I experienced a miraculous healing

The specialist held my foot in his hand, completely speechless. He yanked it around, pushed his thumb into the previously-broken spot, checked his notes again. “This doesn’t happen,” he said. “This never happens.” Well, it happened, kind sir. I have been healed.

Quicker than a snap of the fingers, the Lord healed my broken foot and encouraged my broken spirit. One instant - one glorious instant. It was my pleasure to return to this doctor and show him what God did for me. His nurse’s eyes glowed, sparkling with tears as she smiled at me. I was the first patient to have such a story and it was thrilling to be in the room. He was not one to believe such stories in the past, she had told me, but she knew this was a miracle….and now he was seeing it with his own eyes, feeling it with his own hands.

Seven months prior, I slipped off the step in my garage rather benignly and heard the snap. Since I had broken five bones before, this was familiar territory. Ice, elevation, Advil, crutches. As expected, the foot swelled but the doctor’s office, without seeing me, brushed it off as a sprain and advised me to just wrap it and take it easy. Weeks later, I was no longer using it because it swelled even more, and I couldn’t weight-bear. An x-ray didn’t show a broken bone, so what was happening? With three kids at home and a part-time job, I didn’t have time to fuss with it; besides, it would be better in a few more weeks. But the weeks dragged on with no improvement.

Seven weeks in, with no improvement at all, I had an MRI which showed no single fracture but a bone that looked like a windshield after a bat has smashed it. Numerous little breaks fanned out in squiggly directions. Now I had the doctor’s attention, but it seemed too late. Therapy had failed; rest had failed; time had failed; a boot, crutches, wheelchair had failed. A therapist said rather ham-handedly, “The only thing I suggest is go to Palm Springs and wait it out.” Seriously?!? I had a new problem: RSD. A nervous system disorder, this caused its own set of problems. Basically, my toes were turning purple. My foot and leg pinked a deeper shade every day.

My foot and lower leg were a full 20 degrees colder than the other leg. No amount of heat, hot baths, wool socks and wraps warmed my foot. Getting out the big guns, a pain clinic tried shutting off the nerve to my leg, hoping to reboot the whole system. That, too, failed.

By now it was five months. This was during winter so the weather made doing everything outside harder on crutches. Shopping, working, just getting in and out of the car, carrying things between my squeezed knees or suspending things from my neck. My sweet husband would lay fresh towels on the floor of the garage so I wouldn’t slip crutching to the door from the car. Mopping the floor was laborious as I sat on the floor and scooted. Emptying the dryer took a long time, cooking was harder; basically, when you’re on crutches you don’t have your hands. Everything just took longer and more patience.

Weren’t my family helping me? My husband and kids were fantastic. They jumped in and did everything they could, but while they were at work or school, I did what I could to keep up my normal duties.

At the same time, my leg was getting worse, and I knew it. Even resting it on a pillow caused me to cry in pain. No doctor wanted to see me anymore because there wasn’t anything they could do. Following the Bible’s urgings, I had asked, cried out, pleaded, prayed fervently for healing and all I felt was silence. Where was He? Ask and you shall receive, it says, but I was only receiving more bad news each morning as I unwrapped my leg to see more spots and a deeper pink creeping up close to my knee. A doctor had said what usually happens in these cases (RSD is always in an extremity) is that the limb eventually goes black and sometimes amputation is the only solution. Oh, please don’t let it come to that!

Six months in, I was emotionally spent. I felt like I had tried everything, and well- meaning people made me feel I wasn’t doing enough. Before bed one night, I said to my husband, “I’m done. I can’t do this anymore.” Worried I’d do something terrible, he asked what I meant. “I can’t pray anymore. You can, but I’m done.” I knew that I could rely on him and few close friends to hold me in prayer while I went silent myself. God wasn’t helping me, I felt, and more than a little disappointed, I went silent too. Mercifully, I fell asleep.

When I awoke, I was no longer on board with not talking to God. It didn’t feel right. Before I had even opened my eyes, I asked Him, “God? Do you still want to talk to me?” I felt him say, oh so gently, “My child.” I sucked in a breath. “I’m sorry. What do you want me to do?” With gentle firmness, He answered. “Get up.” I did.

I got my kids on the bus and told my husband I had to do something but didn’t know what. He suggested I call the specialist’s office. “But they don’t want to hear from me.” He urged me to try again so I sat at my table and called. A nurse picked up. I launched right into my problem, saying I didn’t know who to turn to. “You’re in the fight of your life,” she said. Before I go on, you may have noted already that a receptionist didn’t answer the phone; a nurse did. Additionally, she wasted no time in addressing the spiritual need. “You are in a battle. Let the spiritual fight it out with the physical. Get your Bible and pick out a verse and claim it. Repeat it over your foot and believe it. I’ll ask around here and call you back.”

Grabbing my mother-in-law’s Bible, I asked God to direct me to the verse he had for me. I opened to Luke 8 which tells the story of a woman who had spent all her money on doctors and still was not well. In faith, she touched the hem of Jesus’ cloak and was healed instantly. Right after, Jesus was asked to go to a man’s house whose daughter lay dying. And here was my verse, blazing off the page: “Don’t be afraid; just believe, and she will be healed.” Feeling a little silly, I admit, but going all in, I put both hands on my foot and repeated that verse out loud repeatedly, believing with all my heart that He could and would heal me.

I put my foot on the floor, unwrapped it and found a white leg, foot and toes. It was warm. I stood and it felt fine. I stepped and then walked across my kitchen, free of pain. The air was electric as I realized Who was in the room with me. Thank you, Jesus!! I stopped and praised Him. I was walking!!!

My phone rang. It was the nurse. I told her what happened, and she celebrated with me. “Make an appointment and tell the doctor what just occurred. He needs to see this for himself.” Exuberant, I finished the story in Luke 8 and as I read, I had to turn the page. At the top of the page, in red, were the very words He had spoken to me that morning: “My child, get up!”

Oh Jesus, you see me. Forgive me for ever doubting your love and faithfulness. Words can’t do justice to describe my buoyed heart. He’s real!!! I had never doubted His reality, but this day and every day since, His presence was palpable.

A friend said, ‘We may not like his methods, but we can’t argue with the results.’ So true! We don’t understand His ways, but we can choose to trust Him. My spirit depleted, I don’t feel guilty relying on others to pray and carry me for a while. I just couldn’t do it at the time and that’s okay. He understands. He certainly pushed me to the brink, but He never left me.

Leif Enger says real miracle bother people. For too long, he says, the word miracle “has been used to characterize things or events, that, though pleasant, are entirely normal”: baby chicks in spring, a clear sunrise after a storm. He maintains that to call those events miracles is to evaporate the strength of the word. No, he says, a miracle is a swing of the sword. Miracles rebut the laws of nature. They certainly do. My general practitioner told me later that he has many patients who felt they were healed miraculously but he knows they weren’t. He can explain their healing medically. With me, he couldn’t. That humbles me.

Incredibly, I had no muscle atrophy after not using my leg for six months, no residual pain, zero issues. I simply resumed my life, exalting in my healing. Years later, this having an enormous impact on my oldest son in particular, he had the verse tattooed on his arm. I’m honored by that, too, and he’s able to share the story with everyone who asks about such a unique inking.

Gratefully, there’s more to the story, but that may be for another time. Ask me, and I’ll be happy to share. I leave you with this: If you are discouraged and/or feel that He has left you or is no longer near, He is. I can’t explain why He’s holding back, but I trust Him like never before, I’ll trust for you if you can’t right now. My painful days haven’t ended. Trials still come, but I remember that electric feeling, that surge of healing that pulsed through my leg. He sees; he hears; He heals. He really does. All praise to Him forever and ever.