Healing

For the last three months, I have been struggling with an illness that went unnamed, despite multiple, sometimes daily trips to the doctor.  To describe the illness, I could only tell you that I hurt.  I hurt so bad, every where, that I couldn’t function.  I felt like someone had beaten me up, and that went on daily.  I saw an internal medicine doctor, a rheumatologist, a gastrointerologist, I had x-rays, cat-scans, a colonoscopy, multiple trips to the emergency room, a reaction to a medication that made both Philip and myself think I was dying, and cost me an expensive ride to the hospital in an ambulance.  I couldn’t pick up my babies.  I could hardly carry my own weight.  Every movement was painful.

And then it was gone.

I tried for days and days to figure out what happened.  Had I stopped doing something?  Added something new?  Was it gone for a little while but would come back?  As I racked my brain searching for an answer, a very godly woman at church asked me, “Andi, why can’t you accept that it was an answer to prayer?”.  A simple question that stunned me.  Honestly, I had never even considered that to be an option.  Me, a Christian for as long as I can remember, married to an amazing pastor, had never considered that God heard all the many prayers offered on my behalf and answered with a yes.

It’s weird when something like that happens to you.  All of the sudden, you see everything in a new light.  Especially God.  It was as if all the sudden, if someone mentioned God, I could say “Hey, I know Him!  He healed me!!”  I felt like the man in the bible that Jesus had healed.  When asked what had happened, he said “all I know is I was blind and He healed me.”.  That’s the only answer I have as well.

Those three months were not wasted.  I saw love, genuine love, acted out daily in my household.  First by my husband who was so patient and caring, despite a brutal schedule and a class in ancient Hebrew.  I had women from church daily in my home, taking care of my children, doing my laundry, praying over me.  One doesn’t come away from that without being changed drastically.

The doctors never figured out what was wrong with me. They could give me no answer as to why I was healed.  No new medicines had been added or taken away.  I don’t know if it will come back or if it’s gone for good, but I’m thrilled to be safely in the will of God, so either way, I know He will use me, complete the work He started in me, give me eyes to see and hands to serve, and a love for Him and for people that had not been there, at least not in the powerful way it is now.