 All right, let's give Dr. Jill a welcome. Thank you. And thank you for being here, but you're often here, but thank you for being on stage, it's a different view. Your story is amazing. You've gone through so many ups and downs and suffering of your own, and you've learned a lot about flourishing from that. So why don't you tell everyone a little bit more about your story? Sure. So by God's grace, I was born to overcome, and not only to overcome, but my soul's journey has been to experience sometimes great suffering in order that I might learn at a level that I can help you all and other people to overcome as well. I grew up on a farm in central Illinois. I was one of five children. My mother was a nurse, and then she retired to take care of all of us. And I grew up with a beautiful family of faith and nurturing and just an incredible situation. But unbeknownst to me, the chemicals on that farm were slowly killing me. And I went to medical school, and at 25 years old, I was in my surgical rotation, and I found a lump in my breast. Now we're taught that 25-year-olds don't get cancer, so initially I wasn't too concerned. But I did as I was told, and I saw a radiologist, and I had a biopsy, and it wasn't very long that I found out that I had a very aggressive breast cancer. And I know I'm not unique in my suffering. Every one of you has a story. And we all remember those moments where we got a phone call telling us that someone we loved was dead, or that we got a life-threatening diagnosis ourselves, or maybe it was a son or daughter who had, you know, done something very difficult in our lives, or any number financial crisis. And usually we have these distinct memories of the songs that we're playing on the radio at that time. And I remember the color of the chair when my oncologist called me and said, Jill, you aggressive breast cancer. And those are pivotal moments in our lives where we have a choice. And we have the choice to go deep and to wrestle with the suffering. For me, it was within two weeks of my diagnosis, I was driving in the car with my ex-husband, and I heard a pastor on the radio, and he was talking about Lazarus, and he spoke John 11.4. And this shot me to the heart. I'll never forget that moment. And he said, the sickness will not end in death. It is for the glory of God that the Son of God might be glorified thereby. And in that moment, I knew that was my first illness, and I knew I was number one. I was going to live from that moment forward. I never once wondered if I was going to die. I knew that God had promised, but the other part of that promise is the sickness will not end in death, but it's for the glory of God that the Son of God might be glorified thereby. And at that moment, I started to search in the illness, in the suffering. I had no hair. I had skin rashes. I was so sick from the chemo. I was down to my lowest weight since like 10 years old, and I was suffering, but I knew that God had promised me life if I would bring him glory. And I had no idea that that was the first of many illnesses that would frame my entire calling and my whole career. And this week I was reading in Genesis 32, and I read about Jacob who was going to visit his brother Esau with a great gift with his wives and concubines, and he left them at a fjord and said, go ahead, and I'm going to stay here for the night. And over that night, he met an unwanted stranger. And we can consider these sufferings, these difficulties, these illnesses that we're dealing with, our unwanted strangers, why we never asked for them. It turned out to be an angel, and he wrestled that angel that night, pinned him down and said, I want you to bless me. And I love this, literally this week, I thought this is such a great analogy for our suffering, like that unwanted stranger, if we can pin it down and say, God, how can you bless me through this? Because it's when we go to that left, when we get out of our head as the mind, body, spirit that Brian suggested, I was in my head completely before the age of 40, when I had to really go down into my soul and my heart and my body and really experience what it feels like. So it's in these times, and then I, six months later, passed out in the emergency room, woke up with surgery, emergency surgery, and was told I had Crohn's disease, and then I ended up having severe mold-related illness after the flood here in Boulder. But in each of these unwanted strangers, I was able to find the blessing, and God has transformed every bit of that and given me health and healing so that I can share that with all of you and with the world. Out in the lobby, Jill's brought her book, Unexpected, Finding Resilience through Functional Medicine, Science, and Faith, and one of the themes I loved in it is how you talk about love and how love is necessary and essential and flourishing, but also in healing, physically. And can you tell us more about that? Sure. So I realized, and even in making the documentary, that at the core of healing, I grew up in a family where it's all about loving others and giving to others and serving others, and that is this wonderful calling we have as Christians. But at a deeper level, if we don't love ourselves, we don't love all the parts of ourselves. If we don't see ourselves as God sees us, which is perfect daughter of Christ because of Jesus' blood, if we don't have that love for our own body and cells, we develop illness. And so I learned a hard lesson, but a beautiful lesson that at the core, you must accept and love all parts of yourself before you can love others. And so that social connection and unconditional love is absolutely the foundation of healing. There are a number of people in our faith community here, our congregation that are struggling with mental illness, anxiety, depression, loneliness. Of course, it's happening in our community as well. I know you have a lot of really helpful things to say just about some of the root causes of those things that might surprise some people, but also some other steps that they can take besides maybe just talk, therapy or medicine, which those things are certainly helpful. But there's some other things that people can think about that will help. Can you share some about that? Yes. And I want to frame this too. There is nothing wrong with medication. There's nothing wrong with physicians and all of these other things. We're just saying what else is possible, right? And so in saying that, number one, we have to say, as a functional medicine expert, what is the root cause? And sometimes it's surprising in functional medicine, we often look at infectious burden and toxic load. And these are things you may not have even thought about. Could there be an infection that's driving inflammation and dysfunction in my brain and leading to depression or anxiety? Could there be toxins like water damage to my home and mold? I told this in the first service, but I have a good friend whose house had mold issues, she and her daughter came to see me. And when I'm talking to them about the history of the home, we found out there were two homicides and a suicide in that house. And it was full of toxic black starchy batteries. And there's a darkness and depression that comes over people when they get exposed to mold. So could it be that there's actually something else other than just the mood that's going on? And that as a functional medicine doctor is what we like to do is go to that root cause because those things, those toxins, those infections, those inflammatory conditions can affect the brain as well as the body. So what do we do about it? I'm going to give you seven very practical steps as quick as I can. Number one, physical activity, sunshine, getting daylight in your eyes as soon as possible with the rise in the sun will actually help your sleep, will help your mood, will help those neurotransmitters to optimize. Physical activity, getting out in nature, putting away your cell phones and your devices. There is absolute associations with depression and anxiety and the amount of time you spend on your devices. So what I do is turn off all the notifications so that I can go to the phone when I want to, but it never calls me out of my life. Second, sleep, absolutely critical. There is a high association with depression and anxiety and insomnia and hypersomnia, which means either too much sleep or too little sleep. So if you're not sleeping, that's a great place to start. Last weekend I talked to a dear friend who was suffering from dark depression. And the very first thing we talked about was when are you going to bed? How are you sleeping? And I gave him tips on how to sleep better because I knew that was at the core of some of the mood issues. So sleep, physical activity, food. Often we're eating fast food, processed food and all these chemicals, these trans fats, these altered things that aren't really food to begin with are actually affecting our brain and inflammation. We need healthy fats like olive oil and fish oil in order for our brains to function. So these are crucial and that's food. Stress, who of us doesn't have stress, right? Han Selie with his research talked about an acronym called NUTS. These are the predictors of stress in our life and they stand for novelty, new things, unpredictability, threat to eagle or threat to health, and sense of control. So if any of those things aren't in all of our lives at some point, we're probably lying. But when we know that we can deal with stress in a healthy way, whether it's prayer, meditation, and the next one is social connection and love, which is all about this sermon. So connecting with loved ones in real time with real people, not just on screens. And then substances, we can very easily with drugs, with medications, and with illicit drugs, numb out our systems. And this may feel good in the moment, but it's not helpful because what we're doing is we're dissociating from that pain and that suffering. I'll tell you a perfect example. I asked God for a break and he didn't listen very well because I broke my arm. A couple weeks ago, but I came out of surgery and they had done a spinal block. So my whole arm was just like a dead fish. It was completely numb. It was wonderful. No pain at all. That night at 2 AM, the nerves started waking up. And I woke up to this excruciating pain in my arm. I was like, okay, it's awake. But you know what I did? I had medications from the doctor I could have taken in an instant and I would have, but I sat for just a moment. And I said, this is not worse than when I broke my arm. I wonder if I could just take a very light, like ibuprofen type medication and sit with this pain. If it gets worse, I'll take medication. But what if I could just be with this pain and love this pain and thank it for telling me that my arm just had a major event. And I sat with that pain and it was hard. But within an hour it subsided and I was able to go back to sleep. And I think in our culture, we still often run from pain. Do you know that leprosy is a disease where you lose limbs, fingers, arms, toes, because you have no sensation of pain. So you put your hand in the fire, you burn your fingers and you cannot even feel it. And these are disfigured, they lose their noses, they lose their fingers. So pain is a gift and our society is so pushed away. Pain that we've lost that connection to. Pain is a gift, pain is a teacher. Pain is a blessing like Jacob wrestling with the angels saying bless me through this. So not that we have to suffer, but a little bit is okay because that's where God meets us. That's where he teaches us and that's where he says this sickness, this pain is not going to end in death. It will bring glory to God if you can be with it and if you can love it. And then lastly, environmental toxins and I touched on that, this is a whole lecture in and of itself, but some of you may be in an environment that is toxic, whether it's chemicals or toxic mold or heavy metals or other things. And this is affecting your brains and causing mental illness. Amazing. I want you to know we're using Dr. Joe as a resource in the years to come, especially as we're building programs for young people and even as adults struggling with these things. And this is going to be incorporated into the best care we can get from all of the different fields. I know people are very, very interested in all the things that you have to say. Where else can they find your teaching, your podcast, different, different, some of your favorite resources? Thank you. You can go to my website just jillcarnia.com. There's blogs and all kinds of free stuff on this topic. You're prolific. I mean, she's everywhere. CBS News, all these famous people's podcasts, they, they all want her. And it's all there in one place. And so you can find a number of resources that are helpful. Please, when Jill is here at church on Sundays, don't treat it like the office, let her enjoy her time here. But she's an incredible resource to us as are many of our caregivers in the different fields. And we really appreciate what you had to share. Let's give her a hand. Thank you for today. All right, I'm going to end the service a little different. I'm just going to pray a prayer blessing on us and then we'll be dismissed. And I can tell you if you have kids in the children's ministry there.