Essential Oils | Surprise Blessings

Surprise blessings. 

The first time I’d ever heard of an essential oil was when I was pregnant with Matthew and living with my in-laws. My Father-in-law had a skin irritation that appeared to be from his wrist watch, my sister-in-law, who’s always made amazing goat milk recipes (click here to learn more about her awesome products), suggested he use an essential oil called Tea Tree, also known as Melaleuca Essential Oil. She gave him some to use, from what I remember it appeared to do enough to spark my curiosity. 

Not too long after this, a friend came along with her amazing healthy lifestyle, eating grass-fed beef and organic grapes. She used many natural products, she loved to research, and she gave me samples of essential oils. Which ones? Tea Tree and Lavender! I finally had an opportunity to try this amazing oil out for myself. But I was skeptical. Is it a placebo effect? Is it worth the price tag? I’ll save the story of how I fell in love with these two oils for another post, because this blog is about a surprise blessing. You already know these oils worked for me and my family. If they didn’t I wouldn’t have continued to use them for 4 years, I wouldn’t have taken them to Africa with me, and I wouldn’t be wasting my time telling you about them.

So what are the surprise blessings of using essential oils?

• Health Awareness.

  • I pay more attention to what is going onto and into my (and my family’s) body. I have learned so many things about myself that actually have nothing to do with Essential Oils. Like being Gluten-Free! Guys I was always sick and I never realized it until I went Gluten free and lost 30 pounds of inflammation weight in 3 months and for the first time in my life had regular menstruation without the help of medicine. Another odd-ball sign that I needed to be gluten free was that I never bruised! For example, when hiking in the mountains of Pensilvania I slipped and smashed my face (right near my eye socket) on a sharp rock. It cut the skin, I never bruised. Seeing the difference this one natural step to living a chemical-free life can make gave me motivation to research other ways to live a healthier life. I researched why someone wouldn’t bruise, a possible reason: malnutrition. Then I researched malnutrition and infertility, amazing they go hand in hand! Then I research common causes of this type of malnutrition and boom: a gluten free lifestyle was my first experiment. Guess what, I bruise now! HUGE important side note: through this whole testing process I saw not only naturopathic doctors but also gastrointestinal specialists to make sure there wasn’t a greater underlying cause of my issues. The Doctors’ conclusions were that I have a mild form of celiacs disease and should obviously not eat any gluten. 

• Financial Savings.

  • I know most people wouldn’t think this because quality essential oils are expensive! But ever since using Essential Oils I have used them in DIY recipes for salves, skin care products, hair treatments, etc. The benefits the oils provided were noticeable. And even though the quality essential oils aren’t cheap, one bottle would last me a long time! I could get tons of DIY recipes out of it. The more I made my own products the less I could use over the counter ones. Even high quality amazing products, many that I tried in an effort to support different friend’s MLM businesses, would not benefit my skin in the same way. some of the top rated skin care products with amazing before and after photos made my skin oily, or dry, or broken out. Additionally those products are usually REALLY expensive. Making my own products with simple and safe ingredients that I knew my skin tolerated instead of testing every natural product on the market saved me and my family a fortune. And I love that I know how to make what I need, and that I have enough knowledge surrounding herbal medicine to experiment, be creative, and use a variety of ingredients so my skin doesn’t become desensitized to one product.  Additionally, since using the Thieves cleaner I have been able to replace many other expensive “specialized” household cleaners. 

• Friendships. 

  • Yes, this is one of my biggest surprise blessings with using and loving essential oils. Since my friend Dee and I started sharing our love and knowledge for essential oils with each other, we have discovered a whole knew level of our friendship. I attribute this blessing to us being sisters in Christ. We connect on a much deeper level because of our mutual love for Jesus. But we’ve known each other for longer than I’ve known Matt, we’ve been friends this whole time. But we never really talked with each other about our struggles with infertility, our desire to live a healthier lifestyle, our passion for wellness, our strong work ethics, our passions to love our family to the best of our ability, our desire to have our husband’s burden to financially provide lessened, our hope that our hard work can bring them home to work alongside us, our love for helping others and genuinely connecting, and most importantly our drive to work our hardest at whatever God puts before us for His glory. Sharing all of that with each other  has made us even more passionate about it all! Now we talk almost daily. We actively pray for and encourage each other. We hang out and have so much fun “working” together. And our friendship has already grown as a result. Doing an essential oil business along side one of my best friends has multitasked this journey in the best way. Everything we do together with the essential oil business is twice as productive with half the work and all while investing in our friendship. For you Dee, I am so grateful. I love you dearly, my friend. You are a beautiful, knowledgeable, fun, and loving woman of God with an infectious award-winning laugh. God knew what he was doing when he brought us together on this journey. 

• Community.

  • There is an interesting community that loves essential oils. Through my years of researching and following fellow essential oil users, I saw little bits of the community that revolved around living a healthy and well life. When we were in Africa first announcing our news about adopting the second set of twins, Allissa Davis, Diamond Leader at Young Living Essential Oils, reached out to me. She said something like, I want to do a fundraising effort through my essential oil community for your second set of twins, is that ok with you? I had many mlm ladies offer similar sweet offers, but nothing really ever came of them. I told her it was a blessing and we were grateful for whatever help we received. Her effort blew me away. For the entire month she promoted our story to her team of over 3,000 families. The awareness of our need, and our adopted children’s need grew. Their first donation was over $2000! I was blown away by their generosity. When I was looking into becoming a member of an essential oil team (simply to get discounted and free products) I knew right away that I wanted to be a part of this loving and giving community.  It wasn’t until I became a member of the Silver Drop Society that I realized the magnitude of Allissa’s campaign to help us. Below are screenshots of a few of her campaign posts, and the responses from members of the Silver Drop Society. Going through all these this morning blessed me beyond words. If you were a part of this campaign, we thank you from the bottom of our hearts!!! 

Are you crying like a baby? Me too! This is the community that has been a HUGE hidden blessing to me and my family. I thank God for each and every one of them.