Hashimoto’s is not your fault. There may be things you were exposed to that acted as triggers, and there may be things that increased your susceptibility. Those are worth understanding so you know what to address going forward.

None of them mean you caused this, earned it, or failed to believe hard enough.

Someone has probably suggested that if you got your spirit right, your body would follow. Maybe it was gentler than that, a comment about negativity, or a program that told you your thoughts were the reason nothing had changed.

You prayed. You worked on your mindset.

That is Job’s friends in modern clothes. He had done nothing to bring on his suffering, and neither did you.

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Why Job’s friends still show up in your life

I have been listening to a podcast called 40 Minutes in the Old Testament, where two scholars work through every word of the Old Testament. They have been going through the book of Job.

Job was a godly man. He had not done anything wrong. And he lost his family, his possessions, and his health.

The only thing he had left was his life, and a wife who told him to curse God and die.

Then his friends came alongside him and started accusing him of bringing the illness on himself. They made it his fault. They wanted to figure out what he had done to deserve it.

The answer was nothing.

He did not do anything to earn it. He did not do anything to bring it on himself. It was not his fault.

His friends could not sit with the idea that a good man could get sick for no reason he controlled. So they went looking for the reason inside him.

People still do that. They do it to you.

What manifesting culture does to a sick woman

I read a book called Fatal Inheritance by Lawrence Ingrassia. It is about how researchers discovered the genetic component of cancer.

One of the sisters in it always presented her best face. She was always positive. She was never negative.

She wanted everybody to know she believed she was going to get better. She was believing so hard.

And then after she died, they found her journal. She was scared. She thought she might die.

I got both sad and angry for her. She was deluded by a whole group of people who told her she had to manifest, that she had to believe a certain way, and that one negative thought would sabotage her recovery.

There is an entire philosophy built on the idea that if you do not do the right work, or do it well enough, your health will suffer. That it will be your fault if you get sick. That it will be your fault if you die.

Most of the time they are not blatant about it. What they imply is that you are not manifesting hard enough, or not believing hard enough, or carrying too much negativity.

They make it your fault.

It is not your fault that you have cancer. It is not your fault that you have Hashimoto’s. It is not your fault that you are sick.

Yes, there are things that would actually be your fault. If your kid coughs into his hand and you walk over and lick it, fine, that one is on you. But most of us are not doing things that actively make us sick.

Getting sick is part of being human on an earth where there is sin, disease, and death. Not a good part, but a part. And if you want the actual reasons women develop Hashimoto’s, they are physiological, not moral.

Why being spiritually well does not guarantee being physically well

One of my kids wanted to go with a friend to their youth group. It was a church I was not familiar with, so I looked it up.

I found that they have a faith healing ministry. I did not find any credentials listed. Maybe they have them and they are just not on the site.

What I did find was a lot of insinuation that if you are right spiritually, then you will be right physically.

That is a false teaching.

Is there a connection between your spiritual life and your physical health? Yes. I did a whole episode on spiritual stress and how it shows up in the body.

But look at the corollary of that teaching. If there is something wrong with you physically, then there must be something wrong with you spiritually.

Look back at Job.

You are a whole person and the spiritual part is one petal

Think of a flower. Look at the logo on the cover art of this episode.

The spiritual component is one petal. It is not the whole thing.

The physical component is one petal. Your emotional and mental health is one petal. Neither one is the whole thing.

You are a whole person. Body, mind, spirit, diet, environment.

So can you have fantastic spiritual health? You are at peace and living in love. You know where you are destined eternally.

You are in relationship with Jesus. You have repented and you are resisting temptation.

(Side note, because I do not want to overcomplicate this. All you have to do is confess and believe. If you want eternal life, confess your sins and believe that He is Lord, and you will be forgiven and you will have life.)

You can be doing all of that and it still does not guarantee physical health. It does not guarantee mental health either.

If you get right with Jesus, it does not mean your anxiety and your depression will magically go away.

Is there a connection? Yes.

Is it do X, Y, Z and get A, B, C? No.

Each petal is its own thing, and each one interacts with the others.

There is so much pressure to believe you are responsible for getting sick. It does not matter whether you are in the church, in a new age religion, or somewhere else. The pressure is the same and it comes from every direction.

You are not responsible for getting Hashimoto’s.

Hashimoto’s is not your fault and you are still responsible for what comes next

Does your mindset matter? Absolutely it does.

When you are living in hope, you have different physical reactions, even at a cellular level, than when you are living in despair. Your mindset matters.

But that does not mean you have to fake it until you make it. It does not mean you have to push yourself into believing something the way that woman did with her cancer.

You can be honest. You can be honest with yourself and with the people around you.

Being in community and having support helps your physical health, your mental health, and your spiritual health. Even the diet and environment parts of you do better in community.

We are built for community. So do not hide what is going on, even when hiding sounds easier.

Reach out to a couple of friends. You do not have to tell the entire world or blast it on Facebook every time you have a bad day.

God can heal your body and your mind. God is God. You can be healed and miracles happen.

He also works through others. Through doctors, through medicine, through practitioners.

But it is not a transaction. It does not work like God looking down and saying she did everything she was supposed to, so now she has earned this.

Are there times when God says you need to do the work because you have unhealthy lifestyle habits? Yes. And then it is up to you to figure out what comes next.

So no, this is not permission to do whatever you want. You are still responsible for doing the best you can.

What I want to release you from is the shame and the guilt of thinking you did not manifest hard enough, or believe hard enough, or pray hard enough.

When you know better you can do better

A long while back I heard a phrase that has stuck with me ever since. When you know better, you can do better.

Nobody is blaming or shaming you for what you did before you knew better.

When my oldest was a toddler, he was tall enough to reach the top of the stove but not tall enough to see it. We told him not to touch it, over and over, because that is our job as parents.

He knew. And he still reached.

One time we did not whisk him away fast enough. He got burned. I do not think his fingers even blistered, but he felt the heat.

Was that his fault? Yes, it was.

Had we taught him? Yes.

Did he know better and decide to do it anyway? Yep.

Did he get consequences? Yes. Not from us. From the stove.

That is life and that is health too. I try not to should on you in this podcast, because I do not want to heap more guilt on you. But there are things we know make us feel better, and sometimes we do not do them anyway.

I know I feel better when I sleep well. And did I have kombucha at three in the afternoon, knowing it is made from tea and knowing I am extremely sensitive to caffeine?

Yes. Yes I did. And I paid for it that night, lying in bed wondering why I could not sleep.

It was a quarter of a bottle and it still got me. I knew better and I chose the wrong thing anyway. That one is on me.

Sometimes, though, we make the wrong choice and have no idea it is the wrong choice. You do not have to carry shame and guilt for that. And if it was a sin, you can confess and God forgives you.

What to do with this

You cannot go back in time and change what has already happened. You can only do better going forward. And you are already doing something, right now, by learning instead of blaming yourself.

Here is the whole thing in one sentence. You are responsible for what you do next without being at fault for what happened.

So the next step is not another round of self-examination. It is understanding what actually goes on in a body with Hashimoto’s, so the question shifts from what did I do wrong to what do I do next. That is exactly what Hashimoto’s Decoded: Thyroid or Immune walks you through, and you can grab it for $27.