Our hope at Heaven in Healthcare is that through events like our recent annual conference, we get the opportunity to connect with you, and you get to connect with each other in a really meaningful way. Our November event was certainly a wonderful opportunity for us to meet healthcare workers in our community, and today we want introduce you to Dani Simpson, who joined us for the first time last month in search of just that kind of special connection.
Dani is the founder of strideintolife.com. She is a Health coach, Business mentor and Mum of three and has recently written a book called 21 Steps to Unstuck; Overcome Hard Things and become a Happier, Healthier You. Her journey of profound healing led her to retrain as a Health Coach, and her dream is to establish a collaborative approach to healthcare with elements like holistic movement, medicine, coaching, book groups, prayer and joy at the heart of what she offers.
We asked Dani to write a special guest blog for us, which will hopefully give you an insight into the journey she’s been on, and how she is working towards her dream of serving communities with a ‘whole person’ centred approach. Enjoy!
Yet What Can I Give Him…? I Give Him my Heart
I had planned to write something seasonal and bright for this blog, but as I keep hearing echoed in the beautiful lyrics of Lucy Grimble ‘You just keep looking straight at me’. God is looking straight at me, and His eyes say something else; something far more meaningful.
When God’s gaze lingers, I’m often tempted to pull away. But His silent counsel is so loving. Curious. Confident. It’s a look that, whenever I hold it, invites a brave response from the heart. And this is a journey we are all on: of feeling so many things on the inside when we’re ‘seen’ and then facing the ongoing choice about what we’re going to do in those moments. Sometimes we pull away and busy ourselves; perhaps the invitation to deal with ‘the thing’ makes us look away. But sometimes something much more powerful happens… we say ‘Who me?’ and ‘When, now?’ ‘If not you, then who?’, and ultimately, ‘If not now, then when?’
At the HiH Conference this year God moved in ‘the grit’. I had just written a book and one of the deep questions I added before the final edit was this: ‘Would you go about your day with grit in your eye knowing it would cause harm if left there? So why go about your day with niggly grit in your heart or mind – the sources of life itself? We’ve denied, ignored, and minimised what we’re afraid to confront for long enough now. We’ve shied away from taking ownership of the things we’d rather run from. We’ve discovered our survival tactics don’t work very well. But when we finally find and face our discomfort, we find comfort, freedom and even healing in our bodies.’ So, when Dr Lysa Owen gave us grit to pop in our shoes, (to be removed later) I smiled. God is always speaking to us. When we acknowledge and deal with the ‘pain’ we’ve been accommodating in our lives, our bodies can often follow suit and heal.
When God holds his gaze, He holds a space for us. His gaze empowers a deeper dive into the emotional, spiritual, and physical spaces within. And He wills us to hold his gaze. And to heal. With no whisper of ‘you’ve got this’, His gaze reaches places no medication can; it reaches right into our emotions, our bio-physiology, and our spiritual intelligence.
In my own life, my mind, emotions, spirit and body needed Him not to look away. My crying eyes asked Him for a miracle. But instead, he held my gaze. I even wanted to run, but his eyes held mine. And He just kept looking. Straightat me. God is a God of ‘miracles’ but he is also the God of ‘principles’, courage, fearlessness, counsel and inner peace. How often do we stay and pray for a miracle, when all the while He’s willing us to hold his gaze and then actually make a move to dislodge our ‘stuff’ and walk into the healing he has for us? God’s gaze empowers and encourages us to find what is deep inside us. I know that with God’s gaze at the centre, hand in hand with the help I received from medics and medicine, I experienced healing from a raft of complex illnesses including allergies, chronic eczema, urticaria and chronic fatigue syndrome.
I can now envision a world that looks very different to the one I knew, and I long for a world where we grow through compassion and curiosity, bringing healing, calm and connectedness.
Merry Christmas and a happy and healthy New Year!
Dani xx
We hope to hear more from Dani in the future. In the meantime if you’d like to learn more, do visit her website or check out her book (linked above).
The 21 Step Journey is something Dani encourages readers to walk out with others through connection, activations and sharing – so we’d love to hear your stories of healing and freedom! You can get in touch here