The Sickness That Lasted Twenty Years
"Bless the Lord, O my soul... who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases." — Psalm 103:2-3
A Life That Broke in One Place
Consider a woman who grew up in an ordinary religious home. She attended church weekly and tried to live rightly. Through high school and college she was strikingly healthy — she simply did not get sick.
Three weeks before graduation, she slept with the man she had been dating. She had never done that before.
Within a few weeks she got sick. And she stayed sick for nearly twenty years.
The list is almost absurd in length. A car accident with a broken vertebra in her neck. Strep throat. Toxic shock. Strep throat again. Precancerous cells requiring surgery. Alcoholism. Bronchial infections. Strep throat a third time, then a fourth, a fifth, a sixth, a seventh. Eventually she was living on antibiotics, with constant joint and muscle pain, and a final diagnosis of chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia. No cure available.
Twenty years of medicine, and no one ever asked the question that turned out to matter.
The Day It Ended
Someone eventually explained the principles you are learning in these lessons and walked her through praying.
She repented — not only for that one night, but for a range of things she had done across the years. Then she asked God to remove the problems.
That same day, all of it left. The fatigue. The pain. The stiffness in her limbs. The recurring infections. The compulsion to drink. All of it, gone at once.
Two decades later it has not returned, and she has not had another drink.
Her doctors called it a miracle. In a sense that is the wrong word. What actually happened is that a condition misdiagnosed for twenty years finally received the correct treatment. She did what God said to do. She repented. He released her from the consequence.
The Question This Raises
At this point a reasonable person objects: Are you telling me her illnesses were caused by something she did wrong?
Yes. In her case, that is exactly what is being said.
But be careful with the boundaries of that claim, because getting them wrong causes real harm.
Not all illness is caused by sin. Some illness is simply illness. Some is genetic, some environmental, some the plain consequence of a body wearing out in a broken world. Jesus explicitly refused to attribute one man's blindness to anyone's sin (John 9:3).
But many are. Far more than most people would ever consider. And the way you find out is not by assuming, but by asking — and then testing.
Notice, too, that the freedom did not come from repenting of one dramatic sin. She repented of a range of things across many years. The specific entry point mattered less than the thoroughness of the accounting.
Point to Ponder
Twenty years of correct treatment for the wrong diagnosis will still leave you sick.
Verse to Remember
"Bless the Lord, O my soul... who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases." — Psalm 103:2-3
Question to Consider
Is there a point in my life where things began going wrong and never really recovered?
Today's Practice
Look for a hinge in your story.
Many people, when they look honestly, can identify a moment after which things changed — health that had been fine started failing, a run of accidents began, relationships started collapsing in a repeating pattern, a heaviness arrived and never left.
Draw a timeline of your health and your major troubles. Mark where things turned.
Now ask carefully: what was happening around that time? What did you begin, end, agree to, or do that you had not done before?
Do not force a connection where none exists. But do not ignore an obvious one either. Many people know exactly what their hinge was and have simply never allowed themselves to connect it to what followed.
Prayer
Father, there may be a point in my life where something opened that has never closed. If there is, show it to me plainly.
I am not looking for something to blame myself with. I am looking for the thing that needs to be dealt with so it can stop.
You are the God who forgives iniquity and heals diseases, and You put those two in the same sentence for a reason. Do both in me. In the name of Jesus. Amen.
She was not incurable. She was misdiagnosed.