We met with Dr. Kimberly Schmidt in Ft. Collins, Colorado.  She is author of Parables of the Flesh (The Creator’s love story).   Inspired by the depth of Pope John Paul II’s book The Theology of the Body, which speaks to the complexities of being male and female in the image of God, Dr. Schmidt started to draw corrollaries between physiological systems going awry in the body and links to things like psychological trauma that hadn’t been processed.  For example, Dr. Schmidt talked about trouble that happens in the colon (chronic diarrhea, chronic constipation…).  “Constipation speaks of holding on too long,” she writes.  People die, babies grow up, friends move away… and in this process we must learn to let go — realizing God, ultimately, is the author of life.  “Constipation may represent a reluctance to let go,” writes Dr. Schmidt.  In her work with patients in these cases, for instance, Dr. Schmidt will ask Jesus to enter the session to help with the person going through the stages of grief necessary to internally let go.  And in this process, often the constipation will stop as well.  Dr. Schmidt told me during the interview that we are becoming a “society that has forgotten about God.”  We often look at things that come at us as merely random happenstance, as opposed to situations allowed by God to grow from.  So we continually try to avoid hardship, numb pain… with alcohol, drugs, over work, sexual addiction, television addiction…  In the ilk of M.Scott Peck’s book The Road Less Traveled,  Dr. Schmidt believes that her psychological counseling must be intertwined with spiritual warfare. ”I’m challenging you to probe so deeply into your soul that you can hear God’s voice echoing in the sinews that knit you together,”  writes Dr. Schmidt.  For more on Dr. Schmidt, her practice and her writing, see: www.incarnationalhealing.com