10 Years Healed

From the time she was nine, Jess suffered from a debilitating form of illness called fibromyalgia. This year, she celebrates 10 years since she was miraculously healed. Now a Salvation Army officer (pastor), Jess tells her story of fierce faith and freedom.

I was nine when my world began to crumble. During a netball game I hurt my knee, but it didn’t come right, so I was put in a splint. The pain started spreading into my back, so I was given crutches, and the pain spread to my arms. It was the beginning of years of scans, specialists and tests, while the pain became more and more excruciating. I was hospitalised, but told that it must be ‘in my head’.

My parents were Salvation Army officers and they were moved to Hastings. It was there that we found a specialist who finally diagnosed me with the most severe form of fibromyalgia—a condition that causes your body to have extreme pain reactions to even the slightest bumps and knocks. I did a trigger test and learnt that I had all of the 18 possible trigger points, to the most severe degree.

I was 12-and-a-half when I was diagnosed, but it’s usually a condition that doesn’t occur before middle age. Fibromyalgia affects your nerve endings, so that even having a shower felt like needles in my back, and being jostled at school was agonising. I was a teenager living in an 80-year-old’s body.

By the time I was 15, I really couldn’t remember what life without pain was like. I had a huge spiritual battle going on in my mind, I got to such a dark place that I couldn’t see the point of living and I had to decide to choose life over death. I said, ‘The point in living is you, Jesus.’ I chose to believe that I wasn’t a mistake, and that God’s purposes for me were good.

A match made in heaven

Fibromyalgia matured me beyond my years. When I was 15, I met my first love—and my lifelong love. Daryn started coming to the church where my parents were Salvation Army officers. He was a farmer, and here I was, a delicate, frail girl.

I would go for long walks with my mum discussing how I could get to know him. He was going to Canada for a month, and before he left, I blurted out, ‘I’m going to miss you.’ He didn’t react at all, and I thought, ‘Should I say it again? Did he hear me?’ I spent the next month wondering what I’d done.

Little did I know that Daryn had been thinking about me and what I’d said. He brought a teddy bear back from Canada and said to God, ‘Okay, Lord, I want you to arrange it—if we’re meant to be together, I’ll be able to give this teddy bear to Jess at church tonight.’ Well, I was waiting at church to see him, and we didn’t get to speak to each other at all. When I saw him leaving, I yelled out, ‘Daryn!’ He said to me, ‘I find you very attractive.’ And all I could think to say was, ‘I think you’re pretty spunky, too!’ Then Daryn said, ‘Would you like to have a heart-to-heart, Jess?’ It was there in his little black BMW that he gave me the teddy bear. That was the beginning of our match made in heaven.

Heartbreak and healing

Daryn asked me to go on holiday with him and about 20 of his extended family to Brisbane, Australia. It was the trip of a lifetime, but I found the plane ride so painful. I really wanted to join in with all the activities, but my body was breaking down and I ended up staying at the hotel. My mum called me to say there was a healing crusade on in Brisbane. But it was the day that we were booked to leave, so I wondered if I should even mention it to Daryn.

But as soon as he heard about it, he said, ‘Right, we’re going!’ He changed our flights and Daryn’s mum agreed to stay on with us—her only problem was that she needed medication, but when she looked, she discovered she’d brought enough with her for the extra days. We even knew where the meeting was, because we’d already been to the event centre on our holiday.

It was a huge stadium and we arrived about an hour-and-a-half early, but to our shock, it was already nearly full. Daryn ran ahead and we just got in. Behind him, I slowly and painfully made my way up several flights of steps. The first part of the meeting talked about our ‘spiritual healing’, and hundreds made their way to the front to receive salvation. Then they said, ‘And now, get ready for your physical healing!’ We were so far away, but started making our way down the stairs. I was in agony, and we couldn’t get anywhere near the front. In the end, I gave up. I was so disappointed and angry. I was just gutted and my faith was dashed.

There was another meeting the next night, but I didn’t even think of going. The next day Daryn started reading a book, Waking the Dead, by John Eldredge. He flicked it open, and there was a paraphrase of Isaiah 61:1, a scripture that God had previously given us: God has sent me on a mission. I have some great news for you. God has sent me to restore and release something and that something is you. I am here to give you back your heart and set you free.

Daryn and I went for a walk along the beach and I just started crying. I had so many hurts, I had missed out on so much, I couldn’t do what others could do. I was physically crippled and my heart was scarred. As I poured out my heart to God, he started healing it. This fire started burning within us, and Daryn said, ‘Let’s go back [to the crusade] again!’

A walking miracle

Something changed within me; I felt that God had healed my heart. We arrived three hours early this time, but the stadium was still full. I hobbled up flights of stairs with great agony, but strangely, I started praying, ‘Thank you, God, for my healing … I’m not going to leave until I get my healing.’

When the time came to go to the front, thousands of people were trying to get through and I was being painfully jostled, but all of a sudden, all these people in front of me parted and I was able to go right up the front. Later, I learnt that Mum had been praying that God ‘would part the red sea’ for me.

We were packed in like sardines, and someone yelled out, ‘Fire!’ and hundreds of people in the front fell flat on their backs, including me and Daryn. He jumped straight back up and yanked me up saying, ‘She’s healed! She’s healed!’ I would have needed an ambulance if he’d done that before, so I thought, ‘Crumbs, I better check it out.’ My healing wasn’t immediate, but as I kept praying and checking, each time my trigger points became less and less tender.

I kept saying, ‘Thank you, God, for my healing.’ What happened next was completely foreign and strange to us. The only way I can describe it was like a tunnel opened up inside me and my mouth opened wide and this huge gagging noise came out of me. I just said, ‘I don’t care how this happens, I’m not leaving here without my healing.’

The crusade finished and people were packing up, and we were still at the front, worshipping and praying. I said, ‘I want to run up some stairs!’ And I motored it out of the building, up the stairs, down the stairs, and out to the carpark. In the middle of the carpark, I suddenly keeled over and started gagging again. Then I got up and ran again.

In the car, I did these three, huge, disgusting burps from the deepest place in me—I only say this because I want to be honest about how my healing took place; it wasn’t pretty!—and I finally had a sense that it was finished. Neither me nor Daryn had ever seen or experienced anything like we did that night.

When we got back to the hotel, it was about 4 am. I had a shower and started crying because it didn’t hurt. Th e plane ride was awesome, I was up and down the aisles; I felt like I had a whole new body. When we got home I hugged my brother tight, something we hadn’t been able to do since I was nine.

I went to the doctor and told him that I had been healed. He did all the tests and signed me off as ‘healed by God’, there was no other medical explanation—there is no cure for fibromyalgia. The faith God gave me for my healing on that night was a gift from the Holy Spirit, and God healed my heart fi rst, before he healed my physical body. Over the next few years I would say to God, ‘Th ank you for my healing’ every day. And I continue to thank him. I knew I had to claim my healing because the enemy would want to take it from me.

At the age of 17, Daryn and I were married, with my parents marrying us.

The healer

Over the years, I have pondered why God heals some and not others. The only answer I can come up with is that God can heal and he will, whether it’s this side of eternity or not.

My beautiful cousin had a tough battle with cancer, and we prayed for her healing. We went to see her and her body was frail and shutting down, but she was praying: ‘I have hope, I have a future, I have a destiny that is yet awaiting me. My life is not over, I have a new beginning just begun, I have a hope.’

On Easter Sunday, we received the news that she had passed away. I was so angry with God. I went for a walk by myself and cried out, ‘God, why did you heal me, and not her?’ And I heard this voice saying, ‘I have—I have healed her.’

Jesus prayed that the cup of suffering would be taken from him, but concluded, ‘Not my will, but yours be done.’ He suffered and died, and only in death did God’s true glory come to pass. I believe in healing and pray for healing—but whether it’s this side of eternity or the other, is in God’s hands.

The calling

God called both Daryn and me to Salvation Army officership before we met. Daryn had a ‘Damascus Road’ experience while on the farm, in the middle of a paddock. God met him and it was like, Boom!, Daryn was called—to his dismay, at first. Then, when we met, Daryn knew that I was called to offi cership even before we spoke. It was another confirmation that God was in the centre of our relationship.

We worked on the farm for years, but we were always heading towards offi cership. Th en in 2012, War Cry printed the session name ‘Disciples of the Cross’, and we just knew this was our year! We’re now loving this new season of our lives as corps officers at Masterton Salvation Army.

This year, I celebrated 10 years since I was miraculously healed of fi bromyalgia. I have been able to get married and have two beautiful children. I am living a life that I could never have thought possible. And for that, I still thank God for my healing.

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as told to Ingrid Barratt(c) 'War Cry' magazine, 20 September 2014, pp5-7
You can read 'War Cry' at your nearest Salvation Army church or centre, or subscribe through Salvationist Resources.