Heal Me, O Lord — Jeremiah 17:14
by Marilyn Ludolf, Winston-Salem, North Carolina

I woke up with the same tormenting headache I'd gone to bed with, and struggled to the bathroom. I grasped the sink with both hands and reluctantly raised my pounding head to stare in the mirror. The face reflected in the glass was a fiery red mask of tiny bumps and large acnelike sores. Hundreds of them. The horrible rash covered my face like the Egyptian plague of boils in the Bible.

The unending headache and rash comprised the mysterious condition I'd lived with for 12 long, unbearable years. A plague that had appeared out of nowhere when I was 32 years old. It had grown steadily in intensity, until here I was a middle-aged woman with two teenaged sons and a husband who served on a church staff ... and I could hardly bear to raise my head and look in the mirror.

Even the children in my classroom stared at my face — and wondered. Tears blurred my eyes as I tried to remember the smooth, milk-white complexion I used to have. My fingers twitched, longing to claw at the fiercely itching skin on my face.

I'd tried everything I knew — diets, oatmeal soap, baby oil, vitamins and enough creams and ointments to fill a small drugstore. And the long line of doctors I'd seen had passed by like a dwindling parade of hope. The rash had only grown worse, and my face swelled, itched and turned deep tomato-red at the slightest stimulus.

Suddenly the pain behind my eyes tightened as if someone were packing cotton into my sinuses. I reached for a bottle of pain medication and quickly swallowed a couple of pills. I took the maximum of eight pills a day. But they only forestalled the worst of it — when the pain crept down my neck, making clear thinking difficult. I felt swallowed up by despair, by the long years of this strange affliction. I'd prayed so many times for it to go away. "Oh, God, why don't You help me?"

I dabbed at my eyes and, leaving my secret misery in the bathroom, dressed for work. My head was so sore from the headache, I could hardly pull a comb through my hair. I thought about crawling back into bed. But of course, I couldn't. Actually I liked my work as a third grade schoolteacher. And I had to keep going. I pushed myself into church and community activities.

As I entered school that morning, a little girl peered up at me, her eyes wide with surprise and dismay. "How come your face looks like that?" she asked. (Oh, the blunt honesty of children!) I raised my hands over my cheeks and tried to explain. But I fell silent. I had no answer.

Not long after that someone told me about a dermatologist at the hospital. I'd seen half a dozen specialists already, but I made an appointment, ready to grasp at anything.

I sat slumped on his examining table after a long series of allergy tests. "Well, maybe we have an answer," the doctor said. "It appears you are allergic to yourself." I gazed at him incredulously. "Allergic to myself? You must be kidding!" "I know it sounds strange, but these allergy tests show you are allergic to your own bacteria." Hope blew away like the last autumn leaf. How could I escape that? "We'll make a special serum, using your own saliva," said the doctor, "and teach you how to inject yourself."

And so began the next three years of giving myself shots. The headaches were not quite as severe, nor the rash quite as red — partial relief. The doctor did everything he could, prescribing medicines, creams and consultations. Still, the ever-present plague was agonizing, embarrassing.

So I followed my old, exhausted pattern and found yet another doctor. This time an outstanding allergist. More tests. More money. He decided I was allergic to a long list of foods, and put me on a diet. For another year I existed on nothing but peas, potatoes, carrots, lettuce and meat. My weight plummeted to 102 pounds.

"You're wasting away, Mama," said my son one morning, as I dropped my lunch of canned peas in my purse. He was right. Something dreadful was happening to me. And despite it all, the daily headaches persisted and the humiliating rash and acne were splashed across my face big and red as ever. I could no longer even open a box of detergent to do the laundry without my eyes swelling and my skin itching till I was in torment.

This is no way to live, I thought dismally as I draped a scarf across my head and left for work. And worse, there seemed to be no answer at all.

Then one Sunday as I struggled to teach my Sunday school class with a riveting headache, I heard myself saying, "God is the answer." I paused, the echo of my words thundering in my head. As the class continued, the words burrowed inside me like a small, uncomfortable splinter.

After church, I lay on the sofa with a warm cloth across my forehead. I gazed out the broad windows at the tall, silent woods across the road, as the words I'd spoken that morning nudged at me like an unseen elbow. I am a Christian, I thought. I tell other people that God is the answer, that they can find wholeness through Him. Yet I've been a prisoner of this condition for nearly sixteen years.

Suddenly the familiar old story of the woman in Mark 5:25-34 focused in my mind. The woman who touched the hem of Jesus' robe and was healed, I was so much like her. I, too, had suffered a condition for many years, gone to many physicians, spent nearly all I had to spend and was not better, but worse. The difference was, the woman in Mark had finally gone to Jesus with faith — and was healed.

Did such healings still happen today, I wondered. If so, could healing really happen to me? There on the sofa, the idea of real healing from God spun in my head. It almost seemed too ancient to be real. If only I could be sure.
The weeks passed and winter melted away. The incredible idea of healing lingered in my mind like a held-over Christmas present. I toyed with the ribbons, afraid to open it, afraid it might turn out empty . . . but strangely, unable to turn away from it.

Then one Sunday, as forsythia framed the world with spring, something happened. I lay in bed trying to find diversion from my headache by watching television. On the screen stood a beautiful young woman — Cheryl Prewitt, Miss America 1980.

"God healed me," she said. "I prepared myself to be healed, and God healed me."

My heart began to pound with a strange excitement. She was speaking to me! No. God was speaking to me! He did still heal people today.

Finally . . . finally after 16 desperate years of trying everything else, I was ready to turn to Jesus — as the woman in Mark had done. Again I relived that Biblical story in my mind. What was it Jesus had said to her after she had brushed her fingertips across His robe . . . "Your faith has made you whole." And what had Cheryl Prewitt said . . . "I prepared to be healed by strengthening my faith."

Faith. There was the key. There was what was missing before. My faith had grown flabby, like out of shape muscles. I knew intellectually that God is powerful and can heal. But somehow I had to get that knowledge from my mind down into my heart. I had to believe it as fervently as I believed the sun would rise tomorrow.

On May 1, I began to prepare myself for healing like an athlete training for the Olympics. I sat down in the kitchen rocker with a lap full of clean paper and my Bible. I flipped to the concordance in the back — to the headings of healing, health and faith. I picked out verses, then looked them up, writing each one down word for word on paper. It took a couple of days, but I finally compiled a list of 36 scriptures — sort of a training manual for my faith.

"Children, turn to page two hundred in your math books," I said. As the pages rustled, I looked down at my papers ... "And He said unto her ... go in peace, and be whole of thy plague," (Mark 5:34) I repeated it with a prayer for it to sink into my subconscious.

Not a spare moment was lost. By the end of the school day my Scripture papers were dog-eared from wear.

I continued my faith exercises throughout the evening. Between stirring a pot and chopping vegetables, I read the verses and meditated on them. At last I put my dog-eared papers on the bedside table and fell asleep, whispering the verse, "If thou canst believe, all things are possible ..." (Mark 9:23).

In the weeks that followed this became my constant routine. The papers became attached to me — as inseparable as my own shadow. And by some inexplicable process, the 36 Scriptures were slowly sinking into the very core of my being with roots of belief. I was actually beginning to believe — really believe — that I could be healed. I could almost feel my faith stretching and rippling with new strength.

I circled July 12 on the kitchen calendar. "Lord, this is the day I'm asking for complete healing," I said. Then I added another exercise. I began to visualize my complexion as pink and clear as a newborn baby's and my sinus passages free and well. I imprinted it on my mind day and night. This exercise became rather a strenuous one, because the mirror was such a contrast from my image. The red rash and acne, the throbbing headaches continued. But after a while the image, like the Scriptures, began to sink into the deep believing places of my life. The mirror is wrong, I told myself. Soon it will reflect my inner image.

Late that spring I hurried past a mirror at school. Suddenly I stopped, backed up and peered into it. I ran my fingers across my face. Was it my imagination or did the fiery red rash seem a bit faded? And my headache. Didn't it seem better today? "Oh, thank You, Lord!" I cried. "You're healing me."

I still clung to my dog-eared papers, moving through the now well-memorized verses. As my faith deepened and gradually grew stronger, the headaches lessened, and almost imperceptibly my face improved.

July 12 dawned warm and shiny through the bedroom window. I tiptoed to the bathroom mirror, took a deep breath and peered in. The rash still lingered on the lower part of my face and a faint sinus headache tugged behind my eyes. I will not give up, I thought. The day is not over.

With a sudden burst of faith, I said, "Well, Lord, this is the day! I know it will happen."

As the sun set in an orange glow, I crept to a mirror. As I stared at my reflection, tears sparkled on my face. A face completely smooth and clear. It was the face in my image. The headache of the morning had drifted away as well. Like the woman in Mark, God and faith had made me whole.

For almost a year now I have not experienced another single headache, and my skin remains free and clear. I've gotten rid of all the old ointments, medicines, allergy shots and diets. The only thing I've kept are my precious dog-eared paper — those powerful Scripture-exercises that brought my faith to life. For there's one thing I've learned. While it's important to keep physical muscles strong and well-toned, it's even more important to keep "faith muscles" strong. For they are the ones that churn the spiritual energy, that move the mountains in our lives. Even a mountain like mine, that had towered over me for 16 years.

A few weeks ago at a meeting, a stranger tapped my shoulder. "Your complexion is so beautiful," she said.

"Oh, thank you," I gasped, my face bursting into an unusually big smile. A smile, I'm sure, no one there really understood ... except me and God.