Life Healed & Whole

My eyes stared straight ahead. Despite the crazy February wind outside, the room was strangely still. The only sound came from the clock above the door as I blinked my eyes trying register what the doctor was saying. “Something doesn’t look quite right…” had just come out of the doctor’s mouth. Little did I know that those words would open the door to a journey that changed my life completely.

Most of the women in my family were healthy baby producing machines, with little to no complications during their numerous pregnancies. I ate spinach every day of my pregnancy, walked (more like waddled towards the end) during my lunch breaks, and had been taking pre-natal pills for several months before actually getting pregnant. Healthy mama, healthy baby, right? It turns out that’s not always the case.

Before that day, I had never heard the words: “Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome.” The thought actually never occurred to me that a baby could be born with a heart disease. I guess I just thought that heart disease was something that anyone could develop at an old age. I had however, heard of babies born with little holes in their heart, but never realized that those conditions would be classified as a “heart defect”, nor did I realize the severity of those situations. I naively thought that those circumstances corrected themselves on their own. I know now.

My eyes and heart have been opened to a world of tragic beauty. I have more compassion and empathy than I ever did before that day for families who value the lives of their babies even when something doesn’t look quite right at their 20-week ultrasound, or on the day they deliver their ultra-preemie, or even after their baby is born. No matter the condition of our baby’s hearts, lungs, brains, skin, or bodies, we value their lives and are humbled to be entrusted with such gifts no matter how long the duration of their lives.

Before that day I also didn’t realize that words like “healing” and “sickness” bring up so many diverse thoughts about God. Over the past 16 months, many well-intended individuals have shared their thoughts on healing with me. Some conversations have left me feeling empowered, grateful, and hopeful, while others (from individuals on both ends of the faith spectrum) have caused me to feel confused, raw, and misunderstood.

At the end of the day, I know that God is good. Ultimately, His goodness has nothing to do with Elsy’s heart health or any other circumstance in my life. What makes Him good is His nature. He is good because He gave His only son on our behalf that we would have the opportunity to spend eternity with Him.

I also know that Jesus performed miracles of healing in scripture and that He is the same yesterday, today and forever. I knew, on February 18^th, that He could heal my Elsy’s broken heart and avoid all of the pain she was set to endure, so I asked Him if He would. He hasn’t healed her heart in the way I asked, but we have seen Him perform many other miracles over the course of her life.

Despite all that I knew to be true, all of the static noise in my head from individuals who openly shared their opinions in regards to God’s healing abilities, left me fairly mentally drained and somewhat guarded to step into these types of conversations.

Several weeks ago, She Reads Truth published a study on the miracles of Jesus. It has helped clear the static in my headspace and has provided a balm of sorts to my raw heart-strings. I couldn’t help but share the article here in the hopes of it helping someone living with illness and experiencing a similar head/heart space:

Most of us have been there. It’s not just painful, but confusingly painful.

Didn’t God hear?

Doesn’t He love me?


Did I not have enough faith?
 Why wasn’t it a yes?

 These are the questions we ask when the miracle doesn’t come.

Perhaps it was the cancer that wasn’t cured, the chronic illness that never healed, the marriage that couldn’t be saved, or the money that didn’t come through. In the absence of a miracle, these stories about Jesus can be tough to swallow. They can even feel cruel. Why are they here, if not to tease us? 

God knows we feel this tension, which is perhaps why He included Matthew 11:2-5 in His perfect Word. Here, John the Baptist asks Jesus if He is, in fact, the “one who is to come”—the Messiah. Jesus answers with a clear allusion to Isaiah 61: “Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up” (Matthew 11:4-5). He’s essentially saying, “Yes. All the things that were foretold, I am fulfilling them.”

Jesus’ answer to John tells us a lot about the purpose of His miracles: They are a sign of the prophecies fulfilled, a sign that Jesus is the long-awaited Messiah. They are a sign of His authority, His power, and His glory. And they are a sign of God’s love for us, a sign that we can trust Him. 

But here’s what we shouldn’t miss about Jesus’ answer, because John certainly wouldn’t have. Isaiah 61 also says this of the coming Messiah: He will “proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound” (v.1). It’s a message of hope for prisoners, which is exactly what John was; John received Jesus’ message while sitting in a prison cell. And yet, John the Baptist was never set free. Three chapters later, he’s beheaded. Scripture tells us that when Jesus got word of John the Baptist’s death, “he withdrew from there in a boat to a desolate place by himself” (Matthew 14:13).

Our God is not indifferent to our pain.

Matthew 11:2-5 contains all the power and the glory and the complexity and confusion of Jesus’ miracles. It attests to Jesus’ divine identity, but it also attests to the reality that miracles don’t always come. In this tension, we learn more about what Jesus’ miracles mean. 

Jesus’ miracles weren’t only about Him, but about the Kingdom to come. Tucked into every miracle we can almost hear God whisper, “This is what the Kingdom is like. It’s complete healing, total wholeness, freedom, awe, and joy.” Miracles provide a foretaste of this in-breaking Kingdom, but they were never meant to replace it.

We’ll never have the perfect peace and restoration we desire this side of eternity, but miracles point to the place where we will. 

Whenever we read stories of miracles, and grapple with their surpassing mystery, we can do so knowing our God is not casual or removed from our pain. Jesus’ very presence on earth reminds us that He entered into it, experiencing the pain along with us. Jesus joined us in waiting for the Kingdom, longing for the day when the need for miracles will be no more.

I’m so thankful that God is not indifferent to our pain. I’m thankful that our pain isn’t the end of the story, for we know how the story ends.

May our journey, despite all of it’s hidden and surprising doors, point to the Glory which is to come. The Day is coming when the need for miracles will be no more, my friends.

“The Day is coming when we will have it all – life healed and whole.” 1 Peter 1:5