Becky

A few years ago I began to get strange, neurological symptoms – buzzing and tingling in my hands and feet, pins and needles, and numbness. Investigations found nothing, and after a while it went away.

When my second child was four months old, it came back. My shoulder went numb and did not recover. Far worse, though, were the thoughts I started having. I was convinced that I had Motor Neurone Disease, or Multiple Sclerosis, and above all I kept thinking I’m going to die. I couldn’t bear the thought that I might not live to bring up my children. But these thoughts seemed so dark that I felt I couldn’t tell anyone about them, not even my husband.

One day my husband spent the evening at a men’s training course at church. They had looked together at a ‘love letter from God,’ a document made up of various verses from the Bible. When Stephen came home he read it out to me, and I burst into tears. What had struck me was the verse:
‘Delight in me, and I will give you the desires of your heart,’ (Psalm 37:4)
which they had followed with another verse:
‘for it is I who gave you those desires’ (from Philippians 2:15).
God had given me this desire to bring up my children, so why would he let me die while they were so young? I finally told Stephen all about my fears.

From then on I started to pray, using the words from the Bible that had struck me so much. For months I was praying several times a day, pleading, shouting, ‘Please give me the desire of my heart. You gave me this desire. I want to bring up my children.’ I must have used the phrase ‘desire of my heart’ literally hundreds of times. It felt hopeless, though, because I realised that even if I did survive the next twenty years, I could waste them by worrying that I was going to die instead of enjoying my family.

The church was holding a fast at the time for three weeks. My husband and I decided to only eat soup, bread and fruit for that period. As well as using it to pray for the work of the church I made it a fast for my own request to God. I found fasting hard and kept failing to keep it, making mistakes like eating my children’s food, or being too embarrassed to not share some wine with my mum when she came over. But as I prayed I had the sense that God was not disappointed by my efforts; instead, the words ‘Well done, good and faithful servant’ (Matthew 25:21) came to me!

My appointment with a specialist was coming up on a Thursday evening during this fasting period. The Sunday before, I asked for prayer at church and the woman who prayed for me said she would continue to pray for me up until the time of the appointment. On Monday night I was woken by my daughter, Evie, at 3.30am. Evie is three years old and I expected her to say something like ‘my feet are cold,’ or ‘I need the loo’. But she said, ‘Mummy, I’ve got something to tell you.’

‘What is it?’ I said.

‘You don’t need to worry about ellything’ (that’s how she says ‘anything’).

Then she went straight back to bed and went to sleep. (When I asked her why she had said that to me the next morning, she didn’t seem to have any idea what I was talking about.) As I lay there drifting off back to sleep I felt convinced that God had used Evie to speak to me. The words suddenly came into my head, and I don’t think they were from me, ‘Don’t go looking for God’s signs. God’s signs will come looking for you.’

The next evening, Tuesday, was an Alpha night. I help out on the church’s Alpha course, and after it finishes we meet as a team to worship and pray. As I started to worship the fear reappeared again and that thought – ‘you’re going to die,’ came back into my mind. Then Rex, who leads Alpha, came up to me. He had no idea about my fear of dying or how I’d been praying.

‘Becky, I was just praying for you. The Lord said to me, I have heard your prayers, and I will give you your heart’s desire.’

Those were his exact words, the words I had been praying for months. I burst into tears. When he saw how moved I was Rex said, ‘I wasn’t sure whether to tell you or not because it seemed a bit strange, but God kept giving me those words.’

After that, the fear was completely broken. I feel as if my whole life has changed. I know that I will live to bring up my children. I’ve not only lost that fear, but other fears that I wasn’t aware of – for instance I didn’t use to feel comfortable about my husband taking the children out in the car, but now it doesn’t bother me at all.

When I saw the specialist on Thursday, I was calm and relaxed. The specialist explained that there was no cause for worry about any of the symptoms which come and go, only those which were permanent and progressive, i.e. getting worse. The numbness in my shoulder has been permanent and is getting slightly worse. He then said that experience has shown that symptoms in the upper back were unlikely to lead to anything. ‘So, I recommend we do,’ – he paused, and looked as if he was sizing me up – ‘nothing.’ I was discharged.

My mind has changed so much by losing this constant fear, that I’m still surprised by its absence. I realise that for me, worrying has always been a temptation. I was with a friend shortly before all this happened who didn’t know anything about it. She said, ‘Becky, do you have negative thoughts? I think you need to read this book I’ve just read.’ It was Battlefield for the Mind by Joyce Meyer. She bought it for me later that day and brought it round. It seemed as if not only had God dealt with my fear but provided help in making sure it doesn’t come back, filling the space with helpful thoughts instead.

One last thing: when the fast finished we were asked in church to come forward and speak if we had any answers to prayer during the fasting period. I told my story to the whole church. When I finished and was walking back through the congregation, a complete stranger pressed a piece of paper into my hand. It was the verse ‘May you live to see your children’s children,’ (Psalm 128:6) and the person had felt it was a message for me. Not satisfied with answering my prayer for seeing one generation, it seems that God has guaranteed me the next one as well.