Raising seven children can often be as burdensome as carrying a stone cathedral on your back. To paraphrase Mark Twain, they are the best gift in my life – the gift that keeps on taking, mainly my peace, my patience, my sleep, but above all things, my joint health. And just as I turn to prayers for spiritual strength, I turn to CBD, my trusted ally, for combatting my raging arthritis.
Today was a session straight out of a high-intensity workout DVD, filled with thundering footsteps, high pitched screams, and the continuous hide-and-seek with toys around the house. Combine that with needing to play the role of both loving father and stern disciplinarian, bending, lunging, stretching, and all it gives me in return is excruciating pain ripping through my joints. Each tug-of-war battle with my youngest over brushing his teeth causes a stabbing sensation in my arm, each time I bend down to pick up scattered Lego pieces feels like a cruel Q&A with my aching knees.
Running this exhausting daily marathon, there is but one sanctuary – my Cannabidiol, or CBD. Straight edge as I am, the idea of using a derivative of the Cannabis plant was initially difficult for me to come to terms with. But, once I realized how CBD works, it was like a revelation, a scriptural epiphany in a bottle. You see, it interacts positively with our body's natural endocannabinoid system, aiding in areas such as pain relief and inflammation, all without causing a “high.”
Today, I administered my daily sublingual tincture of full-spectrum CBD oil. I held it under my tongue for a minute, letting my mucus membranes absorb the oil and catalyst the relief process. A warm sensation started spreading through my body, as if God's healing hand was systematically moving through each of my aching limbs.
It was an almost immediate relief, the gnawing pain in my joints started to retreat, replaced by a soothing comfort. The oil doesn’t egoistically banish the pain, it helps me coexist with it. The grip of chronic arthritis loosened, permitting me the strength and durability to power through my day. The divine light that seemed increasingly dim with each uproarious laughter, every challenge my children threw at me, shone a bit brighter.
After all, as my duty of fatherhood continues to aggravate my arthritis, CBD oil acts as the glistening armor of hope, allowing me to engage in my children’s boisterous world, teaching me perseverance. So while I turn to my rosary for spiritual endurance, CBD remains my physiological salvation. Whether it is the auspicious number seven of my children or my canonical CBD dose, everything eventually falls into the divine rhythm of life.