At the beginning of 2020, as part of a conference exercise, I was led through a moment of prayer where I asked the Lord to give me a word for the year and that story was one the first stories I ever wrote for this blog.
As the new year of 2021 rolled around, the chatter of “new words” for the new year was abound. I thought in my heart, “A new word? Hmm, a new word…” and a moment later I felt the word “health” impress on me. My body and mind immediately rejected it as I was filled with anxiety and discomfort. I purposely distracted myself from that little harmless word.
Over the next couple weeks, that word would appear in my mind again and again however, it wasn’t met with as much unfriendliness as it had been previously. I wasn’t sold that this was a word from the Lord but it started making aware of this word throughout my days.
Little backstory: For more than a decade, I’ve suffered from an obscure food intolerance: sulfur. It’s naturally occurring in the meats and foods we eat but it’s also included in a lot of added preservatives in processed foods.
I also was suffering from chronic shoulder pain that would keep me from doing normal activities like raising my arm over my head, sleeping on my left side, or putting a shirt on like a normal person. Daily, Cody would have to help me get dressed. Imaging, injections, orthopedics, and exercise weren’t helping.
In February 2021, I went to a healing prayer night at church one Wednesday evening where we had the kiddos come lay hands on and pray over us. Children naturally have more faith than adults and the whole experience brought tears to my eyes recognizing how broken we “wise” adults have become through our years of sinful cycles.
That evening a wonderful friend approached me and said she felt led to give me 2 names: a faith-filled massage therapist and a holistic doctor. I haven’t ever been on the holistic bandwagon so I was hesitant with that referral but when I saw the massage therapist, she also gave me the name to the same holistic doctor. Well, I’ve tried scans and GI doctors and diets and medicines so what have I got to lose?
In the meantime, I picked up the book The Body Keeps Score and really enjoyed it! While secular, it educated me a lot on the brain and helped me see where breakdowns occur in my own body. That excitement propelled me to read another book called A More Excellent Way which is a biblically based book that addresses illness and disease as a result of sin in our lives, both direct and indirect.
I began to see my ailments from a bigger picture. There were many references in A More Excellent Way that I wanted to read in context but looking them all up would require a whole lot of random reading and frantic page flipping. With that, I decided I wanted to start at the beginning and read through the whole Bible.
End of March, I found a Bible in 90 Days reading plan and got to it! With “health” on my mind, I began highlighting verses that spoke specifically about God’s promises to keep us or restore us to good health and the corresponding responsibility He gave us.
During this, I’d been seeing the holistic doctor weekly and after just a couple weeks, I’d already begun to feel better and by the end of March, not only did my stomach issues resolve almost completely, but my shoulder was finally beginning to improve!
I continued reading the Bible for an hour to an hour and a half every day, which was not only showing me the overarching stories and themes but it was also heck of an exercise in self-discipline and a sacrifice of time!
By the end of April, my should pain was gone, my stomach was settled, and my daily devotion to the Lord was habitual and I eventually finished reading the Bible from cover to cover at the end of July.
Six weeks later we entered the season of Cody’s cancer diagnosis and while I was sitting in the waiting room at MD Anderson for him to have a his first biopsy, a friend sent me a document. It was two pages of prayers she had used to pray when her husband went through his own season of cancer. I was so grateful for someone having walked this path before me, someone that could truly empathize with the fear and subsequent emotions.
I looked up each scripture reference from those two pages and get this: the overwhelming majority of them were already highlighted in my Bible!
He goes BEFORE us! He paves the way! Cancer was not a surprise to Him! He was preparing me! And He knew it this whole time!
Looking back, in February, when he dropped “health” on my heart, I’m now reminded of the Lord’s words to Habukkuk:
For I am doing a work in your days that you would not believe if told.
Habukkuk 1:5b
Nope, I wouldn’t have believed it if He told me and even if I did believe it, I would never have chosen that path for myself! Call me a modern day Jonah as I would’ve run to Tarshish. “Nope, not me! Wrong guy! Wrong place!”
BUT GOD!
He knew where my heart was. He knew when Cody and I were ready to experience His power in a new way and on a new level. He knew when our ears could hear and our eyes could see the wondrous works of His hands in a dark and scary situation.
As I look back at the breadcrumbs he left along my 2021 trail, I am 100% without a doubt, sold out that God was in this. He is for us. And while I was nervous and didn’t know which direction this season would go, I was more scared thinking about walking this path without Him. So I stepped out of the boat and kept my eyes on Him.
You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you because he trusts in you.
Isaiah 26:3