Excerpts from Yahweh Rophe (Healer), Chapter 11

“…As I walked Joshua (my 13-year-old) into the emergency room, I noticed he started to have a hard time walking straight and I literally had to hold him up by putting my arms up under him. It was almost as if he were intoxicated by the way he was walking. He also stated that his vision was getting more blurry. Then, I noticed he began to slur his “s” sound, which was not normal for him. At that point, I really got scared that this may possibly be more than just a typical migraine headache.

The hospital did a CAT scan and blood work, and both came back normal. After two rounds of different IV pain medications, his headache finally started to subside after a few hours, and he fell asleep. They then sent us home and told us to return should he become worse…

The next day he woke up and the “migraine” had come back. He was again in so much pain he was crying. One of my biggest fears at that time was that he was going to struggle with these chronically, and he would be confined to bed for days at a time, unable to function normally.

By late in the afternoon, I was beginning to think that something more than a migraine was going on, because of the severity of it and the fact that this headache had lasted for almost three days….I was determined to get to the bottom of this, especially if he woke up feeling bad again the next day. The next morning, Sunday, he woke up and said he felt fine. I was ecstatic that his head finally felt better after this three-day ordeal!

…Shortly after 5:15 am. Monday morning, I was still asleep when Joshua came into my room, which was highly unusual for him although he does sometimes sleepwalk. The opening door startled me and I woke up, asking him if he was ok and he said he was fine. He then laid down next to me, which, again was highly unusual. I knew we had to get up soon for school anyway, so I let him crash next to me. In every way he appeared fine and not in any pain.

I fell back into a deep sleep almost immediately and had a nightmare that a huge tornado was chasing me and the boys. We were outside in a field running towards a cellar. I was yelling at the boys to hurry up because the tornado was catching up fast, and it seemed they were lagging further behind me. The dream terrified me to the point that I woke up and was unable to stay asleep, although my eyes were heavy and I felt exhausted. I now know by looking back that this was God’s way of keeping me awake just enough to be aware of the upcoming “storm” about to take place.

About thirty minutes later, Joshua started kicking me and waking me up with each kick, which was really irritating. I nudged him with my foot and said, “Joshua, quit kicking me.” He settled down for a few minutes, and then all of the sudden, he kicked forcefully and violently shook the bed. I thought he was messing around so I nudged him again, this time a little harder, and said his name. He did not respond, and a few seconds later I knew something was really wrong; it appeared he may have been having a bad seizure. He had never had one before, nor had anyone in my family. It terrified me, because of the fact he had just had this three-day migraine and now this! I threw the covers off and raced to the light switch in order to see exactly what was happening. Nothing prepared me for what I saw when I turned on the lights.

He was very rigid and his neck was jerking backwards violently. His eyes were rolled back into his head and there was blood coming out from both sides of his mouth. I yelled out as loud as I could get out, “Lord Jesus, PLEASE DON’T LET HIM DIE LIKE THIS!!!!” It looked as if he were dying right in front of me…

I ran out to the living room, grabbed the phone and dialed 911, so choked up I could barely squeak out a single word. I had to over-compensate by yelling into the phone to explain what was happening. …Everything at that point seemed like a dream. It felt as if somebody had their hands around my throat, squeezing so hard that I found it hard to breathe or talk.

The seizure had lasted a good five or six minutes, and when it finally stopped, I was unable to wake Joshua up. He was breathing very, very loudly and abnormally, as if mechanically by a machine. Blood was still coming out from his mouth. I desperately wanted it to stop and for him to wake up so I would know that he was all right. At this point, I still did not hear the sirens. I again dialed 911 and demanded to know where they were. It seemed like forever since I had made the first call. What was taking so long? The fire station was only four miles away!!??...I was shaking so badly at that point that it felt like I was going to jump out of my skin…”

Excerpts taken from Chapter 11, Yahweh Rophe (The LORD who Heals), in “Struck Down, But Not Destroyed.” Want to read the end of the miraculous story? Order at Lifeway.com, Amazon or Barnes & Noble. Available in paperback and on kindle.

The Onion, A Toxic Beauty

When I was still enduring a very bad marriage several years ago, God gave me the analogy of an onion when it came to forgiveness; in my particular case at the time, forgiving my husband for everything. Initially, I could not believe that the Lord was pointing out to me that I needed to forgive my husband while I was still in the midst of this very destructive relationship. I know that God wants us to forgive others and that He will not forgive us if we don’t forgive others, but the timing here seemed all wrong to me. In the heat of the difficulty, God was showing me that I needed to forgive my husband, right there and then and that forgiveness was like an onion, with many layers. When you peel one layer, another one is right beneath it.

What I mean by many layers is that many times when someone has wronged us, especially when it cuts deep and/or that person was very abusive, there are many layers below the main hurt. For example, while my husband was becoming physically abusive at this point, I also had a few years of verbal abuse to forgive (just under the layer of physical abuse, which was right there, right then and the most obvious). Then, there was the constant flirting and always looking for someone better than the “old bag” he married (another layer). Keep peeling away and there were all of these girls he had “friendships” with and who were having him take inappropriate pictures of them for their modeling portfolios, whom I also needed to forgive (them for getting too close with a married man and him for constantly searching for a “thinner, better looking” woman than the one my husband committed to on our wedding day). Ouch. He also made several snide remarks to me over the years and cursed me under his breath, thinking I couldn’t hear them, but I did. Again, ouch.

With each layer peeling away, it got more painful but it was extremely important to revisit those things and forgive everything, no matter how small or how big it was. If I was able to peel the entire onion and forgive each “layer,” complete forgiveness and healing would surely come.

Maybe it was a parent who did not want you or a best friend who stabbed you in the back and the feelings ran deep, all the way to your core. You never thought you could get over it. Different situations, same concept. It’s one thing to say, “Yeah, I forgive them,” but another to truly forgive from the heart to the point that you can once again face that person without the feeling that you want to hurt them back or without the anger and pain being recalled that once came with the sight or thought of that person.

I am living proof that complete forgiveness of the ones who have hurt you the deepest and greatest can be done, though it takes time and help from God. I could not peel those layers back on my own; I needed God’s help peeling each layer, as it was painful revisiting each thing as I forgave it. I did not want to let my husband or my parents “off the hook” that easily because I thought that by forgiving them, I was saying that what they did was okay and that God would sweep it under the rug, forgetting about what they did.

At first, I even questioned God about why I had to forgive my husband when he did all this hurtful stuff. I asked the Lord, “Did you not see all my husband has put me through??!!” For the first few minutes I even thought, “Surely God has not seen all of what has been going on and He was mistaken.” But, he did see everything and He also knew that I would be set free from the devastation that my husband’s actions caused when I forgave him. When I was down to the core, or nub, of the onion I was completely set free from the anger, hurt, bitterness and the pain of rejection I felt at the hands of both my parents and my ex-husband. Then, I was able to move on and grow in every way to my full potential.

I read a very interesting fact about onions a few weeks ago. Did you know that if you leave a cut onion out in the open air when someone in your household is sick, it will soak in all the “poisons” or sickness and the sick person will recover much sooner? By the same token, however, it also said that if you leave onions or something with onions in it out long enough, especially in the heat outside, that the onions will turn toxic and make you very sick? These articles that I read said that while most people blame the mayonnaise or something else in the potato salad, etc. for making people sick if left out too long, it is actually the onions in it that are the culprit. Onions are also very toxic to dogs.

So, onions can get rid of toxic things (by unpeeling the layers and forgiving, therefore getting rid of your toxic feelings towards the one who hurt you, or can rid the air of “sickness” and pull it into the onion so you recover faster) and they can also create toxic problems (getting very sick from eating one after it has been left out too long). When I “peeled away” layers of the “onion” that God was showing me as a metaphor to forgiveness, I became better, or, less toxic shall we say.

Just like we would not want to hold on to the onion and then take a big bite out of it several hours or days later (due to the consequences), we should not want to hold on to the toxicity of the words and actions others have done towards us, because they too have the power to become toxic to us (if we do not forgive them).

So, get peeling those onions…but just don’t wait too long to take a bite!