A Special Anniversary

Hello! Yes, it’s been a year since I last updated. And yes, that was about my book, which I am still working on. I hope to have a book update for you all soon, but today I wanted to share about a special anniversary I’m celebrating.  It’s a little long, but I hope worth it and encouraging to you. Here we go!

For some background, when I was in college, I started having some issues with vertigo, and ringing in my ears, especially my left ear. There was no real determining cause and at the time, it didn’t happen very often so I wasn’t super concerned. As the years went on, however, it continued to get worse and more frequent, and was later accompanied by intermittent hearing loss in my left ear as well. This went on for probably close to ten years. Eventually it was harder to hear out of my left ear all the time, and at times would feel almost like it needed to pop and was hard to hear anything out of it at all. I had seen a couple of doctors and no one could really tell me the root cause without going to see a specialist. To be honest, seeing a specialist was expensive, and a lot the issues it could be didn’t have much of a treatment anyway, so it seemed kind of pointless. 

Over the course of my time attending Bridgeway Church, I have really embraced their passionate pursuit of both Word and Spirit. Part of that is believing that God heals so I would ask for healing for my ear and vertigo often. Nothing ever seemed to happen. Now, I’m not one that believes that just because we pray, or have enough faith, or do the right things means God will automatically heal us. We don’t know when or why God chooses to heal some people and not others, but it doesn’t mean we should stop praying for it. But to be transparent, after several years of praying and nothing happening, I was getting weary of praying. Sam Storms, my pastor, says that we only stop praying for healing in three instances: we hear a distinct prompting from The Lord to stop praying for that particular ailment, we are healed, or we die. And even though I knew these things, at times I still didn’t want to continue to pray and feel disappointed. Until two years ago. 

Two years ago today, I was at my friend Callie’s house with my best friend Megan for our Dgroup meeting. The three of us met up twice a month to get share about life, challenges, pray for each other, and support each other. That week was a really rough one for my hearing and vertigo. I had a couple of instances where I couldn’t hear anything at all in my left ear, my vertigo would last for hours and make me nauseous when I was at work, and the ringing seemed almost constant. I was frustrated and worn out by it. I shared this with them, and to be honest, I wasn’t wanting or asking for prayer at that moment. Truth be told, I was just complaining. But they said “Let’s pray for this right now” and in the back of my head I had Sam’s voice saying “You’re not healed, and you’re not dead”, so I agreed, not expecting anything to happen. Megan put her hand over my left ear and they started praying. And all of a sudden I heard what sounded like a gust of wind in that left ear. They finished praying and I told them what I heard. Megan exclaimed “That’s the Holy Spirit!”, while Callie suggested we pray again for total healing. This time I almost felt a pop in my ear and everything was so much clearer. 

The next day at church, the music seemed super loud. I asked several people if the music was louder than usual, and everyone said it seemed pretty normal. I serve in a children’s class and we had been watching this same Veggies Tales video for several weeks. It had a scene in it with a piano playing and suddenly I realized there were these high pitched notes that I hadn’t realized were there. All week I started noticing things I hadn’t even realized I hadn’t been hearing, especially higher frequency sounds. I didn’t have a vertigo episode that entire week, and my ears didn’t ring at all either. I was healed!  

It’s been two years, and I haven’t had a vertigo episode since that day. My ears don’t ring, and my hearing is almost annoyingly the best it’s ever been (I mean sometimes you don’t want to hear everything right? 😉). What I hope you get from this story is that this was ALL GOD. He deserves all the Glory for this. Nothing I did made me earn it. And I also hope this encourages you to have faith not only for yourself in these situations, but for others too. Without Callie and Megan, I wouldn’t have prayed for healing that day. God used their faith when mine was weak. And it’s helped me in wanting to pray for others when they feel weak too.