|
Heather Duncan was crippled for five years--but when a priest told her, “Stand up and walk,” she did! “A day never passes that I don’t thank God for healing me,” says Heather, a thirty-six-year-old mother of one. Her longtime physician, Dr. Catherine Legg, agrees the miracle mom’s sudden recovery was unexpected, and admits: “I can’t offer a medical explanation for what happened.” Former nurse Heather was paralyzed from the waist down in 1985 when she fell while struggling to lift a two-hundred pound patient at an Aberdeen, Scotland, hospital where she was working. The disks and nerves in her lower spine were severely damaged. She was in constant agony and relied on painkillers to ease her suffering. After several operations, doctors told Heather she’d be in a wheelchair for the rest of her life. But in October 1990, Heather made a pilgrimage to the shrine of Medjurgorje in Yugoslavia--and it changed her life forever. She was at a prayer service in a graveyard when Father Peter Rookey, a Catholic priest from Chicago (USA), laid hands on her. “Father Rookey gave me a crucifix and told me to look at Jesus,” recalled Heather. “He laid his hands on me a second time. After that, I could see Jesus! I wasn’t seeing Jesus on Father Rookey’s crucifix, I was seeing Him in a vision and could see nothing else. Father Rookey asked me, ‘Do you believe that Jesus can heal you?’ I said, ‘Yes.’ Then he said, ‘Silver and gold I have not, but what I have I give to you. In the name of Jesus, stand up.’ And a voice in the back of my head said, ‘Stand up...stand up....’” And incredibly, she did! Then even more incredibly, Heather walked around the graveyard! “Everyone around me was cheering and laughing, clapping and crying,” she recalled. “I laughed and cried at the same time. I kept asking, ‘Am I standing straight?’” When she got back home, and ecstatic Heather decided to surprise her husband, Brian. “When he came in, I walked up to him and said, ‘Hello Brian. How has work been?’” recalled Heather. Brian, thirty-eight, said: “All I could say was, ‘Your walking beautifully. I don’t believe it.’” Heather,
who now runs and swims, is convinced her recovery is nothing short of a
miracle. “My five years of pain are over and I’ve
never looked back,” she said with joy. “For me, to
walk is a gift from God.
|