The question often comes up, “Why didn’t God give me what I asked for?” or “What didn’t God give me what I needed?” Sometimes it’s “Why did God let me or my family go hungry?” I was thinking about this very thing this morning, and I wanted to share the answer with a story about my wife. My wife, Heidi, at this point is in perfect health, and is strong enough to not only manage the farm we live on, but carry more than her weight in caring for the animals. But just five or six years ago that wasn’t the case. In fact, that wasn’t the case for a sizable part of her life.
When I first met Heidi, we knew she had some kind of seizure disorder, though it wasn’t like any kind of epilepsy most people had heard of. She had a few episodes in college when we first met, but the ones I remember most is when she would lose the use of one of her legs. The doctors in Lewiston where she grew up either couldn’t find anything or wouldn’t find anything, and at least once suggested that it was “all in her head.” Her pregnancies were hard on her body, and by the third one, she was wheelchair bound for most of it.
Then for a while, she was doing very well, and was working as a special education instructional aid for moderate to severe preschool kids. She did this for two years. And then one morning, right after I had recovered from a serious month long lung infection, she woke up and couldn’t move. She couldn’t get out of bed. She had almost no strength in her limbs. For days, and then weeks, she could only hold herself up for about ten or fifteen minutes, and then she had to be propped up. We took her to a clinic we could somewhat afford, but they had no idea what was happening, and neither did we. She ended having to resign from her job after I had to leave mine because of my lungs. We had to research her symptoms online and came up with Guillan-Barre syndrome, but we had no way to see a doctor. The weeks passed into months, and she barely recovered enough of her strength to walk short distances.
We moved out to Tennessee where I became the co-pastor of a parish for a short time. One of the women in the parish had celiac disease and was completely gluten-free. She suggested that Heidi might try it and see if it helps. She did, and she started slowly recovering her strength and function. She still needed the wheelchair on occasion, and as she started cutting out more foods, she started getting better. Not 100%, but better.
After the 1000 year storm in Tennessee we relocated to live at her grandparents’ old ranch which had been standing empty for a few years by then. At first, I got a job in town and we were doing okay. But we were living in the middle of wheat fields, and especially during harvest time the wheat dust would infiltrate the house and Heidi would lose use of her limbs again. Then I lost my job, and regardless of what we tried, we couldn’t seem to bring in hardly any income. We went on food stamps, but then those were taken away about a year later. We watched as our pantry and refrigerator dwindled to nothing until we only had pinto beans to eat. And we made those pinto beans for the five of us, Heidi, myself, and our children, every meal until they were gone. And then the only thing we had left was a few fifty pound bags of dried peas which we recovered from the fields outside which had been dumped and left. I don’t remember how long we went eating the beans, and then the peas. And you have to understand, it was only peas which we had to soak, cook, and then eat. We all dropped huge amounts of weight as our bodies went into fasting and starvation mode.
At this point, we were praying like mad for more food, an income, some kind of provision. We were hungry and getting thinner by the day, and I couldn’t find work or produce anything to feed us. And the biggest question on our minds was “God, why?” Throughout our lives and our marriage, we had sought to follow wherever God had led us, and follow what He wanted, even when we didn’t understand. We thought we were where we were supposed to be, doing what we were supposed to do at that point in time, and we were losing weight because all we had to eat was peas. I think a neighbor might have stopped by and given us a bunch of frozen fish he had caught but couldn’t use as well. You better believe we were thankful for that fish.
We ate only beans and then peas for maybe a month and a half or so. After that, my mother sent us some money. We didn’t tell her what was going on. We didn’t tell anyone what was going on. But she felt like the Lord had moved her to send something, and we were grateful. Over the next couple of years, we continued to struggle with our finances, and to make a long story short, we moved down to Arizona and ended up in an R.V. which we then, literally on faith alone, took across the country (that is another long story), and eventually ended up on my uncle’s property for a year where, while we never went as long as we did at the ranch, there were times when we continued to have very little to eat.
But, throughout this time, Heidi started to get stronger again to where, when we eventually returned to California, she was able to regain her full health once more though her diet was incredibly restrictive if she was to avoid the partial seizures she got. And it continued to get more restrictive as time went on. But she returned to her job as a special education aid, and was very physically active.
Then, in 2019, Heidi went to work one morning, lost the use of her legs, and then collapsed. I would have to drive and get her. This time however, we had medical insurance and were able to take her to the doctor where, after three doctors and two MRIs, she was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis and Transverse Myelitis as the lesions on her spine and brain became apparent. The doctor, the MS Specialist at UCI Medical Center, would give her ten years, and then after that…
Heidi wouldn’t accept that. Like the stranded astronaut in “The Martian” she made the determination, “I’m not going to die here.” And held her ground. She knew that the medication for it would likely make her worse because of the fillers, and so she declined to take it, much to the doctor’s chagrin. She also knew that the medication could do just as much damage as the MS itself. Instead, she went online and started researching, and researching for anything or anyone that might give some kind of a lifeline.
The first thing she really tried was CBD oil upon the suggestion of a friend. And it did help. It got her out of the wheelchair and able to walk on her own for longer distances and time. After this, GABA was added to her routine. We discovered this after I was watching a Great Courses video on the Biological roots of human psychology to brush up on a previous course on Psychobiology I had taken in college. In one of the courses, the professor was discussing how in some people, the brain produces too much of the neurotransmitter glutamate and when it does, it can literally explode dendrites on neurons in the brain causing seizure.
Gluten is about 25% glutamine, and glutamine becomes glutamate in the body. This explained why gluten and certain other foods were causing her seizures. But what I remembered from my coursework was that almost every neurotransmitter has an opposing neurotransmitter, so that if one is the accelerator (like glutamate) the other is the brake and the two are meant to balance one another. I couldn’t remember what the balancing neurotransmitter was, and so I contacted a psychologist friend whom I trusted and asked him. It was GABA, and the Amen Clinic where he worked produced a GABA supplement that was more efficient in getting past the blood brain barrier. He used his work discount and picked some up for Heidi in addition to her CBD oil. She was able to leave the wheelchair behind mostly after that.
Heidi continued to do her online research and found that the MS medication worked by replicating the state the body goes into when fasting. After doing more reading, she felt like she needed to go on a hard 40 day fast which started on a liquid only diet, and only towards the end could she eat more solid food during certain times of the day. She did this twice over the next year, and her strength completely returned. She got to the point that she no longer needed the CBD, and then eventually dropped the GABA as well. The next MRI she got was completely clear as she walked into her appointment with the MS Specialist and told her what she had done. She has not had a flare up since in the last four to five years.
So what does all of this have to do with how God answers prayers, and when He says “no”? We didn’t know Heidi had MS when we were eating just beans and then peas. We certainly didn’t know that fasting like that, as hard as it was, was the best treatment possible for her. But those periods where we felt like we were literally starving saved her life and hit the reset button on her MS long enough for her to get to where she could get a real diagnosis and learn how to overcome it. God knew what was going on even when we didn’t. He wasn’t ignoring our prayers. He was saving her life and treating her disease the best way possible at the time. If we hadn’t have gone through that, we might have lost Heidi to MS years ago. Instead, she reversed and beat it.
When we talk about trusting God for our provision, we have to do just that, even when He doesn’t provide in the way we think we need in that moment. We also must trust that He knows what He’s doing, and He knows when we need something we ask for, and when we need that thing to be withheld for whatever reason He sees fit. We need to trust that He really does have our best interests at heart, even when it looks like everything is collapsing around us. You never know when God’s “no” or “not yet” may just be saving your life.
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