God Help My Unbelief (Headaches Part 1)

I guess you could say that for many years I was a little skeptical of God as a healer. I was catching onto God’s love and salvation, but his healing was something more difficult for me to believe. There were multiple roots of my unbelief. So many people have illnesses that they are not healed from! Also, being raised in a medical family, it was natural to turn to medicine in times of sickness.

As a teenager on mission trips I attended some rather wild charismatic healing conferences. I often felt doubtful that the person who claimed to be healed really had long-term healing. I wondered if they were giving a testimony as part of the show: how could someone know they are healed without giving it any time to really see?

I first went to the doctor for headaches as an elementary school kid. The headaches had turned to migraines by my late teen years, and when I was in college and in my early 20s I had very frequent, painful headaches. Most of the time I would push through, take medications, and keep going with my busy life. In retrospect this was not a good idea, but I’m not sure I would have listened if anyone told me to slow down and rest!

Others in my family had frequent headaches so I decided it was normal and kept going. I would miss work occasionally due to migraines. I got to the point in 2008 that I would have 6-8 severe headaches or migraines each month. This does not include the mild headaches, and this doesn’t account for the days I felt yucky in the aftermath of a migraine. According to the calendar where I documented my health, I had a headache approximately half of all days.

During this time, I had been trying to avoid migraine triggers such as caffeine, certain foods, and strong smells, and I had tried several prescriptions from my primary care doctor. Nothing really worked. My husband encouraged me to see a medical specialist, and I did, but I continued to have headaches.

In years leading up to this point, I had been asking God to take away my migraines and headaches. I had asked for prayer at occasional church services and small groups, and a friend who had suffered from migraines in the past faithfully prayed for me.  Those prayers were not futile, yet the pain remained.  At times it was a huge struggle for me to go up for prayer because I said to myself “well, God didn’t heal me last time, why would He heal me this time?”

Well, that’s why we keep asking Him, because one day He will! In retrospect, I can see that there are some prayers that really made a difference. Starting when we married in 2008, my husband has prayed nearly every night that I would not have headaches (he still does). Although I’m not one to regularly go to healing services, I happened to be at the Raleigh Catch the Fire conference in the fall of 2009 when Pastor John Arnott from Toronto was praying for people to be healed of various health issues, including migraines. I did not go forward for prayer but asked God to touch me anyway. I had a headache that night and it did not instantly go away, and I continued to wonder if God ever would heal my body…

Part 2 will be shared soon.

(I wrote this post in 2011 and shared it first on "the Chix blog.")