Medical Update: Healing Prayer

People have been praying over me.  A couple of weeks ago, at Life Group, my entire group prayed for healing into my life.  (For more information about what I need healing from, read my other Medical Update post).  I had to go to Austin on Jan 24-26, and that week was ridiculously bad with episodes occurring frequently throughout each day.

But, then on that Saturday, it was as if a switch was thrown, and my episodes tapered off substantially, out of the clear blue.  I went from frequent and severe episodes Mon-Fri, to virtually NONE on Saturday.  I had 1 or 2 episodes on all days, Saturday through the following week.  Still no episode-free days, but as close as I've come since December 22 (my one and only episode free day since the onset of this mysterious condition at the end of November).

So, I ventured out to Healing Prayer at church on Tuesday, February 7.  Let me start by saying that I was extremely nervous, having no idea what to expect.  I had mentally "planned" to attend the healing prayer opportunity, but physically, I hadn't.  In other words, I didn't get any child care.  So, the day of, I was scrambling to find someone to watch my kids, but in reality, I think I was hoping I wouldn't be able to find anyone.  But, leave it to my life group leaders to say, "Just bring them over here."  Then, I had more excuses....like, "But, they live about 25 minutes away from Beltway...."  Still, I felt it pressed more and more strongly upon my heart that I was to go receive this gift of healing prayer that night.  So, I did.

It was nothing scary.  I wrote down a summary of my healing needs, and I was assigned to a small group of 3 other people to pray over and with me, in a private room.  They were complete strangers to me.  Correction.  They were complete ANOINTED strangers....to me.  They prayed over me for healing, but they also spoke words of encouragement from the Father into my life.  Rick (one of the prayer partners) spoke a vision over me, and it was as if I was walking with him through that vision, not just listening to him as he described something.  No.  I was there.  IN it!  It was phenomenal, really.  Then, he spoke words of prophecy over me.  Words of prophecy that I believe God has spoken into my life personally, but that I'd doubted and, consequently, never grabbed ahold of.  Confirmation of things I had already heard from the Father.  Things, such that I would be praying encouragement and healing over others.  It was a little freaky...but in an amazingly comforting way.

So, here I am, in the middle of prayer, and I have an episode, in which my head pulls back, like normal.  But ... NOT like normal.  Rick has his hands on my head, and someone else has her hands on my shoulders from behind, and then I have this overwhelming sense of peace, like a flood over me.  This sense of ... well ... it's indescribable really.  Like a reassurance that this is not some attack from the enemy (which I had wondered).  It's not something over which God has no control, but that He is there, and HIS hands are on me, and IN me, and THROUGH me.  I just felt it.  It was a newness.  A peace.  Something completely different than I'd ever felt, especially right in the very midst of an episode. It was like a big ol' great Divine, "No worries, kid! I GOT THIS!"

And, so it was.  Healing prayer.  Nothing scary.  But, in fact, something Miraculous.  Amazing.  A phenomenal encounter with my Savior.  With my Great Physician.

And, since that night, I've had only one episode.  I've had some bouts of dizziness/aura (maybe once a day), but when I've felt it, I have prayed, declaring the Truth, that God is my Healer, and He is IN me, and so He can renew all of my neurological signals to their original flawless purpose.  And, aside from the one instance, the aura has never developed into the physical manifestations of the episodes, since that night, when God gave me His great big, "I got this!" message.

Wow!  A thousand times over!

Incidentally, after the team prayed over me, they asked if there was anything else for which I may need prayer. The only thing that stuck out to me was that I really really feel this calling to write, but I'm struggling with exactly what, where, why, or how that is supposed to take shape. Now, remember, these people were complete strangers to me. They didn't really know much about me at all, except what I told them about my medical stuff.

I'd been praying to God, requesting clarity about the direction I am to take with my writing, and I kept feeling this nudge on my heart to give up Facebook. I even said to God, "Is that from YOU, or ME?" Because I am well aware that Facebook can become all-consuming for me, but I also think that it is not all bad. So, I had asked God to "give me a perfectly clear answer, maybe even through a dream" as to whether He is telling me that I need to close my Facebook account.

Well, so back to the prayer team. There was a man in the prayer group who wrote down all of the words of encouragement that were spoken over me during our time together, but on a separate sticky note, he wrote a word he felt he had heard from the Lord, but hadn't spoken aloud. "Fasting brings clarity. Food, Facebook, whatever you can give up."

Um, hello! Does it get any clearer than that?

Thank you, Lord, for adopting me as your very own, and for caring so intimately for your children!

Oh, and in case you're wondering. Yes, I'm fasting Facebook :)