How the Word of Wisdom Sparked Ali Essig's Beautiful Journey of Faith

Ali Essig opened the emergency room door and scanned the room until she found him. Her husband, 37 years old, was slumped in a wheelchair, one eye drifting down, looking two decades older than he was. The thought arrived like a flood before she could stop it: he's having a stroke. She pushed it away. She told herself he was fine. But she already knew.

What made the moment harder to sit with was a promise. Years earlier, her husband had received a patriarchal blessing that named his health as a blessing tied directly to keeping the Word of Wisdom. Now that promise sat across the room in a hospital gown, and Ali did not yet have language for what she was feeling. She only knew she needed an answer, and she knew where to look for one.

This is the story Ali Essig shares on Why We Believe, hosted by Nathan Gwilliam: what happens when a promise from God collides with a diagnosis, and what obedience looks like on the other side of that collision. Ali is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and her testimony centers on one truth she returns to again and again: God keeps His promises.

A Foundation Built on Small, Answered Prayers

Ali's testimony did not begin in a hospital. It began in a childhood home where money was often tight and her father changed jobs frequently. When the family's dishwasher broke, they prayed, and it started working again. When the refrigerator failed, they prayed, and a fridge appeared at their door. One Christmas, after her father had been out of work for six months, presents and food arrived without explanation.

These were not dramatic miracles. They were small, specific, and repeated, and that repetition is exactly what built her faith. She learned as a child that prayer is not a last resort but a first response, and that God notices details as ordinary as a broken appliance.

That foundation carried her through a mission and into a marriage to a man she met, unconventionally, by jumping into his bed on a dare while visiting his roommate. It carried her into a career on Capitol Hill and then into motherhood, Pilates instruction, and eventually a health scare that would test everything she had learned as a girl praying over a dishwasher.

The Question She Took to the Temple

After the ER confirmed what Ali already suspected, the questions multiplied. Would her husband ever fully recover? Would he be able to work, to drive, to see normally again? Doctors ran tests. There was no hole in his heart, no genetic marker, no arrhythmia to explain a stroke in a 37-year-old man.

Ali did what her childhood had taught her to do. She prayed, and then she went to the temple. There, she describes an answer bursting through her with unmistakable clarity: follow the Word of Wisdom, and follow it completely.

She went into the celestial room and opened the Word of Wisdom as though reading it for the first time. What she found surprised her. The revelation does not simply ask members to avoid coffee, tea, tobacco, and alcohol. It also addresses meat, and it does so three separate times, each time counseling that meat be used sparingly, that abstaining pleases the Lord, and that it is intended for times of winter, famine, or excess of hunger. Ali had read those verses before. She had simply never stopped on them.

Living the Answer Completely

Obedience, for Ali, meant more than adjusting a grocery list. She and her husband moved from a high-protein diet toward a plant-forward one, replacing meat with beans in nearly every meal. The transition included, by her own account, real physical discomfort as their bodies adjusted, along with real resistance from children who missed chicken nuggets and mac and cheese.

But the results were not subtle. Her husband's cholesterol and triglycerides improved. His blood pressure came down. He lost weight he had carried since before the stroke. And Ali began noticing changes she had not anticipated, including a marked improvement in one daughter's hair growth after the family's diet shifted toward more variety in fruits, vegetables, and legumes.

A short list of what changed in their home:

• Breakfast became a plant-based smoothie instead of a quick, processed option

• Lunch shifted toward large salads built around vegetables in season

• Dinner replaced meat with beans, lentils, or chickpeas as the primary protein

• Dairy milk was largely replaced with nut-based alternatives

• Exceptions remained welcome when traveling or visiting others' homes

Ali is careful to note that none of this required perfection. The Word of Wisdom does not ask members to eliminate meat entirely. It asks that it be used sparingly, and Ali found that even partial, consistent obedience produced blessings she had not expected.

A Mission Call That Arrived in a Dream

As Ali's testimony of the Word of Wisdom deepened, something unexpected followed. In 2020, she had a dream in which she received a mission call, not to a country or a language, but to what the letter described as a vegan transition committee. She woke from the dream with an unmistakable sense of peace, one she could not dismiss as ordinary.

She took that peace as direction. Despite the discomfort of putting herself forward on a topic she knew could invite criticism, Ali began sharing what she had learned, first with friends, then through a YouTube channel, and eventually through the coaching program she now leads at PlantWhys. She describes watching God direct each step of that process the way she once watched Him answer a child's prayer over a broken dishwasher.

Why She Believes

Ali closes her conversation with Nathan on a simple note. She believes, she says, because it is more fun to believe. Choosing faith does not remove hardship, but it opens the door to purpose inside that hardship, to community, and to a settled confidence that a caring God is directing her steps even when she cannot yet see where they lead.

Her story is a reminder that obedience rarely arrives as a single dramatic moment. It arrives as a choice renewed one meal, one prayer, and one day at a time, and it is often God's answer to the very trial that seemed, at first, like it had no answer at all.

Thank you for reading this week's blog post inspired by the Why We Believe show. If you are interested in more stories like this, you can check out our other blog posts and episodes at WhyWeBelieve.com, or listen on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

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Follow Ali Essig
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