17 Falling be-hind-sight

April 2023

It was at this point in my healing journey that I began to have my extended paddy about blogging. Is this really what God wanted me to do? Am I making it about me and not about God? Why would I think that anyone wants to listen to what I have got to say? Etc etc.

The consequence of this is that I stopped writing about what God had been doing and fallen behind with documenting how my healing was progressing. So, I am writing this retrospectively with the help of my journals and I have some catching up to do.

Around this time, I also began to ask God to show me where he wanted me and how he wanted me to serve him. Physically my health had improved, and on any given day I could be up to 90 to 95% function, with bearable aching in my legs. So confident was I in my mobility, I started to wear heals again and Geof bought me a beautiful pair of purple Doc Martens, the laces of which required dexterity that I didn’t yet have. But I could put up with that. My left hand represented the 5 to 10% that was not in full working order but I felt that this was something I could live, with while waiting for God to miraculously reverse the damage and restore my hand fully.

I felt able to open myself up to God and ask him how he wanted me to serve in churches much closer to my home. About 15 years previously, God had revealed to me, his heart for this area. I never let go of that, believing he would show me my part in bringing his Kingdom to this community when the time was right.  I began to push a few doors open and explore what God was doing in my area. None of these doors stayed open for me and I found breaking into the local churches surprisingly challenging. Was this God’s way of showing me that the timing was still not right? God was continuing to deepen my connections with people at Eastgate instead, as well as revealing opportunities initiated there as well.

In Pete Carter’s recently released book ‘Faith’ (Carter, 2021), which I was reading at that time, Pete talks about how the River Thames was so badly polluted for centuries, that people died from just inhaling the fumes and no life could be sustained in it. More recently however, there has been a considerable clean up operation and the River Thames is now sustaining fish and plant life. The analogy here is, that if our own rivers are spiritually polluted with contaminants such as wrong beliefs, doubt, fear etc, then we may be prevented from receiving or sustaining the healing God is releasing. This impacted me significantly, having previously had a relapse after my first healing in November 2021. I set about to identify and remove any and all contaminating substances from my life. Perhaps that was why I was to remain at Eastgate?

I began to examine my behaviours and beliefs; struggles and challenges as well as the thought processes and lies I was embracing. As I write this 18 months on, I can reflect on how much of a spiritual battle there has been to prevent raw sewage from continuing to contaminate my river, if you get my drift. Since that time, I have unexpectedly discovered that there have been a steady flow of contaminant and I have still not isolated or sealed some of the breaches. I love how God has not wasted this opportunity to enable me to see that poison is still seeping into my river. Now, at the cusp of 2024, with the benefit of hindsight, I have the opportunity to consider how I will address this once and for all, in the coming year.

Back at Eastgate in April 2022,  it was the annual Healing conference, where I was blessed to be able to share my testimony with people from all over the world. I was also privileged to pray for other people to receive healing, some with similar conditions to mine.

May 2022 also saw the passing of my father in law Don, during his stay in hospital. During those few weeks, Geof and I were visiting him in hospital and I was thankful that I had greater mobility to be able to travel back and forth to the hospital as well as doing everything else. Although we were prepared, it took a while for us all to process his absence as he was a huge part of our family and now one quarter of it was no longer with us. Don was a huge fan of TV quiz shows and I am still unable to watch these now. It was also not long before the next family event which was Unique’s 17th birthday in June, notable for Don’s absence.

Summer came, and along with it were the celebrations for the Queen’s Jubilee and street party. I welcomed the opportunity to build connections with our neighbours which had been disrupted during Covid. There was so much going on and life became very busy again. I realised there was a need for me to listen to my body and recognise its limitations and not keep pushing myself and allow time for rest and recouperation. This was highlighted by a string of extra health issues that seemed to come all at once, including a urinary tract infection, slightly raised blood pressure, a persistent tickly cough that refused to go and reflux. I also hurt my knee while walking rather too quickly because my hip seemed out of alignment. All these conditions seemed to hit me right in the core of my being, as though I could feel them deep within my cells.

In December, I appeared to have an extreme allergic reaction to Trimethoprim, which I had taken many times before. I had just been fussing one of our cats in the garden so it may have been something I touched. I managed to quickly swallow an antihistamine but my airways had already begun to close and my everything felt very tight and had to take off everything including my earrings and the Doc Martens. Geof rushed me to A&E where I gradually began to recover after we prayed together. Then I felt perfectly fine and wanted to go home but Geof insisted I stay and get checked out. Geof left soon afterwards as he had to be at an event and then my phone died so I couldn’t call anyone to pick me up. I used the hospital phone to call a cab home. The taxi driver was a Christian from Sri Lanka and I had the unexpected opportunity to share my healing testimony. Fancy that.

I still don’t know if I really suddenly developed an allergy to trimethoprim or if it really was something the cat dragged in. I also since found that the tickly cough I had for months was caused by the Ramipril I was taking for raised blood pressure and the reflux was really uncontrolled asthma. The injury to my knee was resolved with regular physiotherapy exercises. With all the unnecessary medication now cut out, I felt these were all distractions and attempts to derail God’s purposes and keep my river contaminated.