Jumping In

I've heard about essential oils for years (and years), mostly from church friends.  Honestly, we thought it was a joke. My husband and I are accountants, he's the son of a doctor, and I'm the daughter of a nursing professor. We've always been too "practical" to jump into something "alternative" to mainstream/doctors/"normal", something too expensive to reasonably commit to as an experiment. 

So, we've listened and been happy for our friends that had (a lot of seemingly-subjective) success with oils; and we've moved on, happy with our Tylenol, Advil, Neosporin and the like.  I often wondered how our "oily" friends could be sure that their oils were actually helping with things like reducing the duration of a tummy bug, preventing germs, increasing focus, etc - it's not a very scientific process, after all (where's the placebo group??)  But...it's hard to ignore the increasingly-loud, constantly-growing group of people that are joining the essential oils bandwagon.  In fact, I have yet to hear of someone that was upset that they invested in essential oils!

The story that finally convinced us (or that the Holy Spirit used to convince us) was this one: our friends, the Johnsons, have been patching their son's eye for four years, to correct amblyopia (lazy eye).  Initially, they were told the patching would be necessary until their son was around 8 years old.  When our friend was introduced to oils approximately six months ago, she started using one of the more expensive oils (Frankincense) to see if it would help her son's eye (at the same time, she temporarily discontinued the use of the patches).  At their next appointment, the doctor was amazed at the child's progress.  Three months later, they were told their treatment for the son's lazy eye was over (at age 6) and, that for the first time in his life, he had depth perception.  The doctor took credit for the healing and explained that the therapy duration varies per child - Mom has a different theory.  We were now curious! (See original post here).

In the interest of documenting our experiences, I thought I'd start a blog!  I am particularly interested to see how (if?) these oils will help our family and think it would be helpful to us (and our friends and family) to keep track of things here.  So, here goes!