13th December 2000
IntroductionI'm hosting this story because it doesn't seem to have a home elsewhere on the web A lot of people are skeptical about healing, and reasonbly enough want to see a really clear, well-documented case. Well, this is a spectactular case history, and it happened recently (Decemeber 2000) in Crawley, East Sussex (you can't get a much more mundane location than that!) Sue is Fiona's accountant's wife, and a good friend of Fiona's mother; so while she's not exactly a personal friend of mine, she is close enough to me that I can vouch for the authenticity of this story. Sue's in the process of gathering formal documentation of the healing from doctors and other authorities.
Note that I did not write this text; it is Sue's story told in her own words. I have resisted the tempatation to clean up the prose, because I think it's important that what people read is exactly what she wrote.
- Mike.
On December 12th I went to bed crying in terrible pain in my hands and right arm. This was because I'd written too much in the evening. Normally this would mean that David my husband would dress me the next day. As arranged the alarm went off at 6.30am so David would have had time to help me before going off to work. Once up I then realised that I had no obvious difficulty or pain in my hands and arm. I still couldn't walk without aids etc. but my hands were fine. I didn't think, great I've been healed, but just thought it was nice to have some space from the constant pain that normally was in them. I went about the day needing help, using my adapted motability car which had my electric wheelchair in the back of it. It was a normal day for me consisting of activity, children, making dinner etc. with my usual constant and severe pain in so much of my body. At the beginning of most days I was able to get out to the car relying heavily on sticks. Increasingly there were more days where this wasn't possible so social services had a ramp put at the front of our house to get my electric chair in. As each day progressed I would get more and more exhausted by the effort of just doing the simple things of life so I'd need more help as the day went on.
When I went out in the evening of 13th December 2000 my sons helped me to the car, that was the last time that they ever saw me unable to walk and in pain etc. etc. During that evening at a friend's we prayed and talked together, and I wrote using pen and paper for ages, this was something that I could not normally do as I usually used a handheld computer. I had no problem with my hands because of doing this, I still couldn't walk or get out of the chair I'd been sitting in. I felt quite ill getting to the car and needed loads of help to do so. 5 minutes later I dropped my friend Tracy off and arrived home at 11pm, on automatic I went to phone my husband David so he'd come and help me in doors. Although this was our normal routine I always felt really bad troubling David in this way. Anyway just before ringing it through an inner voice said, "you don't need him", now I didn't have time to compute that thought or to think "don't be ridiculous" because straight after that I was totally compelled to jump out of the car. I compare it now to when you give birth, you have to push the baby out even if it killed you. I then ran, something I'd not done for probably 15 years. (When I said this to Trix my physiotherapist she said that having used a wheelchair for the best part of 10 years I shouldn't have had the muscle tone to do that, wow!). Anyway I ran through the garden, kitchen and upstairs past the stairlift, I said to David "I think God's healing me!" Then until 3.45am I danced the night away doing the twist and loads of things that I would not have done in years etc. etc. Whilst speaking to a friend at 12.30am on the phone I had a strange sensation in my right ear, it was like a popping of water in my ear, like after swimming. At that point all the symptoms of the Meniere's disease, which is chronic vertigo, hearing loss/fluctuations and tinitus, completely disappeared. When I eventually went to bed I was frightened to go to sleep in case it all went away. I didn't need to fret though as when I woke only 2½ hours later I bounded out of bed without giving it a second thought.
It has been an absolute complete healing, I lost my memory through a trauma at 12 years old, since the 13th December it's like the lights have been going on inside my head. I have lived for years with loads of pictures that I didn't understand, now understanding is happening. It's wonderful.
I still needed an emergency bowel operation until 2 weeks ago, so when I see the surgeon on February 6th, he thinks he is booking me in for surgery. I've no more symptoms so obviously don't need the operation, but I will let him be the judge of that, although I have know doubt that he will feel the same way as I do.
I have had ill health all my life, even as a child I can remember crying with the pain in my knees almost every night. I was diagnosed with migraine at 5, and was still on 4 tablets a day. Since the 13th with the help and wisdom of my GP I've reduced my tablets from 44 to 17 a day, so far. I've completely come off of the migraine tablets now, but have not had a head pain at all. I'd tried at various times before the 13th December to reduce those tablets but had always needed to go back on them, as I couldn't bear the migraines. Years ago, ( I think in my teen) thy found on my spine x-ray that I had a curved spine. This last July (2000), my GP had observed that the top of my back had also started to curve over, it has some fancy name to the condition but I can't remember right now. At that appointment she also measured me to be 5ft 1", after I got healed I measured 5ft 2½ which was the height I was before I went into a wheelchair. I have now been measured as 5ft 3", I've been on weight watchers and have now only 2lb's to go as my goal weight had to be higher. The nurse at the surgery said that I will probably grow throughout 2001 as my spine decompresses. You see although the wheelchair had only been around for 9-10 years and only 6 of those had I been in it permanently. For years before that I'd not been able to stand without pain, so had normally looked for a chair to sit when possible. My whole of my right side had become very weak. I fell down an escalator and damaged my right shoulder, I was then in a sling for 19 months. Even after they'd operated I didn't get the full use of it back. I've got it now, even to the point I went swimming and did back stroke! I had very poor circulation and my knees in particular were always cold. Now even having been sledging for 4 hours my knees were still warm. My right foot used to have to keep being re-aligned. I'd been given a diagnosis of Fibroymalgia, which really was the closest box that they could put me in. It is an extremely painful illness, one that is in the arthritis family, although it is not arthritis. It causes the tendons to start to shrink. It has many other symptoms as well, too many to list now. I had also lost the feeling in my fingers and kept dropping things. My reflexes on my right side had also disappeared, the medics still hadn't found out why. Also very frustratingly my co-ordination had gone which meant that if I wanted to walk to my right, (using my sticks needless to say), who knows which direction I'd actually end up in. When I saw my GP after Christmas, the 2nd time since my healing. I said that I was still convinced that I had MS, she said that she agreed, but you see I'd gotten fed up with consultants, hospitals, pokes and prods etc. I therefore decided that I didn't want to go through with any more tests.
Every 2 years I had to have a medical examination by the DHSS, the last one being in 1999, September I think, well the letter from that exam reads that they found me to be more than 80% disabled, and that I would never work or walk again. They didn't put God in the equation did they?
Certainly we are all physical, emotional and spiritual people, I am no different. Obviously when you are stressed or tired you do feel pain more intensely. I have had a hard life with one thing and another, and some of that had a bearing on my illness, although I have documentation from various important sources that my illnesses, in there view were 100% physical. This was a question that I had already strongly delved into. I am totally satisfied and so are the people that cared for me that my illness was very much a physical development. But even if it had been in my head, and nobody that I am aware of believes that to be the case. I still had been in a wheelchair for such a long time that I should not have been able to walk, run, sledge etc. etc. straight away. Also my hearing has been restored, I haven't had a hearing test to confirm this, but I am using the telephone on my right ear now, something that I would not have been able to do before this. Obviously there is also the fact that I am now 2 inches taller. Something that my mind however clever it is, could not have done!
My children, Nathan (12) and Ian (10), do not remember me walking without major difficulties and help. We've already done so much as a family that we have never been able to do. Also I am doing things that I have never been able to do, not even as a child. Even as a child I needed to wear special shoes to try and deal with my obvious leg problems.
I don't believe my healing is temporary. When we went to the Millennium Dome, a week after my healing, 20th December, I had planned to take my wheelchair with me. I didn't want to be rash, stupid or irresponsible. But after 3 or 4 days of being healed I knew that I didn't need to take it with me. We had a wonderful day out. I haven't even had what I would call ‘normal' aches and pains from doing so much. Even so I am trying to schedule in time out for us as a family and me as an individual. It's been very busy here, as there are so many official bodies to inform etc.
In all of this though, I am totally humbled that God has chosen to do this for me. Why not others in the Church that are sick and suffering? I don't know the answer to that, a part from the fact that God is Sovereign. I don't know why I have been ill for so many years. But I do know that God doesn't love me any differently now I am able bodied, than when I was at my weakest, sickest and lowest. I know that He doesn't give the promise of a trouble free life even as Christians, but I do know that even in the midst of appalling circumstances we can know His presence and peace, and I did. The greatest miracle in all of this is still the fact that we can have a relationship with the living Almighty God through Jesus, and what he achieved by dying on the cross for each one of us.
I wouldn't change any detail of my life if I could, as it's made me, me. My strengths and lessons I've learnt have been difficult but worth it, for God to bring His glory. Several years ago I came to a point of peace with my situation. I then thought that because I'd come to terms with it that God would heal me, He didn't. Then in January 1999 I came to a point where I said to God "if you can use me more in and through this wheelchair then you mustn't heal me" I wanted His Glory so much in my life that that was the most important thing in my life. Then in August 2000 I asked Jesus to give me an addiction to His presence, what I meant by this was I wanted to put Him as top priority. That I wanted to read my Bible so much more, and that I'd want to consult Him over everything. This is what He has done for me.
It's so wonderful to wake with every new day without the continual terrible pain that used to be with every moment of every day. It's so fantastic to go for walks without the terrible ringing in my ears of tinitus, it's so quiet in side my ear now. I appreciate so much, not necessarily the expensive things, but just being able to do the basic things for myself that others had started to need to do for me.
To know that David, Nathan, Ian and I have the rest of our lives together to enjoy each other without being surrounded by illness and disability, things that the boys have never been without. They are also still my top priority, and even in the midst of all the wonder of being healed I haven't, and hope I never to do in the future anything that would be right for our whole family.
But most of all I have to give Jesus Christ the Glory for healing me, and changing my life and the lives of my friends and family forever.
May you know this Jesus for yourself, and find encouragement, peace and hope through reading this story of how God came and worked a miracle in our day and age.
Written by and about myself Sue J. Noakes
January 2001