After receiving the new word, I expected my healing to come quickly. I was delighted and encouraged to see two of my very sick friends receive miraculous healing. Though all the while a little voice in the back of my mind squeaked, “What about me?” I thought I was ready.
Instead of being healed, the friend who told me I was healed had a breakdown a couple of weeks later and had to be hospitalized. I was closely involved with the situation, which somehow caused me to relive the trauma of my best friend’s death seven months earlier. My health plummeted.
My hands began to react to cold items I touched. Even when I wore nitrile gloves to chop refrigerated vegetables, they’d form welts which itched and burned. In January 2015, I began to react to outdoor temperatures 40 degrees F or below. After exposure, my brain would “fuzz out.” Like white noise on old television sets. I lost motor control and the ability to speak. Breathing was difficult. My vision turned wonky. I could hear voices around me, but couldn’t always understand. It was terrifying the first time it happened because I was driving with my children in the car. But the Lord was faithful to bring me home before I lost total control over my mind and body.
So not only was I a shut-in; I couldn’t even walk outside anymore. And about the same time, I began to run chronic fever. I hurt and felt terrible all the time.
At this point, I wasn’t doing well physically, emotionally, or spiritually. The Lord led me to turn off all social media, which left me alone with him and my family. Other than the brave few who wouldn’t go away, I saw no one else. I didn’t want to see anyone else.
Within a few days of signing off my blog and Facebook, my husband suffered an injustice at work. I shattered. I swung from despair to rage to utter exhaustion and back again. Life was eat, sleep, repeat; try to keep myself and the kids alive and be there for my man who’d been there so well for me. At day’s end, I had nothing left over.
God hadn’t abandoned me, nor I Him. We’d been through too much together for that. We were just…different. Every morning we met for a wrestling match until he had me pinned breathless on the ground. From there, he led me, spoke to me, ministered to me, and gently listened to my complaints with much longsuffering. When I finally quit fighting him, he met me day after day underneath the broom tree, resting and nourishing my spirit back to health.