Sarah
Today is the Day
So my name is Sarah, and I’m a wife, I’m a mom of three awesome young men, and during the day, I work with junior high and high school students. It’s just a joy because I get to see what God is doing in this generation. So that’s my day job.
So I was asking the Lord, where to start…and so anyways, this is where I’m going to start. In December of 2020, my husband and I got COVID for Christmas. After about 10 days, I felt fine and went back to work. A couple of days after that, I had some really, just a lot of weakness. I started feeling really strange. Something I knew was really wrong and so I came home. I was having a lot of dizziness, it was getting worse, and I decided I needed to go to the hospital.
So the doctor that saw me there, thankfully, she had a lot of insight. She took my blood pressure laying, and then sitting, and then standing, which is when I blacked out. So what happened was, as I changed positions my blood pressure would drop about 30 points or more. She had the insight to kind of pre-diagnose that as something called POTS, which is Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome, and it’s a form of dysautonomia. What that means is just that your autonomic system is on the fritz. Your autonomic system is, think about it as any automatic system in your body. Things that you don’t have to think about – your breathing, your blood pressure, your muscle reactions, your digestion, your heart rate.
She then forwarded me to a long line of doctors who are then testing these different things in my body, because they just were not working right. They would say, “Well, I’m so sorry, we don’t really know that much about COVID. But clearly something has happened.” And they just kept confirming, “This is POTS. This is POTS.” And what they thought was that COVID actually did the damage that triggered POTS activating in my body. So really, there’s not really anything that you can do. It’s just a lifelong disorder that you will live with and you just kind of have to adapt to. So that was really, really depressing.
I just remember feeling like that was such a hard diagnosis to take, because I’m a very active, strong person and to think that I couldn’t even really walk to my mailbox or anything like that…And so maybe I’ll just describe a little bit of how POTS looks; it’s very erratic. So it’s attacking your autonomic system, which is what controls all of your vital organs. So your body’s just in this erratic state. And one of the main things is when you change positions you can black out, and it’s because your blood pressure is not regulated. A normal person would get up out of a chair, and your body naturally just regulates the blood pressure and you’re good. For me, that didn’t happen. It would consistently either drop really low or go really high. I was having really bad tremors, and just to put that in context, eating from a spoon or a fork – I couldn’t – the food would fall off. So there was a lot of finger foods during that time. It was just really exhausting. So that would really exhaust my body muscles.
I don’t really understand it. But I think the autonomic system must control something with the strength of your muscles. Because I could only stand for a couple minutes at a time without feeling like everything just went limp. And so I was really homebound. I wasn’t able to do very much at all.
Then there was this whole other neurological side of things which was my brain and my eyes. My eyes, one eye went like four times worse than the vision. The other eye was fine in vision, but was having brownouts and blackouts just on one side. Then my brain, the brain was beyond brain fog. You know, we know that a lot of people with COVID have brain fog, and I did have that, but it got to a point where it felt like brain damage.
I remember one time my mom coming over to make some freezer meals for my family because I couldn’t cook. And you know, she sat me on a stool in the kitchen. She had the recipe, she gave me one page and she said, “Why don’t you do this part.” So I remember looking at the paper, and I knew what recipe it was and I could read it, but I couldn’t understand it. I looked at her and I said, “Mom, I don’t know what this says.” And we just both started crying, because that’s the degree of what was happening neurologically. I couldn’t make a thought connection or understand things or process, something was shut down there.
So just to kind of pull back another layer, my marriage was also really struggling. For a couple of years, my husband had just been struggling with some mental health. This had been going on before the onset of POTS. I already was feeling very alone, there are some very dark periods that would just last from, you know, a few days to a few weeks. So it just created a lot of fear in our house, and a lot of unpredictable emotions. It was just a really, really dark time. Honestly, I just feel like it was this spirit of fear that just totally invaded our home.
I wanted to set that context, because now there’s POTS on top of that and I was in a really, really desperate place. I felt like I was physically suffering, I was emotionally drained, and spiritually, just really desperate. I had heard a friend talking about an inner healing session that she had gone through and just really encountered Jesus. It was like everything in me, it was just like, I have to do that. I want to, I have to reconnect with Jesus. I feel like all of my senses are turned off. It was just a really strange feeling.
So I did that. I went for an inner healing session with, at the time I didn’t know her, but now she’s a dear friend, and she helped me ask Jesus to start showing me what damage the enemy had done. We started peeling back these layers of my life and what lies had been holding me in bondage and prisoner. Some of the lies were: that I’m alone, that I’m worthless, and that God won’t protect me. So she told me to ask Jesus, “Jesus, where did this lie start? Show me where this started.”
Instantly, He took me back to one of the hardest memories of my life. When I was a teenager, I was about 17, I was an exchange student in Italy to study art. It was an incredible opportunity, but it was also pre cellphones and you had to go to, like, an internet cafe to get on the World Wide Web. And so you know, as a teenager, I’m there and it wouldn’t be like today where you can still communicate with your family, and all those things. So it was just really different. I’m proud of myself for being so brave to do that.
I was really close with my family. I was raised in an amazing Christian home, my parents are just incredibly faithful. But I would say I didn’t really have my own personal encounter with Jesus. I loved Him, it just wasn’t a deep faith. I think I was still kind of riding on the faith of my parents.
So I’m in another country, I have no rules or boundaries. I really fell into just a party lifestyle while I was there. One night, I was at a club with my friend and some guys bought us some drinks and we accepted them. That’s sort of where my memory stops at that time. So we were drugged and taken. I woke up at one point in this house and that’s the only memory that I have from this time. I just remember sort of blank walls, looking up at the corner of the room where the ceiling met the wall. I was in a ton of pain, but I couldn’t move and then I must have passed back out. I don’t know how I got out of that situation.
Eventually, my first kind of memory that comes back is just being at that friend’s house. We really just hid there for a couple of days, physically recovering. We went to a clinic to get some help. And you know, just when I look back at that hiding, that became a bigger thing in my life, but there was just so much shame. It’s really hard to find the words to describe that. Because of that deep shame, I just hid it for over 20 years, I did not tell a single person.
So that’s what Jesus brought up in this moment when I asked Him, Where did the lie start? That’s the memory that He brought up. The physical harm, the emotional pain, the confusion and the shame. And I just asked all these years, like, “God, why did You let that happen to me? Like, Jesus, if You love me, and You’re my friend, and You’re this close person, why would You have left me alone to go through that?
The lie that enters there is, It’s because you’re worthless, and you weren’t worth saving. So that lie really took root in my heart and just held me in this really guarded mindset.
I love Jesus and that was really genuine. And I know He loved people, and me to a degree, but there was just this part – maybe He didn’t love me quite enough to save me from this thing. So that just started rooting into a self hatred and a worthlessness, and just a brokenness. Even into adulthood, I found myself coping in really weird ways, self harming ways. Major anxiety, disordered eating, and especially just confused boundaries. We know when, when you experience trauma, it really distorts your identity and distorts what you think is a proper boundary for yourself and for others, and how they interact with you. So I just really let people take from me physically and emotionally.
So back to this session, I was asking the question I had always asked, “God, why did You let that happen to me? Where were You? Why did You leave me alone?” And my friend had me ask a different question, which was, “Jesus, show me where You were in that memory.” And instantly, something pinged in my heart, because I thought, that’s what’s true! Jesus says He’s never going to leave us and never going to forsake us, and that’s His promise. So instead of the enemy saying He wasn’t there, an accusation towards God, I started with, “Okay, God, You said that You’re never going to leave me. So, Jesus, where were You?”
What happened next was incredible, because this deep vision happened. So I only have that one picture and it’s very blank in my mind. But what He showed me was Him there battling for me. And what I felt in that moment was like when He’s in the temple, and He’s righteously angry, and He’s turning over the tables. That was what I could feel in the picture, because I could see myself in the picture and I could see Him battling. Then up at the corner of the ceiling and along the ceiling line, I saw the angelic realm, like swords drawn, fighting back dark figures. It was a huge battle scene and all these years that one picture has haunted me because I don’t have any other memories. It’s just this one picture. And when He showed it to me, it just completely rewrote that memory. I can’t, even when I’m trying to describe the old picture, it’s like I can’t even see it that way anymore.
It was the deepest healing I’ve ever experienced in my life, because it was just like He, by showing me what was the truth, it was like it just hit this button and unraveled all of the chains associated with this memory. It’s like the hold just completely dissipated out of my memory. There’s just a deep knowing that He was there, that He saw me in that moment, that He was battling for me. I could feel that.
So I asked Him another question that was also haunting me, which is, “How did I get out of there? Like, what happened? I don’t have any memory of that.” I just remember in this vision, it’s like He just turns to me and says, “Don’t worry, I carried you home.” And that word, that word was all I needed. Like something that just bounces around your brain for years – it was like, it’s done. It’s finished. It’s no more. It has no hold. It was like He just had this final word and it was just done. Like, there’s just nothing more. I don’t know how to explain that anymore. That encounter with Jesus just healed the deepest place in me and set me free.
You know, when we cry out to Jesus, He says He will answer. Just one word, one picture from Him can unravel years of destruction and pain. One word from Him can break off any lie. It can heal any wound. It can do anything. So this is the first miracle that He did for me.
There is no external evidence to this miracle, but it is a radical miracle in my life. I can’t unknow the power of what He can do and what He can heal. For anyone listening, I just feel like He can heal your deepest pain.
Just one word, one picture from Him can unravel years of destruction and pain. One word from Him can break off any lie. It can heal any wound. It can do anything. So this is the first miracle that He did for me.
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After going through this process, I was just like, What on earth is this? I have to know this because I’ve been in church all my life – I’m at an amazing church, an equipping church, a sweet church with people that I love. – but I’ve never encountered Jesus like this. But this is accessible to anyone and this is His heart, that we would encounter Him this way. So I wanted to learn more.
A few weeks later, I was invited to a training for this ministry. Keep in mind, on the inside I’m healed, but on the outside, I still have POTS. But I did say yes to the training and it was amazing. The second morning of the training, I got up but my brain was so tired. Typically, if I had been doing a couple hours of brain work, I’d have to rest a whole next day. This was like going to a conference for six or seven or eight hours talking about very emotional things and then get up the next morning and do it again. Like, that felt really impossible for me.
So I was up early. I was just having time with Jesus and the Holy Spirit just wrote on my heart, “Today’s the day.” and I wrote that down. I thought, Oh, this is so awesome. We’re gonna have more inner healing. This is so great. Yay. But then almost immediately, something happened neurologically in my body. I couldn’t use my arms and my legs. It felt like from the inside out, every nerve was on the fritz, like bugs crawling all over my arms and legs itching, just all of a sudden, like that. I started doing spiritual battle, just praying. I just rebuked this in the name of Jesus, because this is obviously a spiritual attack. Because Jesus told me today’s the day and I’m going to this conference, you know. Eventually it subsided not completely, but enough for me to leave the house and so I got there late.
Anyways, during one of the sessions, the speaker’s wife had something that she wanted to expand on. So she sort of stood up and – I don’t know these people and she doesn’t know me. – but to the room, she just said, “I don’t know who this is for, but if you’re struggling with post COVID symptoms, you need to know that this is a spiritual attack.” She started listing off symptoms that were like my medical chart. She said, “There is a spiritual reason your senses are shut down and it’s an attack from the enemy to limit your areas of gifting and sensing, and take you out of your ministry. But God can heal it.” And then she sat down.
So she’s on the front row, I’m in the middle and I was like… You know those movies where, Ding!, the spotlights on you? I’m sweating all of a sudden and I just thought, she has to pray for me. So I told my friend I’m like, “I don’t know who that is, but she has to pray for me. And you have to pray for me.” In my head the Holy Spirit is screaming like, “Today is the day! Today is the day!” That is what came to my mind when she said that, “Today’s the day.” So I knew it was for me.
So we go to the back and they’re praying for me, and they prayed over every symptom; that each system in my body would be under the complete power and authority and alignment of Jesus. Just casting off any of the enemy’s work in my body. They broke off a spirit of fear and doubt and infirmary, and just rebuking words of “lifetime sickness” and medical diagnosis. I remember, she said, “What’s been spoken over you? What medical diagnosis has been spoken over you?” I was telling her and we just rebuked each one that was not from the Lord, and declared a new word over my body of restoration and healing, and freedom.
It was like – Our words hold so much power. – it’s like I had given over some submission to these diagnoses and these lifetime words of death. I had to come out of agreement with that and put myself, every thought, every everything under the complete submission of Jesus’ power and His authority. As we were just declaring His word over my body, all the strength went out of my body. I just remember this picture of light. I knew it was Jesus, because it was Him, but His face was light. He just reached towards me and put His hand on my chest, like He was reaching for me. The feeling in the moment was very intense, complete peace. But I didn’t necessarily feel anything in my body.
So then we finished and we just went back into the conference like, everything’s fine. We went back into the conference, and we sat down. I was kind of just late to the party, I guess. But I just started symptom checking. Like, wait a second, hold on, I’m not shaking. I don’t have a migraine. I am not dizzy. You know? I’m going through this list and I’m just realizing like, it’s all gone. Wait, I think I’m healed. Wait, I am healed! Wait, Jesus healed me! And I’m, I’m in this conference with all these people and you can’t necessarily get up and scream. But inside I was screaming. That was August 7, 2021.
It was really hard for my brain to catch up, but that’s what happened. He completely healed me and I haven’t had anything in over a year, blood pressure, heart, tremors, headaches, dizziness, fatigue. This is really cool with my eyes. And I love telling my students this when I was able to share my story, because there’s medical proof.
So when I had POTS in my eyes, how I describe it, it was so weird. I had to go to the eye doctor and try to get some type of glasses that would help level out the vision because the one eye was four times worse. So I was wearing glasses that accommodated that. So one eye was four times worse and one was my normal prescription, which was pretty light. So the first time I was there, they remembered me because it was so dramatic and embarrassing, because every time I had to stand up and sit down from all these machines, I was browning out. They were so worried that I had to sit and I had to recover and it was a super exhausting thing.
So when I came back, I didn’t tell them anything before I got there. I was just so excited to tell, to see what the machines would say because I knew the machines are going to say that none of this is there anymore. I had told them, when I made the appointment, I’m having some trouble with my glasses, which is true because they didn’t work anymore. After they run me through the gamut, he comes in with this piece of paper and he says, “I’m so sorry. I don’t know what happened. But here see, I’ve written at the bottom here, ‘Physician error. Please remake.’ so that you can go back to the glasses place and they’ll just remake them because this prescription was completely wrong. I’m sorry I made this mistake.”
I was like, “Actually, you didn’t make a mistake. Can I tell you what happened? Because Jesus actually healed me radically and I’d love to tell you.” So I got to share this with the doctor and the nurse. To this day, I don’t know what they think. I hope that God ministered to them through this because they were just looking at me like I was so crazy. But, you know, God says He’s the same yesterday, today and forever and He is the God who heals you. That’s who He is, it’s His character. So we can’t not expect Him to heal. And we have to be talking about these things, that He is the God who heals.
I would say, today, just after the physical healing and the inner healing, I’m a completely different person. But I do believe my physical healing started with inner healing. You know, physical healing is amazing, because we can see it and we’re in awe and we should be. I just, to the day I die, I’ll be sharing about how He can heal. But, you know, physical healing is for our earthly tent, it’s for our body, and it expires. But the deep inner healing miracle that He can do affects our eternal man. It’s our connection to Jesus and we should be in awe at the miracle that He can do on the inside, and what He can heal on the inside.
So much of this was a really dark journey for me, several years of a dark journey. And it’s interesting that I feel like what He’s taught me is that I can just see so clearly. He just exposed so much of the enemy’s strategy. The enemy always wants to create a distorted identity and so my identity was pain, abuse, trauma, and now sickness, at this point. And that’s what the enemy always does. He’s going to distort either your view of who God is and His character, or distort your identity, or both. I mean, it works together and if he can get us to believe a distorted identity, we just live in bondage. Because it limits us from stepping into our calling, our purpose, who we are, God’s good intention for us, His good plan for us.
I just feel completely different. I feel like in the inner and outer healing, He just really healed my identity. He just restored me to a place of who I really am and that’s why it says, “Consider it pure joy when you face trials..” because I wouldn’t be sitting here and I wouldn’t know Jesus and have encountered Jesus without some of these hardest things. I’m just really grateful.
I was gonna read Psalm 103, because that is really my scripture for my life. “Let all that I am praise the Lord with my whole heart, I will praise His holy name. Let all that I am praise the Lord. May I never forget the good things He does for me. He forgives all my sins, heals all my diseases. He redeems me from death and crowns me with love and tender mercy. He fills my life with good things and my youth is renewed like the eagle.
That’s what He’s done in my life.
