I want to share my testimony with you. In church, as the Spirit of God moved, He reminded me of all He brought me through, to this day, for such a time as this. If you are reading this, know that many times I didn’t want to go on. Many times I wanted to give up, but God, He is God, our Faithful God.
I want to start out by saying that we serve a God of grace. It’s who He is, just as He is a God of Love. In 2005, just as I was finishing my RN degree, I became very ill. As a teen, I always had a heavy monthly for 30+ years. My body had adjusted to functioning with a low hemoglobin at this point. I was still working everyday at the nursing facility, working in the hospital to complete my clinicals two days a week, and scooting down two flights of stairs two days a week to attend my last college class. Because of the weakness and difficulty breathing that I was experiencing, I went to the emergency room. The doctor came in with the lab results and informed me that my hemoglobin was 5.4 (normal is 12-14 for women). At that time, I was a Jehovah Witness and refused a blood transfusion. Therefore I was prescribed iron and sent home, being told to return if my health declined.
I took one day off, then returned to work and school. I made an appointment with my gynecologist, and he prescribed birth control medications to control the bleeding, but they were not effective. He wanted to perform a D&C, a procedure in which the uterus is scraped, but he needed my blood count to increase to a count of at least 10 in case of bleeding during the operation. He also performed labs, but by this time my hemoglobin had decreased to 4.6 .
Now I was admitted to the hospital and the doctors were not so nice, being judgmental and angry saying, “Why don’t you just take the blood?”. I was in the hospital for four days and the doctors tried every thing they knew. By this time, my hemoglobin was down to 2.6, one of the lowest recorded in the state. I was receiving IV iron, and had several doctors tell me that I was going to die if I didn’t take the blood. All of my family was urged to see me because it would be my last night. I had about 50 family members around my bed. Every time I would move, my heart rate would increase to 160 (normal is 60-100), and the nurses would run in the room. Eventually, they made me stay in the bed.
At this time, my body had such a small amount of blood that my skin was dark gray, my lips were black, and I was weak and requiring oxygen to breathe. That night, after my family left, I remember saying to Jehovah God, “If it be your will, I will serve You for the rest of my life.” I thought that if I could just make it through the night, I would live. Some time during the night, I was visited by a doctor in a white coat with a golden shine to his appearance. He didn’t say anything. He just grabbed and held my hand, then left. I remember awakening the next morning around 4 a.m. when the lab technician came to stick my finger. She couldn’t draw blood because I had so little.
Around 6 a.m., when the results came in, my hemoglobin was 2.8, up .2 points and it continued to climb. When I left the hospital two days later, the count was 8.0 . Praise God!!! I was scheduled to see the hematologist a week later and my hemoglobin had increased to 10.8, which was enough for my doctor to schedule the surgery that took place two weeks later and was successful.
Fast forward six years to 2011. While at work, I experienced a large swollen area behind my knee. I went to the hospital and was told that it was a baker’s cyst. I continued to experience weakness and pain in my left lower leg. After a while my left arm and my back was involved as well. Appointments were scheduled with an orthopedic, nephrologist, and rheumatologist doctors. They wanted to rule out autoimmune disorders, MS, and Lupus. I started taking many tests and began physical therapy sessions. My medications increased from two pills per day to twenty-two, some of which I believe changed my personality. I began to experience depression and started seeing a psychiatrist and being prescribed more pills. Finally, I had a full body MRI.
By this time, I’m no longer able to perform my duties at work and had to quit. Prior to losing my insurance, I received multiple shots (TPI) in my back the first of two sessions and was also able to see the neurologist who revealed I had a crushed nerve in my cervical spine between C3 and C4 and was told the only treatment would be a surgical intervention, which I refused. Since I wasn’t able to work, remaining weak, I went to live with my aunt.
Meanwhile, my daughter (the first in my family to leave our generational faith), had started to attend church without me knowing. She invited me to church for Mother’s Day that year. The speaker mentioned that we are living under a new covenant and that really got my attention! I immediately began to think that I almost lost my life living under the old covenant.
So, I began to compare bibles and could not see any differences. I started to go to church afterwards because it really came down to the love commandment, and made a decision that love wins, because JWs disassociate and decease relationships with ones that are disfellowshipped (committing any type of sin), even towards family members and that’s not love. God is love and the Word says to lift your brother up. Anyway, shortly after I started attending church, our pastor was doing a series of sermons called “Heaven’s Healthcare”. I was supernaturally healed during this series, no longer dragging my leg, or having to lift my left arm with my right hand.
Shortly after I gave my life to Christ, only then, did I remember the promise I had made to God six years prior. I didn’t have a home, a car, or any money, but immediately my life was changed. I started to work on becoming the new person and to let all of my many bad habits go. I felt led by the Holy Spirit to break those things off of me and I would not engage in any of it. My family began to say that I was having a mental breakdown, but I knew that I was beginning to change from the inside-out. It wasn’t easy, but I did it. I started to get myself together and tell everyone I encountered about Jesus. I thank God for my daughter. I’m sure she was praying for me. A year later God called me to attend Rhema Bible College as a missionary. I married a pastor, so now I am a pastor with a heart for missions.
I have always been surprised that when any pastor calls for the sick to come to the front of the church for prayer, wherever you are, most chairs and pews are left empty. My heart is that people know that Jesus is still in the healing business. He is the same and doesn’t change. God’s will is for people to be healed. I want to teach on healing and see many healed through the finished works of our Lord and Savior. I want every believer to know how much God loves them and wants a personal relationship with them. I want believers to know their identity through Christ, and their authority in Him.
