed with all these things.

00:26:51.500 Yeah, and there was a season

00:26:54.840 where I was telling my kids before I'd go to bed,

00:26:59.060 you know, hey, if daddy dies,

00:27:00.560 just know that that god's sovereign over all this and that god predestined dad's death

00:27:06.780 at this time and and don't don't be angry with god if if that happens and you know they'd ask

00:27:14.640 me questions about that and and you know i would have conversations because i was that sick yeah

00:27:19.460 uh and people were concerned about me like people were coming up to my wife privately and like

00:27:24.780 hey is dale dying yeah you know and so it certainly changed our our life it forced our

00:27:32.460 relocation from oregon to arizona yeah um it we lost everything we own so when you have when

00:27:38.520 you're sick with mold you you can't move with all of your stuff because the mold spores are on all

00:27:44.660 your stuff um so we had to get rid of basically everything i'm talking like 95 of what we owned

00:27:54.720 and and the stuff you keep you have to keep the fix through like ozone uh you know treatment

00:28:03.200 and you can only keep things that are basically glass metal some clothing yeah um then you realize

00:28:10.200 it's not worth keeping the clothing after you know you're like i don't need this thing yeah you know

00:28:14.300 there are some things that I've tried to salvage

00:28:16.520 like by keeping them in storage for a period of time

00:28:18.600 and like, you know, there's some

00:28:20.520 studies out there, but there's

00:28:22.120 really not much you can do to get mold out of certain

00:28:24.380 things. And the mycotoxins stay

00:28:26.380 there forever. And so I'll react to like

00:28:28.500 certain books that I had in my office

00:28:30.380 or a table or a painting.

00:28:32.160 I'm trying to move a painting for my office that I had

00:28:34.260 in my office at home two years ago

00:28:36.220 back into my office now.

00:28:38.400 And today, I took it outside

00:28:40.340 and let it sit in the sun for six

00:28:42.260 hours, hoping that it would maybe

00:28:43.880 you know there's again there's lots of data out there on how to remove mold but honestly the best

00:28:49.540 thing is just get rid of it all so we're talking like 50 000 worth of stuff we just lost and

00:28:56.920 there's no insurance to cover that yep and that was a thing um it's now limited my environments

00:29:05.000 and you know this trevor because i can't go into buildings yeah you know like i'm gonna i'm

00:29:13.700 actually going to say something because this is something just recently uh i did my pastor story

00:29:18.300 hour you remember that right yeah um there's a bunch of people that that are trying to hate me

00:29:24.440 on the internet kind of as always but there's a particular woman who is like i called the

00:29:29.820 cottonwood library to find out if dale had kept doing these pastor story hours just to show that

00:29:37.220 He just did that for the press.

00:29:39.420 Right.

00:29:41.500 And what they don't know,

00:29:44.280 what happened when I did that pastor story hour?

00:29:46.380 What happened when I was there?

00:29:48.360 Yeah.

00:29:48.540 I mean, I think within maybe five, 10 minutes,

00:29:52.740 you reacted to the building.

00:29:54.440 Yeah.

00:29:54.840 So there's, yeah, you kind of have to,

00:29:57.400 you've committed to it.

00:29:58.760 Yeah.

00:29:59.240 So you got to get through it.

00:30:00.600 Yeah.

00:30:01.040 And then get out as quickly as possible.

00:30:04.200 I had almost a seizure-like reaction when I left there.

00:30:07.220 because mold loves books and you're in a bunch of old books from all these people's houses

00:30:13.880 that have mold. And so we've been talking about how do we restore the pastor story hour

00:30:21.980 and do it in somewhere like maybe our church building that we're going to get at some point

00:30:27.600 or somewhere that's a safer place. Yeah. But that's also been an issue.

00:30:32.340 that's also the issue trying to find a uh a church building to rent uh how many buildings

00:30:37.720 have we looked at i would say eight to ten yeah yeah and we couldn't find one until recently

00:30:45.220 well yeah i was gonna say we found a handful that were just beautiful uh buildings yeah that you

00:30:51.860 know once we got there it was maybe you know 30 minutes into it realizing that that you were

00:30:57.940 reacting yeah uh which just kind of puts a halt to everything yeah and it makes us start from 0.99

00:31:03.320 scratch and people think i'm like you know some wacko idiot like he's reacting to the building 0.82

00:31:08.040 yeah it's like no like i i can't like a real thing yeah it's a real thing like i can't just like 0.98

00:31:13.040 uh hey every time i go into your building i have diarrhea like that's like uh you know like what

00:31:18.300 do you want me to say you know or i think at that point they would say like yeah you know tmi yeah

00:31:22.400 right and so um yeah it's one of those things you just go it's limited my environments yeah we had

00:31:28.080 to rent an expensive new house yeah um we are building an expensive new house yeah not because

00:31:36.140 we need an expensive house but because because the structure actually matters at this point yeah

00:31:40.820 we're trying to build with metal we're trying to build with things that are preventative of mold

00:31:44.720 and we actually had neighbors across the street from us in our neighborhood who are dealing with

00:31:49.460 the same thing and so you've been kind of surrounded around mold people yeah totally

00:31:52.800 you know i feel like arizona is the place that people go who are struggling with mold yes so

00:31:58.380 it's a thing here there's lots of people so we're like the chronically ill church yeah like you're

00:32:02.860 probably the only church that's going to have like three air purifiers in our church going

00:32:07.720 asking people not to wear giant amounts of perfume when they come to church on sunday yeah um you

00:32:14.420 You know, I don't know.

00:32:15.240 I'm just like...

00:32:16.220 And it's not because we just dislike those things.

00:32:19.560 It's simply out of a need to make sure

00:32:22.360 that we can all worship together and remain well.

00:32:25.980 Well, and it's essentially, you know,

00:32:28.700 I'll give you another fun story.

00:32:29.980 I was just recently over at another member

00:32:32.080 of our church's house

00:32:33.040 and they just moved into this new house

00:32:35.960 and I felt okay.

00:32:37.360 It's a newer house.

00:32:38.160 Sure.

00:32:38.820 And I walked up to him

00:32:40.440 after we were in the house for a few minutes

00:32:41.920 and said, hey, guys.

00:32:42.940 and i was kind of being like tongue-in-cheek and funny but at the same time i was like guys i love

00:32:47.320 you so much yeah but i will never be able to come over to your house if you don't unplug every one

00:32:54.180 of those glade plugins in your house like and so they have all these glade plugins and i'm like

00:32:59.240 and then on another note please read up on glade plugins because they're just poison that you're

00:33:04.800 breathing in your lungs and uh and when you remove yourself from those things it it intensifies yes

00:33:11.420 And so you're not used to it

00:33:12.680 because you don't have it in your own home.

00:33:14.140 And then you come into somebody else's home

00:33:15.740 and it's almost like a heightened sense of it. 0.99

00:33:18.500 Yeah, all the boomers are like,

00:33:20.240 Febreze, Glade Plugins, Lysol. 1.00

00:33:23.320 Like nothing happens to them.

00:33:25.120 Yeah. 0.67

00:33:25.420 Right, all the millennials are like,

00:33:26.860 oh, I can't breathe, you know, I'm reacting. 0.99

00:33:29.840 Yeah, my mother-in-law will pine saw the walls in her house.

00:33:36.080 And they're not wood walls.

00:33:37.020 To somehow clean it, yeah.

00:33:38.800 Right, are they wood walls?

00:33:39.740 uh no they're just drywall drywall okay yeah so this is yeah this is a thing right yeah yeah

00:33:44.880 they like the smell sure the smell kills us yeah and so um yeah so hypersensitivity essentially

00:33:53.720 was a big thing um i had to limit my diet yeah um i have been eating a lot of people might be

00:33:59.880 saddened by this but for about three years almost three years i have been eating the same

00:34:08.340 lunch and dinner what is that what do you what do you eat normally it's a sad sad thing uh i have

00:34:15.600 rice i have and that's white rice chicken rice um i have chicken and it's specific chicken that's

00:34:22.880 like low histamine chicken that's flash frozen when it was butchered that's right i have um

00:34:27.740 variety of vegetables and onions which is nice and i do i am able to integrate steak in a couple

00:34:36.220 times per week, which has been kind of new, like a year. Sure. Yeah. But I have had the same food

00:34:43.060 basically every day for like three years. Yeah. My body just does well that way. And, you know,

00:34:50.360 I have some snacks and I have some good stuff from breakfast that I can have. So I'm not like

00:34:55.520 malnourished. Right. I thought about this too. I'm like, you know, you go back like 200 years

00:35:01.200 and no one's having like a foodie diet yeah it's true they're like we got potatoes we got chicken

00:35:09.460 we got bread it's a diet specific to their region yeah they're not eating watermelon in

00:35:14.660 oregon in december right you know so it's a thing but um i you know i would say the other things for

00:35:24.720 my church and i had to step down from preaching for about six months and 2021 when i got really

00:35:29.640 sick we moved down to arizona i stopped preaching for for a year i wasn't pastoring for a half a

00:35:34.120 year or so until we replanted here in in uh arizona um i think appearing as physically weak

00:35:41.800 to my children and to other men i didn't i didn't see that as i didn't expect me to be insecure

00:35:49.080 about that but i certainly was i was certainly struggling with you know watching the guys my

00:35:58.120 like you know tag barbell logic and hit their 300 pound deadlift and i'm over here like

00:36:03.180 withering yeah struggling to just breathe in general yeah yeah and so um but i did i did

00:36:11.320 realize that my by god's grace faithfulness to the ministry to you know there wasn't really a

00:36:20.180 stop in our podcasts yeah our social media stuff or you know all the things that we were doing as

00:36:26.100 ministry um i think my children uh the people at our church uh again this is all by god's grace

00:36:34.100 in me sustained me enough to remain faithful to the ministry while being sick and there was

00:36:40.180 something accomplished there that i can't necessarily put my finger on but work that

00:36:45.620 was accomplished in me yes and and through me being ill and weak yeah that that people got a

00:36:54.260 chance to see the sincerity and validity of the message that i preached yeah yeah second corinthians

00:37:04.260 uh 12 9 and 10 paul talks about when i am weak then i'm strong in christ yeah this

00:37:12.020 was certainly like that season of life is going okay lord i'm and i did feel like i was

00:37:19.380 actually related myself several metaphors like i felt like uh like you know a 64 nova with like

00:37:27.720 uh like a you know it's like an old muscle car yeah with like a volkswagen bug engine in it

00:37:33.600 yeah or i felt like um like i was i was essentially like an animal tied to a post

00:37:42.940 and i couldn't go anywhere and do anything and work and then i realized that post was christ

00:37:48.440 And so when you're sick, you're super close to Christ because you're just, all you have is Christ.

00:37:56.640 Well, I think for that reason, it's important for our kids to see that.

00:38:00.740 Like when I have headaches, I want them to know that while I might be struggling and have this form of weakness that I'm dealing with, I am strengthened in Christ.

00:38:14.580 yeah that doesn't make the experience pleasant doesn't make the experience easy but it does when

00:38:21.820 you are out of it you you can then realize that that your rest is not dependent upon how healthy

00:38:30.200 you are necessarily it is it is solely based on on who christ is and and what he's done for us

00:38:37.020 that is the greatest comfort.

00:38:40.860 And when that's all you have,

00:38:42.700 it should still be enough.

00:38:45.040 Your eyes are fixed on eternal life,

00:38:47.420 not this life,

00:38:48.500 like the life to come.

00:38:49.700 Yeah.

00:38:49.980 And for our kids to see that in us,

00:38:52.060 I think is of great benefit

00:38:53.800 because it shows them,

00:38:56.760 dad might be not doing well today,

00:39:00.120 but there's still hope.

00:39:02.180 And the message that he believes in

00:39:04.980 doesn't change when he's sick.

00:39:07.020 exactly yeah yeah fourth question how are you doing now i am certainly better i would say i'm

00:39:14.380 80 percent um when i left oregon i would say 50 percent yeah i have i got up to i felt like 90

00:39:22.000 and then i dropped back down and you know you start to feel better you start to change your

00:39:27.240 supplements and you start to change certain things that you're doing and you think i'm getting better

00:39:31.860 and then all of a sudden you're like loosening up yeah you loosen it up and then you you get

00:39:36.080 sick again and so um i'll tell you this just you said something earlier it's not just about having

00:39:42.560 good days it's about having good hours yeah every day i'm generally feeling bad at least one hour a

00:39:51.200 day yeah wow but if i'm feeling good the vast majority of the day yeah that's great yeah um

00:39:59.760 it's a win it's a win so if i just feel kind of like oh i just don't feel good or i'm slow or

00:40:04.560 you have a symptom um it's not day by day it's hour by hour yeah it really is and that that's

00:40:11.360 a big shift for me um you know i have some other things like i got amalgam fillings in my mouth

00:40:17.020 that i got to get out but i've been too sick to even deal with them so i got to get those out of

00:40:21.500 risk involved with that type of procedure we're the only generation that people are like hey let's

00:40:26.220 put let's put lead and or whatever what is it yeah is it no it's not lead it's a is it lead no

00:40:32.860 it's arsenic and anyways i i feel like my brain's not as sharp as it should be we're also in this

00:40:37.880 building which has had a little bit of issues with some mold and it's it's very humid today

00:40:42.580 it's very humid today and so i could feel sick tomorrow um but i'm trying to add some more stuff

00:40:48.200 to my diets i'm trying to change my supplements and i will say the thing that i think has helped

00:40:53.780 me a lot is pickleball pickleball yeah pickleball yes i started because i'm like i was basically

00:41:01.440 dying. So I'm like a 60-year-old man inside of a 38-year-old's body. And I'm like, I started

00:41:07.900 playing pickleball. And so... Which out here, there are a ton of retirees that are playing

00:41:15.500 the game. Yeah. And at the beginning, I was... Playing it better than us. Yeah. At the beginning,

00:41:19.580 I was getting crushed by 70-year-old women. And I've now been playing for probably two years 1.00

00:41:25.940 and played some tournaments

00:41:28.120 and you know

00:41:29.180 I'm in it now I'm like honestly

00:41:32.180 when I'm functioning

00:41:33.760 decent I'm playing five days a week

00:41:36.060 you know an hour and a half

00:41:38.300 a day and I love

00:41:40.260 it I'm competitive if you're

00:41:42.280 a pickleballer you got to come hang

00:41:44.240 out with us in Arizona but

00:41:46.260 yeah that's been some

00:41:47.440 I'm doing okay a bright

00:41:50.140 side of still pray for me I still have a long

00:41:52.340 road to go totally it

00:41:54.220 might be a couple more years before i'm up to that 90 yeah yeah uh question number five what are you

00:42:00.640 going to be covering in the next three episodes so when i was writing this outline um i was thinking

00:42:08.620 about okay this we have a series you know uh four episodes one is the next episode i want to talk

00:42:13.560 about a biblical exhortation on suffering contentment and hope yeah because those are the

00:42:22.480 those are the things that if you don't have a theology of suffering you should because you're

00:42:28.820 going to suffer yeah like it's not if it's when and it's unfortunate to have to figure that all

00:42:35.360 out when you're sick yeah or when someone dies right and so you know i used to have like a dualism

00:42:42.040 like oh the devil's doing things that and god's doing things and and god wishes that he could

00:42:48.820 stop the devil's work, but he can't. And then you realize like, no, actually it's, it's the devil

00:42:55.160 that comes up to God and ask permission to afflict Job and that nothing comes to pass without God's

00:43:01.500 approval and permission. And there's like God's permissive will and decisive will. And there's

00:43:06.260 all this stuff and God's sovereign over your, over your sickness in the sense that he allows

00:43:10.680 those things to happen or ordains them even to happen. And, and, you know, he actually accomplishes

00:43:16.560 sanctify and work in sickness and suffering and and so there's there's all of that that you you

00:43:22.400 need to really have figured out before you're in the fire right so i want to talk about that

00:43:29.220 contentment because man trying to be content when you are sick is hard yeah um i would say i still

00:43:37.100 wrestle with that. Like praising God, not just, um, in your suffering, but check this praising

00:43:51.980 God for the suffering. Yep. That is a major distinction. Yeah. Yeah. I heard a quote. Uh,

00:43:59.320 I can't remember from who exactly, but it was, uh, you know, realizing what, what the Lord can do

00:44:06.540 through, uh, through suffering and, you know, even going so far as to say, you know, are we willing

00:44:14.380 to, to go through these moments of suffering? Are we willing to, um, to experience these things

00:44:22.300 in order to grow closer to God? Yeah. And we're not masochists that we're saying like that we're

00:44:28.560 praising God for our suffering. Give us more. No, we're saying that we trust God so much when it

00:44:34.780 comes when it comes it will um we know that god will work all things together for good for those

00:44:40.720 according or for those who love him and are called according to his purpose and so we we we can praise

00:44:46.540 him for that suffering um so that that'll be the next episode we'll talk about suffering

00:44:51.660 um the third episode will be a practical guide to biblical lifestyle for for good health okay and

00:44:58.620 um so that'll be like what what do we what should we do as christians just to live a healthy

00:45:06.940 lifestyle yeah and honestly i'm not i'm not an expert but being sick makes you very acutely aware

00:45:15.500 right of a lot of the methods honestly i don't even seek much medical care because at this point

00:45:22.860 I haven't met a doctor

00:45:25.080 that knows more about my condition than me.

00:45:27.440 Right.

00:45:28.060 And with the internet

00:45:29.300 and the books that I've read,

00:45:31.560 you know,

00:45:31.980 it's more like I work with a doctor.

00:45:33.680 Yeah.

00:45:33.800 I don't submit to a doctor.

00:45:35.420 Certainly.

00:45:35.940 Because,

00:45:36.440 you know,

00:45:38.380 I've read thousands and thousands of pages

00:45:39.820 on this.

00:45:41.360 When I was ill,

00:45:42.140 I was like,

00:45:42.640 everything was like,

00:45:43.640 get better.

00:45:44.580 Yeah.

00:45:45.300 So,

00:45:45.800 so a practical guide,

00:45:46.640 like basics,

00:45:47.220 just basics on how to be healthy.

00:45:50.040 Yeah.

00:45:50.520 And then the last one will be addressing

00:45:51.920 the medical system.

00:45:52.860 and supplements because the medical system, there's obviously a massive distrust, like

00:46:00.620 institutional distrust in our generation. Right. We were just talking about that. Yep. Like experts,

00:46:06.680 CDC. Yeah. Yeah. We don't trust you, you know, sir. Yeah. Um, doctors we've lost trust for,

00:46:13.680 you know, pastors we've lost trust for. So, so how do you deal with a secular medical system or,

00:46:18.460 a, you know, the medical system essentially is good at acute. You break your arm. I want to go 0.90

00:46:23.700 to the hospital. You're chronically ill. They're not going to have nothing for you. At least my 0.87

00:46:28.020 experience, you know, they want to give you a pharmaceutical. They want to get you all the

00:46:31.420 things, right? So talking about the naturopathic approach, God's design for the earth and the

00:46:36.820 world and healing. And the supplement side of things has its own set of issues too. Yes. Where

00:46:43.220 they'll, they'll claim, you know, this fish oil or something like that will, will cure all of,

00:46:49.620 all of your issues. And it, you know, just like the medical system, it is not a one size fits all.

00:46:56.620 Every body is different, right? That's like what the kids say to, or the doctor says to the kids,

00:47:01.960 your body is different than his body and her body. Every body is different. And that's true.

00:47:06.980 but it's like we all have different bodies.

00:47:09.460 So yeah, that's the plan for the next couple of episodes.

00:47:15.680 Amen.

00:47:16.440 Any last thoughts you have?

00:47:19.200 Yeah, I think with what I've gone through

00:47:24.380 in the past 10 years of my life

00:47:27.040 is something that I certainly would not,

00:47:31.360 I don't want to minimize the ways that God has used

00:47:36.860 my illnesses, the chronic issues with headaches and things like that to prepare me for something

00:47:46.020 great. And so if you are currently in the process of going through an illness, struggling with

00:47:53.580 something that is chronic, there is hope. Whether it be in this life you find healing or in the

00:48:01.640 life to come in christ uh there's there's always hope not everybody gets better right uh and that's

00:48:08.400 a hard thing to swallow truth yep but not everybody gets better yep and um and so yeah how do we

00:48:16.260 redirect our god is still good yeah god is still good how can we continue to sing yeah um all glory

00:48:22.800 be to christ in the midst of a terminal diagnosis um and so hopefully this is edifying and helpful

00:48:29.660 we're excited to to go through it just because i think it's a topic that maybe the church has

00:48:34.220 avoided um and so hopefully it's a it's a series that you can send to family members and friends

00:48:39.400 or whoever has a mysterious illness this might be a very helpful series to send them and so

00:48:45.200 thanks for joining us on this episode if you haven't left a review if you're a regular listener

00:48:48.800 we'd love it if you left us a review i think last time i checked we're over 6 000 reviews

00:48:53.460 maybe even 7 000 i can't remember but those reviews really do help the exposure of this show

00:48:59.460 And you can also watch this on YouTube.

00:49:01.620 So you can watch it.

00:49:02.300 You can watch it.

00:49:03.300 Again, it'll be in our app.

00:49:04.900 You can listen to it on our website.

00:49:06.680 You can listen to it anywhere that podcasts are available.

00:49:10.120 And so we just thank you guys for being a part of it.

00:49:12.220 So again, I'm Dale Partridge.

00:49:13.480 This is Trevor West. 0.98

00:49:14.880 You're watching Real Christianity. 0.74

00:49:16.280 We'll see you guys next week. 0.99

00:49:17.260 Bye.

Dale Partridge - August 24, 2023

Christ & Chronic Illness Pt. 1： My Story - Dale Partridge

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