God works on us like homeopathic remedies: gently, layer by layer.

Peeling back layers - it's a phrase homeopaths use to describe the healing journey, and in this final installment of our Encouragement Series, we discover how profoundly this metaphor applies to our spiritual lives as well.

When facing chronic illness, the center of that metaphorical onion can seem impossibly distant beneath years of accumulated layers. The journey toward wellness feels overwhelming, progress seems painfully slow, and sometimes old symptoms resurface just when we thought we were moving forward. Sound familiar? It's remarkably similar to our walk with God - the frustrations of sanctification, the disappointment when we struggle with issues we thought were resolved, and the confusion when growth happens in unexpected areas.

But there's profound beauty in these parallels. Just as homeopathic remedies work gently without forcing change, God works in our lives with grace and patience. He knows exactly how much transformation we can handle at once. And when those old symptoms or struggles return? That's not failure - it's often a sign that our bodies and souls are now stronger, better equipped to process and move through them permanently.

Melissa and Bri share a powerful story about a severely pruned fiddle leaf fig tree that appeared dead for a month before exploding with more abundant growth than ever before. What looked like certain death was actually the necessary preparation for unprecedented flourishing. What if our painful seasons of pruning are exactly the same?

Whether you're walking through physical healing, spiritual transformation, or both simultaneously, this episode offers encouragement for the journey. The layers are peeling back, one by one, in exactly the right order. And underneath it all? Something beautiful is emerging.

FIND ME!

Chapters

• 0:00 Finishing the Encouragement Series
• 4:07 Peeling Back Layers of Healing
• 6:39 God's Gentle Transformation Process
• 9:08 When Old Symptoms Return
• 11:08 The Pruning Metaphor

Transcript

Speaker 1: 1:22

welcome back to homeopathy at home with melissa.

Speaker 2: 1:25

Hey, melissa hey, brie, I'm excited to finish up our encouragement series.

Speaker 1: 1:31

Yeah, it's been a long time coming. Um, this has been going on for over a year, which is awesome, so these have been peppered in. I hope they've been encouraging to you all. Um, this is a series that I originally wrote for the first retreat Melissa did the Rise and Shine Retreat in 2024. So go back, look for the encouragement series. You don't have to listen to them in any kind of order.

Speaker 2: 1:56

There's actually a playlist on YouTube where you can listen to all of them.

Speaker 1: 2:00

Great, there you go and then you can watch us and Melissa get attacked by flies in the last one. These were to give you a short summary If you haven't listened to any of the other ones. This is just some stuff that I shared on my heart and how God has used this journey of learning homeopathy learning what healing really looks like to show me more of Him and who he is and how this can apply to my spiritual walk, and so really I'm just sharing here with you. It is not equating homeopathy with biblical principles, so I hope that nobody's hearing that. I'm just sharing how God's used it to teach me things.

Speaker 1: 2:47

So, last but not least, is this idea of peeling back layers. So in homeopathy we often talk about healing is like peeling back layers of an onion, and that visual has been really helpful to me, even as I'm walking through cases in my family or clients and we tell them it's going to be a process, so we're going to come and take your case and get all of these things right. Sometimes there's a lot going on and it feels like just this huge task, and when you go back to these years they've been walking through all this chronic illness, it seems like that. Where in the world even is the center of that onion right? It's just all these layers on top, but this reminded me of in our spiritual growth. It can feel very overwhelming to initially walk into the process of sanctification, of sanctification, and this process, this growth, is just that a process of uncovering things and addressing deeper issues over time and trusting that each layer can bring us closer to the Lord, help us look more like Him. And in His grace, god works gently but consistently on our pruning and sanctification. So in the same way that I think sometimes it's so easy to get discouraged in the physical healing process, to feel like we're not getting anywhere, our bodies can't handle going from zero to 100 overnight. We didn't get here overnight, we're not getting back there overnight.

Speaker 1: 4:29

And spiritually speaking, I myself have gotten frustrated sometimes with like it feels like my own lack of growth or like I'm back in the same thing. You know, I thought I've made so much progress and grown here and it feels so discouraging. But God knows in His grace that there is. You know, he does it gently over time. He knows who we were made to be, who we can become, and he is faithful. He never stops working on us. He continues that work even when we may be resistant and ultimately our goal and destination is not here on earth. So hopefully we're allowing his work in us to make us more like him until we get to eternity. But I think that just goes to show sometimes the end goal can't just be whatever we think is ultimate here. Just to allow God to keep working, Let him be faithful in that.

Speaker 1: 5:26

2 Corinthians 3.18 says we all who, with unveiled faces, contemplate the Lord's glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit. So just to encourage you, I don't have a lot of extra things to add to this. I've said a lot of things in the other points that culminate maybe in this. But just stick it out, stick with the process If you don't know the Lord. I hope that these have encouraged you and maybe you are interested in what that could look like for you and hopefully today's encouraging too, that you don't have to be something or be somewhere before you are acceptable before god, but that he'll take whatever your onion looks like you know, and you just work some of those layers exactly what you just made me think of is that?

Speaker 2: 6:18

that I wanted to say is that, just like um so homeopathic remedies work gently, right, and they don't force change. So just think about if you're grieving the loss of someone. We're not given a remedy to take away your grief, but it helps you get through it gently and in a healthy way. And in the same way God works in us with grace and patience. He doesn't force anything. He's such a gentleman.

Speaker 1: 6:51

And the order sometimes isn't what we think it should be. Like, god is growing and we've said this in some of the other points. But looking at other people's lives too, like you can recognize God's growth in someone and they might be really discouraged and thinking, man, well, that's not what I've been, that's not the area I've even been focusing on, but this is the area where God has chosen to do a work and so, yeah, all of those things he's very usually gentle, I mean, sometimes he's gotten, you know, had to do a little checking on me.

Speaker 2: 7:26

Well, exactly you know, and that was exactly going to be my next. My next point is that when you're using homeopathy, sometimes old symptoms will return and while that's a sign of progress, we get irritated, aggravated, discouraged. We think it's not working. This is good. We get so upset, but when God's pruning us, it doesn't feel good.

Speaker 1: 7:58

And you know what, though? When those symptoms come back up, your body should be in a better state to move through them, like more equipped, like in a better way, in a quicker way. Right, that's some good stuff right there.

Speaker 2: 8:11

That's right, yep. So when? Yes, it's not that you're working. So I look at it in two ways. Like you know, there's God pruning us, right, so that's cutting off some of the branch, cutting it back. It hurts, it hurts, it hurts. I don't like it, I don't want it, but we're better when we grow fuller and we're we reach our reaches more right when we get pruned. And then the other way I think of it is when we're in the fire, we're getting refined in that fire and it hurts, it burns, and we don't like it and I don't want to be there.

Speaker 1: 8:48

I'm thinking about so many things. Like we have fruit trees and they were. The guy told us, like the first year, that I don't think it was mangoes, I don't know One of them. You pinch off all of them. You pinch off every single new bud because it's not going to be good fruit and if you do that after that it's going to be great productive, really good quality fruit. And I was like I mean, I mean that's something.

Speaker 1: 9:14

You know what I had? This fiddle I'm getting a little bit of a rant now this fiddle leaf fig if you know what those trees are, they're beautiful, everybody likes them in their house. It's really great. Well, we moved with this thing for a few states, several states, and my fiddle was just struggling and it was big, though I had grown it from a little baby to like a big tree. But it was like not so sure about Florida life. You know liked it. I think they do well here.

Speaker 1: 9:38

But this guy didn't know. He's like not getting the right kind of light and just growing really sporadic, like not good healthy leaves. And I did some research and it said literally cut it off, like cut it all up, prune it all the way back and then notch it for new growth. And I've raised this tree like a child and I love this tree. Not many of my plants have made it and I was like so proud of this thing and I one day was like it's either going to die or I'm going to cut it all back. And that thing now is. It sat there like a stick for a month and I thought I killed it. I'm like I killed this thing. I put it out in the sun. I put it out in the Florida rain. You know like everything's supposed to go. That thing is blowing up. It is more leaves than I've ever seen it have. It's this beautiful tree. It can tolerate like this. It's just out there living its best life, happy little tree.

Speaker 2: 10:42

And happy little trees. Can you imagine God's heart when he has to prune us?

Speaker 1: 10:49

Probably like I. This is so stupid, like that's what that's what I just thought of. Yeah, like, and then you watch it there like suffer for a little bit right, Like it sat there for a whole month.

Speaker 2: 10:58

It stood there. That's what we do. We stand there like a stick, like now. What am I supposed?

Speaker 1: 11:04

to do so, you know, and it doesn't make sense because we see, like, why, like, what we had here was like okay, or like cut off all that fruit the first year. Yeah, like, what do we do? It feels like, why would you take it? Yeah, good, that's some good stuff right there.

Speaker 2: 11:22

Right, my job, I think that's good Way to wrap up the encouragement series is. Well, it's all in the playlist on um on YouTube, so go enjoy the whole thing if you haven't yet, and we'll see you next time.