[triviafriend]

Dear fellow pn'ers. Please hear me out...don't jump to conclusions about what I am going to say, I beg you. You too might find help with your illness the way that I did. I hope and pray with all my heart that it is so!

I was diagnosed over a year ago with idiopathic peripheral neuropathy, probably due to a reaction to chemicals in a hair product I used (stripped my hair of all color, the next day I couldn't walk!)

In the beginning it was truly terrible. I had horrific pain, couldn't walk without tripping/falling. Numbness, tingling, electric "shocks" running up my legs, jerking muscles...you name it, I felt it. I became so depressed and angry. I laid in bed for months, just feeling sorry for myself and trying different combinations of meds for pain and anything mentioned on the net or from other sufferers for some kind of improvement.

I felt that I was being held in bondage by this disease.

I roused myself one Sunday to get up and get myself to church. On that day it just happened that a healing sermon was taking place. Though embarrassed, I went up to the front of the church to be prayed for. I have always been a believer, but more of a "holiday" churchgoer than anything else. However, on this day, I just opened my heart and begged God for healing. But not only did I beg, I believed, with all my heart, that I would be healed. That God would come through for me, absolutely and without question. I felt for the first time perfect faith. A first for me!

I didn't get a miraculous change right then and there, but went home, feeling absolutely exhausted. I fell asleep right away (around noon), and didn't wake up until the next day at around 12:30 p.m! I felt very strange, almost like the feeling you get after being ill with the flu. After walking around the rest of the day, I knew that something huge had taken place in my body. The pain, tingling, numbness and other symptoms that I had, that had held me captive, were still there...but they were muted. My disease had become, overnight, bearable. It was the most profound experience of my life.

Since this happened, I have continued to improve in much the same way. I know that the disease is there, but I have regained my ability to live my life broken from the bondage I had felt. I can now easily bear pain and all of the other symptoms that held me so tightly in their grip. And all this despite a very negative nerve conduction study appointment just last week (diagnosis: "severe peripheral neuropathy").

Needless to say, my faith has radically changed. I embrace my daily walk with Christ. I live in constant gratitude for the miracles he continues to send my way. Blessings literally fall upon me like rain.

I tell my fellow pn'ers this story in the hope that it will help you to explore a new and different way. Ask the Lord today, if it is his will, to give you the strength and the faith to overcome your illness. Believe that it will come to be, because all things are possible with God.