Health Problems or Heart Problems?
A few years ago I began to have debilitating health problems. Health problems have often plagued me but it had been many years since I had truly suffered. I found myself not only in extreme pain but with physical heart problems that left me tired and breathless. Those problems have since worked themselves out and I want to share my story in the hopes that it may help you. They were rooted in emotional heart problems.
First, a little backstory. We had just moved to Tyler in difficult circumstances. Much to our surprise, we had been laid off in Little Rock. It came as a shock, because, even though we knew that my husband’s company was reducing management staff, we had been led to believe they were going to keep the him and that his counterpart was going to retire. Instead, his company fired all teams in the entire state. The move to Little Rock, three years prior, was no picnic but we moved knowing the Lord was calling us there. God had confirmed with many, many scriptures and circumstances that LR was where He wanted us. We had grasped onto the comfort of human planning that we would be in LR for many years, plant roots and find fulfillment in serving the body of Christ there. Yet, three short years later, we were done. It sent our heads and hearts spinning. There’s too much story to share here, so for those amazing details check out the LR post.
We came to Tyler with no confirmations of Scripture, our house still not selling in LR and only a whisper in his mind that we were there for reconciliation among family members. We were not in a good place emotionally. This was our second layoff in 4 years. We were just digging out of the financial hole.
I guess you could say I fell into depression. I still took care of the kids and functioned normally, but my hope was gone. The drive and hope for a future was gone. Our marriage was polite but empty because neither of us had anything left to give. It was during that season that I asked my husband to leave his job. I gave up on our marriage, faith and dreams. You should know that your body will do exactly what your mind tells it too, barring spiritual interference, which is covered in this post. It wasn’t much longer, before my body began to have some serious health issues.
Whether from an old water skiing injury or from child bearing, I do not know, but my SI joint (hips) began to lock up. It sounds like a simple thing and eventually I found that chiropractic treatment could break it loose. In the meantime, I suffered for months with, what felt like, muscle spasms near the spine. It was incredibly painful and limited movement and time able to stand. I actually spent a lot of time in bed with videos from the comedian Tim Hawkins as I found that laughter could make the muscle spams stop. I hope he values his ministry because it certainly got me through a rough time.
Along the way, I started having heart problems. Doctors found an arrhythmia and a couple of tolerably leaking heart valves. Nothing treatable and nothing that serious. Perhaps, not serious in the world of heart problems, but serious to me. I couldn’t even sweep the house without having to sit down and gasp for breath. There were a couple of physical reasons it started. Low calcium and a vitamin supplement. The Source of Life vitamin supplement said guaranteed burst of energy in one hour. I should have known it was too good to be true. Yes, it gave me a burst, but by the end of the bottle, a month later, my heart was having palpitations, even though it had no caffeine or taurine or guarana in it. I tend to choose older doctors because they don’t tend to be test happy. They tend to have been around the block enough to have knowledge that’s not taught in books. Calcium levels was one of the first things he tested and sure enough it was very low. I had quit eating dairy products a couple of years before that because of becoming lactose intolerant. See here about how the Lord taught me to fix that. The electrical rythyms heart specialist had no real help for me. I assume he had read my chart but he walked asked me no questions, just said the only thing he could offer me was a prescription. Then he left. The whole encounter took less than five minutes. I googled the side effects of the prescription because i tend to get the weird ones that the manufacturers mention but hardly anyone ever experiences. The script he gave me said I needed to be sitting in the ER when first taking it because it could cause permanent heart damage! He never mentioned that, nor, asked if my symptoms bothered me enough for that kind of treatment. When I asked the nurse about the instructions for the meds and why they didn’t mention it, she said: ‘well, that hardly ever happens’. Naturally, I was angry to have just spent over $400 to meet with the specialist who couldn’t even bother to ask if I wanted risky medications and spend less than 5 minutes. What it really boiled down to was that I was expecting The Healer but looking to man.
My husband and I spent the next couple of years working through our sorrows and as such the physical problems began to fade. I also had the joy of having a literal supernatural healing of the heart thru a prayer session. I knew it was time for the healing to come. We had worked through the grief we had been carrying so there were no more blockages to physical healing. There was a sense in the Spirit that it was coming. I was watching for a prayer opportunity. We were leading worship at a conference in Tyler and during one of the breaks my husband and I were standing in the outside hall. We met a gentlemen there and Mike sensed the Lord prompting him to ask what he did. He said he was a truck driver for a living; but, in the Lord, he had the gift of healing. My spirit leapt within and I knew this was the opportunity. Immediately, I clapped my hands together and exclaimed in delight ‘Ok, this is what I want!” It was funny, the man started to backpedal (because God is not a candy store, you can’t just demand what you want when you want it) but as soon as he started to explain about how healing works (not knowing the Spirit had already been testifying to me that it was coming), the Spirit fell and he got excited. He immediately started praying and laid his hand on me. We all stood there praying and glorifying God. I knew at that moment my heart was healed and the arrhythmia was completely gone. What rejoicing!
It lasted six months to the day but that’s a whole other topic! I knowingly had too much caffiene in one day and it messed up the rythym again. It has sense gone away but the Lord had to let it run it’s course that time until I learned to steward my health.
Praise God!
“Praise the Lord, my soul; all my inmost being, praise his holy name. Praise the Lord, my soul, and forget not all his benefits—who forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit and crowns you with love and compassion, who satisfies your desires with good thing, so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.” Psalm 103:1-5