My Story
When I was twenty-nine years old, I woke up one morning with an unusual pain and stiffness in my low back. I couldn’t think of any way I’d injured it, so I ignored it, but weeks went by and instead of improving, it got worse. I bought new running shoes, joined a Pilates class, and eventually purchased new mattresses. Nothing helped. My pain got worse and worse, and in a few months my pain was keeping me awake all night long. Other symptoms popped up: digestive issues, skin rashes on my joints that itched and bled, burning mouth syndrome, crushing fatigue, brain fog, crippling anxiety with panic attacks, and of course, the incessant, never-ending pain.
For such a long time, I felt like a half a person walking around in a shroud of fatigue and pain. I chased a diagnosis but the most common response I got from doctors was either “You need to strengthen your core” or “I don’t know what’s wrong with you. You seem healthy to me.” It wasn’t until I was thirty-four and I began having severe vision problems that an eye doctor guessed at a systemic disease. Genetic tests proved an incurable autoimmune disease. I slept an average of three or four hours a night for thirteen years.
After diagnosis, I tried lots of treatments—some kosher, some not. Nothing worked. I exhausted our finances with naturopathic/functional treatments that made me sicker than I’d ever been. Nothing touched my pain. In late 2023, I finally gave in and began biologic treatments because my quality of life was so poor. These treatments cost about $8,000 a month, but they have changed my life. I am never completely out of pain, but I am finally able to sleep and I would endure anything during the day to be able o sleep at night.
Praying in Pain
That brings me to now. I’ve written a book on what it’s like to live with chronic pain while knowing God could heal you but hasn’t.
During my many years of writing and dealing with pain, I’ve learned that my experience is not unique. In fact, it’s becoming alarmingly normal. Yet there is a dearth of resources on how to endure lifelong pain with a gospel lens. So, I wrote the book I needed back in 2010.
My prayer is that it will teach you how to pray through your pain and how to trust the Lord with you life and your health. He is so good to us, even when life feels impossibly hard.
It was important to me to only choose endorsers for this book who have personally walked through their own form of chronic health struggle, so know that their words about this book come from a place of painful lived experience. It means the world to me that they took the time (and stamina) to read an early copy of this book. You can read them below.
Endorsements:
