Most Unlikely Missionary    Blog - Day One.

God was an unwelcome guest in our house, growing up.

Even today, at 85 years old, my dad begins to turn red in the face at the mere mention of anything pertaining to religion. So on that fateful day when I excitedly, but gently, announced that I was going to be a missionary, dads reaction was on par with me announcing that I decided to become a prostitute. “How can you do this to me after the way I raised you?!!” With the familiar crimson color rising on his neck and face, I boldly continued. “I have been called by God to go to India…so I will be preparing to leave in a few months.”  I will never forget the reaction at the dinner table. It was a collective “She’s lost her mind!” and “Oh my God!”

In retrospective, I guess I don’t blame them. I mean, I was in that wheelchair and had been in that wheelchair for nearly 4 years.  It really wasn’t a logical thing for me to consider, let alone to do, in this real world of ours.  This real world of doctors and tests and the diagnosis “She will never walk again. She will only get worse.” 

 But I had long before entered into another world, a world where nothing was impossible, where my faith had grown to such a degree that I believed in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.  God had shown me, in visions and dreams that my place was in India.  I believed that if God showed me in India, then God would pave the way for it to happen.  God could use me in my wheelchair!

While my family was considering having me locked up in a mental hospital, God was opening and closing doors so fast that I watched in amazement.

  But physically I was getting worse.  The pain grew in intensity and my body was twitching and shaking so much that the smallest of tasks became impossible. Yet I believed.  When everyone, with their worldly logic told me that I should be in a nursing home, I declared that I was going to India! The visions came to me larger and full of color and light, smells and sounds.  I could SEE myself there. I held tightly to these visions and dreams. They had become my reality.

I never asked to be healed. I suppose because I felt unworthy of such a miracle. It would be an insult to those who didn’t smoke or drink and had lived their entire lives in a Christian environment. I had only dusted off my bible less than a year ago. I hadn’t yet begun to learn the language and catch phrases that Christian people speak.  I studied the bible furiously, trying to catch up with those others who quoted scripture and lines with ease. But I also read the bible with a hunger for more of God. The words jumped out at me and danced alive as the stories, the truth unfolded my very spirit.  I didn’t understand what was happening to me, but I loved it!  If I had to remain in the wheelchair for the rest of my life to feel this way, I was willing.

But God…had different plans. Without consulting or warning me, He just healed me. I can tell you that no one was more surprised than I was!   Yes, it did happen in church, but it didn’t happen because of a powerful sermon, or because ten pastors laid hands on me, or because I attended a huge healing conference.  It just gloriously and wonderfully happened.  I stood up and walked.  THAT was a great miracle…but what happened afterwards…well that is a miraculous story too.