A True Healing Miracle

Healing is not a fantasy

I’ve read several fantasy books recently where magical healing makes an appearance. It’s a convenient wonder, allowing our suffering heroes to recover almost instantly to continue their quest. But in real life, injuries take time—if they heal at all.

I suffered a neck injury that kept me in chronic pain for almost a decade. After years of many kinds of treatments and doctor visits, complete healing wasn’t a realistic hope anymore. But all that changed in a moment. I had a miraculous healing.

The accident

In 2010, my sophomore year of college, I lost a mentor to cancer. I didn’t know how to handle my grief, so I ducked out of the funeral early. I drove home through the mountains on a two-lane highway and had to stop for deer crossing the road.

That’s when it hit me. A Ford F-450 pickup going about 40 miles per hour.

I saw it in the rearview mirror an instant before the impact. No time to react except to tense in fear—the worst thing to do in an accident.

I remember having the sense to put on my turn signal when I pulled off the road. Funny how that logical part of my training remained in tact.

The rest didn’t fare so well. My Buick’s solid steel frame had bent into the back tire and pinned the driver doors shut. My garage door opener and cassette tapes from the front seat had flown into the back.

And my neck and head hurt.

The injury

At first I didn’t think the injury was so bad. I delayed going to the hospital for hours as the pain got worse. But as treatments got underway over the next few months—chiropractor, physical therapy, dry needling, massage, MRI’s—I struggled to maintain a functional life.

I couldn’t hold up my head for very long, making standing or walking for any length of time unfeasible. Sitting in a chair became agony for my neck and back. I feared I might have to drop out of college. My lifting restriction of a few pounds—not even enough to lift a gallon of milk—didn’t raise beyond 15 pounds even after months of therapy. Unable to exercise sufficiently, I put on 20 pounds. By transitioning to a sedentary life where I propped up my head during class and then lay on the couch all evening, I managed to get my pain to a somewhat tolerable level.

For years, I tried more treatments and personal training to achieve minimal progress except for getting back to a normal weight and increasing my stamina for standing. My whiplash injury, complicated by the fact that I had turned my head and tensed before the impact, changed my whole way of life.

The complication

Over the course of 7 years, I achieved functionality within careful boundaries to protect my weak neck, getting jobs that didn’t have physical demands and a standing desk to minimize the pain of sitting. Although I had no visible impairment, I carried the shame of repeatedly having to say no to tasks and opportunities a healthy person my age should be able to do with ease. If a friend was moving, I couldn’t help. If a child needed comfort, I couldn’t pick her up. I had to build a wall of self-defense around my weak, painful neck.

But one day, I took a foolish step outside of those careful boundaries. I tried to change the water jug for the dispenser at work—not realizing it weighed 40 pounds—and re-injured my neck.

From there, my neck would pop constantly, ratcheting up the pain each time all day long. I feared turning my head to check my surroundings while driving because of the punishment that would come with the movement. The therapy treatments started all over again, with some doctors stumped as to why I could not seem to gain any improvement while others point blank told me I would simply get worse for the rest of my life and grow more dependent on treatments. The diagnoses were heartbreaking. I had no hope.

The miracle

In May of 2019, over 9 years after my accident, I attended the Colorado Christian Writers Conference, where I awkwardly stood at the back of classrooms and lay on the floor of the auditorium during class sessions to cater to my persnickety neck. One day, a lady in the lunch line asked me about my injury. And then she asked if she could pray for my healing.

I’d heard rumors of miraculous healings—usually coupled with lots of skepticism—but in the past few years, as I’d come to know God better and trust Him more, I’d concluded that He could heal. I believed He’d healed others. I just didn’t know if He would heal me.

And there, in the lunch line as a stranger grabbed the back of my neck and I sobbed my way past the salad bar—I dared to hope. Just the smallest, tiniest glimmer of a hope. God, would you really heal me?

I admit, I didn’t feel much of a difference when she stopped praying. It wasn’t until a quiet moment of prayer that evening when I asked if I really could be healed—if I had enough faith—and listened for God’s voice. He told me that having the faith to come and ask Him was enough and that He wouldn’t withhold this good thing from me.

That’s when He said, “It is done.”

My body’s healing

I didn’t know what the healing would look like. Should I keep doing my daily stretches and ice/heat therapy? Would I wake up perfectly whole and strong? Because I didn’t know, I got up the next day and did my usual routine while hoping and believing that the victory Jesus gave me wouldn’t be lost—just as He promised me.

From that day, I had no more pain sitting or standing. My neck didn’t pop. I could turn my head without fear of violent repercussions. I no longer lived my life in terror of what every action would do to my body. Pain went from an extreme daily inevitability to an occasional mild surprise. My 9 years of suffering were finished. God had healed me!

My mind’s healing

My improvement was immediate and drastic. Yet, it was not complete. I wasn’t instantly strong enough to lift greater loads or put forth more exertion. As the year went on, I still had pain on enough occasions—even the occasional alarming pop—that I concluded my healing was about 75%. Of course, I was very grateful for the 75%. But why not 100%?

One day, as I was praying almost a year later, I saw God in a vision remove a little pin from my neck. My spine shifted. He blew on my mind to erase the pain pathways. And another improvement ensued, bumping me up to what I consider 85% healing.

I realized that I needed to claim the victory in my mind as well as my body. I had lived in the pattern of pain for so long that my thoughts needed to be refreshed and replaced with thoughts of wholeness. I needed to stop saying, “I think God might have healed me partway,” and instead walk confidently in the healing He had given me.

Although I no longer feared the harm of regular activity, I did fear pushing myself to achieve greater strength. I feared losing the progress that I’d received. That fear was completely unfounded given what I had experienced. Jesus had already proven to me that He could heal. Now I needed to trust that He would bring what He started to completion. I needed to stand on the victory He’d given me and not put up with doubts or defeat.

So now I am performing tasks previously out of my reach, and when the fears that injury will ensue or set me back like the many times before my miraculous healing, I say to myself instead, “God has healed me. He will complete what He started. I will not lose even a piece of this victory.”

And the miracles keep rolling in!

Recently, we had a big snow storm up in the mountains where I live. I needed to run the snowblower to plow a way out through my driveway—a physically rigorous task on the best of days—but the machine ran out of gas. In a series of undesirable events, I had to pick up, transport, and sustain our full and extremely heavy gas can. I started to fear a re-enactment of the water-jug injury. But instead I said, “God has healed me. I have a normal neck. When normal people pick up something too heavy, they get sore, and then they get stronger. I am going to get stronger.”

The result? I did not sustain any injury, my neck didn’t even get sore, and I’m probably stronger. God promised me this victory would not be stolen from me. Now I am standing on that promise and pushing forward through previously impossible tasks to achieve greater strength.

Miraculous healing happens

It’s not fairy magic. It’s not fantasy. God does miraculously heal. I am a witness that He still loves and intervenes in order to perform miracles. Through my miraculous healing, I learned that we need to believe not only that He can but that He will work on our behalf. We must be willing to receive what He wants to give us, trust that He will complete what He started, and then stand strong in faith on what He has done.

God is working a miraculous healing in my neck and my mind. What miracle might He want to do in your life? Are you willing to receive it?

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