I first noticed issues with my back

when I started cheerleading in high school.

When I would just be up moving around, it was a lot of pain.

And then, after I had been moving around for a couple

hours and would sit down, it would

turn into pain and stiffness.

I would become really stiff.

I never had it checked out.

I never had it looked at.

Never told my parents about it.

I was active all the time and just

assumed it was a part of being active.

It started to get worse when I was

pregnant with my first child.

It was just a lot more intense and pretty well constant while

I was pregnant compared to when I wasn't.

I had loads of pain from the back pain

from seven pregnancies.

All seven of them.

As a parent, you've got things to do with your kids,

and you just suck it up and deal with it.

As a children's pastor, you've constantly

got to be on your toes.

I have been having lots of numbness in both my arms.

And then, finally, while I was leaving my church office

one day, I had a spasm in my leg and immediate atrophy

in my leg.

I was worried about losing my ability to walk.

I'm a children's pastor and a mom of seven

and just busy in general.

And to not be able to walk, that did cross my mind quite a bit.

Two weeks later, it was still bothering me.

And my husband, he was finally like,

we need to get my mom to watch the kids.

You need to go to the ER.

The MRI, after I had it done, showed that A,

that I had lesions on my brain, which pointed towards MS.

And also, the doctor was far more interested

in the spine portion of it, which

showed that I had a condition called spondylolisthesis.

It's slippage of your spine, and it just causes your spine

to be very, very curved.

Your discs are all stacked on top of one another.

So the only way to fix it is with a surgery

called spinal fusion.

And they basically go in and put just a bunch of metal rods

in your back to straighten out your back.

It's a major surgery.

I was terrified.

You can become paralyzed from the surgery.

At the time, I had to deal with pain, but I wasn't paralyzed.

So we just didn't know how it was going to affect us.

But they were positive that I needed surgery.

The night we went to the ER, it was actually a worship practice

night.

And so we were on our way to get our kids

from my mother-in-law's house.

And Pastor Brent, Pastor Sharon texted us

and said they wanted us to come over.

They were still at worship practice

and they wanted to pray over me.

The stiffness went away at that time, but I still had the pain.

Well, the pain kept coming back, but it didn't make my faith

waver any, because I would be so stiff that it would make

me walk hunched over like a little old lady

if I had sat for any amount of time after being active.

And so I was just focused on that.

I was just praising God that the stiffness was gone.

It was about two months.

I was standing on stage, we were practicing,

and my back started to be in a lot of pain.

And so the worship team just gathered around

to pray over me.

Well, I didn't feel anything in my back during the prayer.

As a matter of fact, on the way home

that evening, I was in some of the worst

pain I have been in in a really long time at that point.

All I wanted to do was get home and take

some kind of medication.

I noticed something was different the next day.

I had to go grocery shopping.

And for a large family, grocery shopping takes a long time.

It was always something that I would come away

with my back hurting after the end of a two-hour grocery

shopping trip.

I actually did all my grocery shopping, I got in my car,

and I thought, my back isn't hurting.

And, at that time, I didn't know if it was going to last

or if it was just a fluke.

I think I was testing it all the time.

I would bend over to pick stuff up off the floor

and I would just wait for the pain to come back.

Or I would get out of the car-- that

would be something that would usually

cause me a lot of pain-- and the pain wouldn't be there.

I was constantly testing it, waiting for it to come back,

and it just never did.

After a couple of days, and then especially

after I got through Sunday service with the kids

and was able to clean up and not have to sit down,

not have to have anybody help me, not have to take a pain

medication, that's when it really

started to sink in that maybe this was going to be permanent.

It wasn't going to come back.

I haven't had any back pain since the day

after that prayer.

And I have not had any back pain since then.

My eighth pregnancy has been so much different

than the first seven.

I've been a lot more active.

I didn't actually realize how sedentary I

was during those first seven pregnancies, just

because I was in so much back pain.

I wonder why He chose to heal me a lot, because I

was going to be a Christian and be His servant as a pastor

whether He healed me or not.

And I honestly never really even expected Him to.

I wasn't healed the first time that we asked.

We prayed a lot before I was ever healed.

Just keep asking Him.

And, in the meantime, just keep serving Him.

It has changed my relationship with God a lot.

It was just a very deep experience

of how much He loves me.

It made it really tangible to me.

Instead of just hearing it and knowing it with my mind,

now I know it with my heart.