Psalms 42:8 “Then God promises to love me all day, sing songs all through the night! My life is God’s prayer.”

If you’ll remember from my blog post entitled “Come to Jesus”, I wrote about how I had thought I’d hit rock bottom about my esophagus. I prayed that night for God to send me a little bit of of hope and to just remind me that He hasn’t forgotten about me. He revealed to me Matthew 8:1-4, which is about Jesus healing a man of his leprosy. So, I took this verse and carried it on my heart and reminded myself of it when I was hurting.

However, it kept getting harder and harder for me to swallow anything solid and even certain liquids. I had the most traumatizing (to say the least) esophageal manometry done while I was awake. For those of you that have never had one, an esophageal manometry is a procedure where a tube with monitors in it is threaded through your nose and then down your throat. After that, they have you swallow different consistencies of liquids and solids to locate the problem (for most people, it’s typically done awake with no problems and little discomfort, however as usual, I was the troublemaker). After three unsuccessful attempts to thread the monitor down my esophagus, we gave up.

This was on a Wednesday. By Friday, I could barely swallow anything. So, my incredible, life-changing angel of a speech therapist scheduled a very last-minute swallow test to be done behind an x-ray (shout out to LBN, she’s the only reason we found out I could eat at all in the first place). Anyways, the radiologist said I basically couldn’t swallow anything thicker than milk. Bummer. But I remembered Matthew 8:1-4. God’s not giving up on me.

Fast forward to Saturday, I had a big day ahead of me at a best friend’s bridal shower. We had a perfect day but I was sure not to try and eat anything. Well, I noticed later in the afternoon, it didn’t hurt to swallow my drink, I was completely comfortable. Later that night, I attempted to eat a tiny piece of chicken and, by the grace of God, it went down without a hitch and I was able to eat a solid meal for the first time in about a week. Hallelujah! I cried tears of joy.

The first person I thought to call was my precious friend and sister in Christ, Rayna Langston. I knew she had been worried about me the few days prior to that and could tell my health was taking a deep emotional toll on on me and that I was exhausted. After about a minute of crying, screaming, and praising God, she asked me what time I noticed I could swallow. I told her it was probably around 3:15 or 3:30. The words that came out of her mouth next completely made my heart swell. For a couple of weeks before this, she had been praying to God to help her improve her prayer life, she wanted some kind of sign that she was heard. Well, that Saturday, I had been on her heart again and she thought, “enough is enough.” So, she prayed so hard for me and my health right then and there. By the time she was done, it was about 3:00. Within half an hour, God had made her prayer my reality.

In the midst of all our chaos, God used us to answer each others’ prayers. He answered our prayers that I should eat but He also used me and my situation to show Rayna that He hears her prayers loud and clear!

Y’all, we serve such a mighty, loving, faithful God. Our God provides. Our God knows our needs and does not overlook them. We are the blessed ones.

Because He still hears us. He still moves our mountains. He still showers us in grace.

“Because He is the God that still does.”*

John 13:7 “Jesus replied, ‘You don’t understand now what I am doing, but someday you will.'”

(*This was said in a sermon a few months back at my home church, West Ridge, by my all time favorite pastor, Pastor Brian Bloye… and it’s stuck with me ever since.)

©The Ansley Foundation