Nicaragua was my hardest country, physically. I felt sick for most of the time we were there. Sick from my dairy allergy.
When our squad was in Ethiopia my teammate, Elena was healed from her gluten allergy. It started when she and my squad leader, Ashley were in a one-on-one and Ashley asked her if she had ever asked for healing. As Elena came to our team with the reaction of not knowing she could, myself realizing I hadn’t either. It’s easy to see someone in a wheelchair or lying on a bed very sick and think, “let’s pray healing!” It is more common to remember only physical healing. Emotional healing and spiritual healing are JUST as important but aren’t as glamorous. Getting healed from a food allergy is definitely external healing but what I learned through Elena’s experience, there is way more internal healing than external. We had a squad healing night after coming home from Midpoint debrief. It was really powerful and was so empowering. Our leadership had a week long vacation with our squad mentor after midpoint debrief allowing our team leaders and each of us as individuals lead ourselves. Doing this all on our own but really doing it because we all had the exact same Holy Spirit our leadership does, thus, there should be no reason life shouldn’t go on normally.
My squadmate, Luke lead the night and he brought a new way of asking for healing over your life. As we worshiped through speaker music people would shout what they needed prayer over and as a squad pray over that person. It was SO COOL! There was so much physical, emotional and spiritual healing that night, including me. I had a nasty sinus infection that night and when we prayed I felt complete healing of the pressure in my head which was causing splitting headaches. What was the coolest part of that night was watching person after person step out in boldness and declare what they needed healing, one of those was Elena. People were praying in the authority of Jesus’s name and not only was Elena healed but tons were healed that night. Elena has a beautiful and longer version on her blog by the names of, “Healed in Jesus’ name” & “Miracle of healing”.
She went through a long process of slow healing. While she was going through it and getting sick I often questioned God on why he wasn’t healing her immediately, why he was letting her suffer. Oh, how little I knew then! You see, God is a God of the process. God will always take the long, scenic route. Yes, he could have healed Elena and I in a literal blink of an eye but he makes the decision to let us walk through a period of pain in order to learn and grow closer to Him. We really have no right to question God and why he does the things he does. One thing we do know is he does all things to point the glory back to Him. Through this process Elena and I have had to go through really sick moments but as we got better, we REJOICED in Jesus for the victory! God taught Elena so much through her journey and now SHE IS HEALED. Take a moment with me and think about that. Elena got really sick, terrible, terrible pains in her stomach with just the wrong oil in Siem Reap. That was a really tough week for team Grafted, watching our sister so sick and it ended up being the oil our cooks used in our meals at Overflow. Her life was dictated by food. Always being careful and how exhausting to always be checking every label of every box. As humans created in the image of God, allergies do not belong in our bodies. I think one of my fondest memories of this whole process of Elena getting healed was watching her eat a pancake for the first time in years! Fun fact; it is her favorite food now. 🙂
I never felt the need to pray over my allergy because my symptoms weren’t that bad. Plus, on the race we never even eat diary products. But going into
Nicaragua I had a heart change, mostly because one my teammates, Kaelan told me to start asking for healing and how I deserved to feel the healing as well. One of the first nights in Nicaragua we were debriefing our weeks and I asked for healing over my allergy! I announced it to my squad and I was prayed over a multitude of times. Every time having full faith that I WOULD BE HEALED, in God’s will of course! After each prayer I would try something and each time I would get sick. It was so hard because I wasn’t seeing any progress for almost three weeks. Always feeling sick and having to spend days resting from ministry which is so hard for me. It’s hard because my diary allergy doesn’t make me puke or get super ill, it’s all congestion with stomach pains if I eat something huge, like ice cream. So, it was a total pride emotion when I felt ashamed sitting in my bed and people asking me what was wrong. Yes, I wasn’t puking my guts out but I still didn’t feel well and I knew I needed to rest. It was also hard because my symptoms aren’t immediate, I always feel healed and then wake up each morning running to the bathroom with terrible nausea.
Asking God relentlessly what I need healing of underneath and each time He said self control. At first I thought He meant from food. Having self control on my diary intake and other unhealthy foods I was eating. I believe God still asks me to do this and to treat my body like a temple but he meant something a little deeper.
Referring to my blog of, “Jesus Take The Wheel” God revealed to me that I had not given him full control my life and I was still steering parts of my life. Especially in the regard of giving my heart to Jesus. In my blog, “I am yours & your are mine” I will go way more into this but the summary is, my heart was dangled in other things and was constantly getting bumbled like waves in the ocean. Jesus was reminding me that if I gave him control the waters still might be choppy but all I had to do was sit and let him do the hard work.
So, as of right now working on giving Jesus control and continuing to have faith. Constantly praying for the spirit of my diary allergy to leave and enjoying the ride of the process.
I can rejoice that my diary allergy isn’t as severe anymore. I have seen so much improvement about 2 months later from that first prayer. I used to get sick for about two weeks from ice cream, now it’s only a couple of days. No food is worth being sick for that long but in name of healing it is!
It has been a wild ride so far but I’m excited to see what is to come and practicing patience because it’s all on His timing.
Thank you all for reading and I would love prayer for continual healing in my body! 🙂
