Years later, a reminder that miracles still happen

In recent months I've shared my story of miraculous healing with a number of friends; time to re-post it for a wider audience. If you're like I used to be, and believe miracles are a thing of the ancient past, or if you don't believe in God at all, I hope you'll read my story anyway; maybe it'll provoke some questions in your journey, maybe it won't, but if nothing else you'll have something to ask me about next time we talk! And if you already think I'm crazy to believe in God, you're going to think I'm even crazier after you finish reading (just warning you).

Growing up in a traditional Lutheran church, I didn't know much about the Holy Spirit, I boxed miracles neatly away into Biblical times, and the last person I expected to show up in church was God, or Jesus. I suspect many Christians are in that same boat. My reality changed dramatically in 2008/9.

For the first part of my story, I defer to my own journals from 2009, when this all went down: My Miracle and Physical and Spiritual Health Update. I know those posts are long, but take a few minutes to read them, please; they capture me in the middle of my turmoil, which is infinitely more powerful than anything I could write now.

Since 2009, I've continued visiting my amazing doctor, Chris Romine, every 6 months or so. I always book the last appointment of the day, allowing for our conversations to last well over an hour; we talk a little bit about my health, and then the rest of the time about God and stuff. Chris is more than just my doctor, he's my friend, a mentor, a role-model. Every encounter, we encourage each other, pray together, and if I may be so presumptuous, help make each other better human beings.

When I retell my story, I now insist that, "I was given a miracle of healing, but my real miracle came after that" - the "real" miracle I think, was God's providence post-symptoms-returning, working my situation so I would be with my AWAKEN family when my symptoms hit, so that we'd be performing at a school doing a "Coins for Crohn's" fundraiser, so that I'd meet Chris, and in the years that followed, allowing me the privilege of sharing my story with friends who, like me before, are spiritual skeptics. I still struggle asking why I was gifted with a temporary healing, when there are so many other people who need miracles, much more desperately than I did, for whom the answer was "no." But even so, never ever again can I pretend that the spiritual reality of the Tanakh, Gospels, and Acts belongs locked away in antiquity.