Fran

The church was holding a fast in January and everyone was encouraged to join in, to pray for the work of the church and anything else you wanted to bring to God. There were various suggestions on how to fast. My husband and I decided to take it seriously and restrict our diet to fruit and vegetables for the full three weeks it was taking place. A lot of our praying was for problems we were facing as a family, like our struggle with the authorities to get enough support for my autistic son at his new school, and my husband’s job - in the first week of the fast he was told he may be made redundant. I don’t find it easy to face these kind of problems. My natural state varies between tense, stressed and manic. During the fast, though, we took these problems to God in prayer rather than dealing with them by opening another bottle of wine.

Not long after the fast had ended, I began to get very itchy legs. I wondered if my body was reacting to going back to my normal diet, and hoped it would settle down. Instead, it got worse, and the itching spread all over – hands, scalp, back – it became so severe that it was impossible to stop myself scratching, hard, to the point that I bruised the skin on my legs. I also had gastric pains. I couldn’t sleep and I couldn’t get any relief at all except when I lay in a hot bath and for a few minutes afterwards. I was exhausted. I remember one evening I had a bath before our church house group, which was meeting that evening in our house, and I didn’t even make it downstairs. I was too tired to do anything but lie down.

The GP said that unless it was an allergic reaction to washing powder or bubble bath – which was unlikely because it was on my scalp as well as the rest of my body – it was probably a problem with my liver or kidneys. I was given cream, anti-histamines, and blood tests. An appointment was made with the GP for a week’s time. However, the GP called me at home the next day. One of the test results was for my ‘ALT’ level, measuring the presence of certain enzymes in the blood that spill out of the liver when it is damaged. The normal range is between 0 and 54. Mine was 752. The GP gave me an appointment for further tests and a scan of my liver at Barnet General Hospital the following week.

I was extremely worried. A friend of mine had died of an aggressive liver cancer a few years ago. How would my children cope if I even had to spend a long time in hospital? I kept thinking, ‘I can’t be ill! I’ve got too much to do!’

Over the weekend my condition continued to get worse. We went to church that Sunday and, as usual, there was a call at the end for anyone who wanted prayer to come to the front. There is a team who spend time praying before the service and often they feel that God has told them about problems he wants to heal, so a list is read out, e.g. heart condition, migraines, asthma, cancer. I didn’t really hear what was read out. I never have time to go forward for prayer because we have to pick up the children from their activities, but my husband suddenly started nudging me. ‘That’s you!’ he said, about some condition that had been described on the list. ‘I’ll sort out the children. Go and get prayed for!’

As a woman prayed for me, it was as if waves were washing over me, gently washing things away. I felt my shoulders relax and the tension left my body. In a few minutes, I had started to feel a lot calmer.

Over the next couple of days there was a gradual improvement and by Tuesday, I was no longer itching. I spoke to my GP who suggested that maybe it was because the anti-histamines were working, and that I should stop them to see if the itching returned. I did, and it didn’t. On Thursday a second round of blood tests showed that although my ALT level was still well outside the normal range, at 194, it was reducing. On Friday I had a scan. Having seen my blood test results, the radiographer expected to see lesions on my liver, but he checked all my organs and found everything completely normal. In fact, he was very impressed with my pancreas. ‘That’s a great pancreas,’ he said. ‘They are usually really difficult to find - I haven’t seen one like that in a long time!’

There is one more blood test to go, but I feel sure that I’m fine now. The one thing I know is that I was getting worse until Sunday, and from the moment I was prayed for, I began to get better. I have no doubt that God has healed me.

This the first time I have experienced God intervening in my life so directly; I understand now how close He is to us, and also how much of this life is a spiritual conflict. It almost seems that by taking the fast seriously and by growing in faith, we stepped onto a battlefield, but God was with us. Some of the issues with my son’s education and my husband’s job are unresolved, but the difference now is that we are facing them more calmly and with more trust in God. It is as though God has been saying to me: ‘I have shown you that I can heal you, so trust me to deal with your other worries.’

Fran’s ALT level is now a far more healthy 18!