Читать книгу The Spirit Told Me What the Doctors Couldn't - Jody L. Williams - Страница 5

But as for me, it is good to be near God.

I have made the Sovereign Lord my refuge;

I will tell of all your deeds. —Psalm 73:28

I was thrilled to have received three job offers when I graduated from graduate school at Virginia Tech and chose to accept the offer from Columbia Energy Group, located in northern Virginia. I was selected to be in a very competitive Executive Manager Rotation Program called STEP that exposed the new hires to at least three different departments of the company over a two to three-year period. It would give me a chance to find what area of the business I liked the most and it gave management the opportunity to see how I performed in their department.

Lisa and I moved to Ashburn, Virginia on July 4, 1999, the hottest Fourth of July in the last 100 years with an actual temperature of 103 degrees. After getting settled in, I joined a gym in the area and began walking for thirty minutes every day before work. Once our insurance was in effect, I saw a doctor about my snoring and a sleep study was performed. I checked in to the hospital for my sleep study and was hooked up to electrodes and detectors , and I had to wear a cap with wires coming out from every direction. I was also hooked up to a breathing monitor and heart monitor. I couldn’t imagine how I was expected to sleep with all of these wires and contraptions attached to me. But after several hours, I finally managed to drift off to sleep. After only three hours of sleep, I was awakened by the technician. He reported that I had a very bad case of sleep apnea. I was waking up about sixty to seventy times each hour and was never getting to REM sleep. He fitted me with a c-pap machine that night and I slept well the rest of the night. The next morning I was given my own c-pap. This stopped my terrible snoring and Lisa was able to move back into our bedroom, which was a good thing since we were trying to start our family.

My weight had dropped since my graduation day and stabilized at 230 – 240 pounds. Due to my excessive weight, I began to experience problems with my back, knees and other joints. I was sore and stiff and everybody said it was because I was just getting older and also that my weight was playing a part. No matter what I did with exercise or diet, I could not lose weight. I would later find out that the joint pain and stiffness was a symptom of the disease.

In the spring of 2000, I was involved in a car accident. A co-worker and I were rear-ended during a rainstorm. I was taken to the hospital with severe back pain. I had x-rays taken and was told that I didn’t have any broken bones. However, I was still experiencing severe back pain so I stayed home for a couple of days on pain medicine. After a week, I returned to work but still had back pain. I learned years later that my back was actually broken in that car accident. The fractures showed up when I had more x-rays taken, my doctor was trying to determine the cause of my pain and stiffness.

While living in northern Virginia, we started attending a new type of church. We had both grown up in conservative, very traditional churches but decided to visit Christian Fellowship Church in Ashburn, Virginia just across from the Washington Redskin’s practice facility. There were several football players that attended and the worship service was very lively and active. Christian Fellowship Church was non-denominational but had roots in charismatic movement and believed in healing, speaking in tongues and believer’s authority. This was something new for us but we enjoyed it. We joined a small group and began experiencing God in a new and fresh way.

During this time, our attempts to start a family were not successful and we began to wonder if it was due to physical issues with either me or Lisa. She was having heavy bleeding and cramping each month, more than was normal. Lisa went to her doctor and was told that she had several fibroid tumors. During a follow-up appointment, the doctor diagnosed her as having a cancerous growth in addition to four tumors. She was referred to a specialist.

We met with our small group and asked for prayer. They all gathered around us and laid their hands on Lisa, anointing her with oil. When they prayed, they did so with authority and confidence, not like they were begging or even asking for God to heal her, but with expectancy and commanding voices. They condemned the devil’s work in making Lisa sick and demanded that the cancer leave her body. We had never heard this type of prayer before but could feel a power surrounding us.

Lisa saw the specialist a week later and there was no cancer to be found. It was gone! The specialist looked at the reports from the other doctor and examined her again.

He said, “Now, why are you here? I see what the doctor wrote but there is no cancer. I’m not saying he was wrong but whatever he saw isn’t here now. I feel the fibroid tumors, but there is no cancer to be seen.”

It was unbelievable! God had touched Lisa and answered our prayers like we had never seen before. We were struck by the way the members of the small group had prayed and decided that was the type of church we wanted to attend from now on.

My first rotation with the STEP program was finished and I was given very high reviews from my managers. As a result, I was transferred to a highly sought-after rotation located in Columbus, Ohio. Unfortunately about a week later, Columbia Energy Group was bought out by a competitor, NiSource Energy.

NiSource Energy was based in Gary, Indiana, a city named by Time magazine, three years in a row, as one of the worst cities in the United States to live. NiSource Energy had their headquarters there because the real estate was so cheap. This was a good indication to me of the management style of this new company and that didn’t bode well for a long-term future.

We had no desire to move to Gary, Indiana, especially since we were trying to have a family. Lisa and I wanted to live in a growing area, with good schools and a lot of opportunities to do fun and interesting things. Northern Virginia and Columbus had those things, but Gary did not.

We moved from northern Virginia into a small one-bedroom apartment in northern Columbus, Ohio with plans of staying with Columbia Energy Group, only long enough for them to offer severance packages to those who didn’t want to be part of the new company. We enjoyed living in Columbus, even though neither of us had ever lived outside of either Virginia or North Carolina. Columbus had a vibrant social life with many cultural events like October Fest, an Italian Festival and, of course, the Ohio State Fair. We also attended several professional hockey games of the Columbus Blue Jackets. We found a similar church in Columbus and became more involved in the charismatic movement and teachings.

Not long after moving to Ohio, I noticed a lump in my belly button area. It wasn’t very large but as the days went by, it got a little bigger. We asked Lisa’s mom about it since she was a nurse, she said it could be a hernia and suggested I see a doctor. I made an appointment and the doctor confirmed it was an umbilical hernia and scheduled surgery.

After the surgery, my doctor informed me that most of the fat in my body was located under the wall of my abdominal muscle and was filling up my body cavity, surrounding all of my major organs and was even beginning to compress my lungs. The hernia was caused because the fat pushed up against and tore the abdominal muscles. Lisa and I had previously noticed that my stomach wasn’t flabby; it didn’t shake around like most overweight people’s stomachs do. Mine was hard and felt like muscle but it was large and stuck out like I was really fat. The doctor said this was a very dangerous condition and I really needed to lose weight. I asked about the stretch marks on my stomach and sides and he said they were the result of me gaining weight too fast, stretching the skin. We would later find that this was a major indicator of a serious health problem, unfortunately this doctor didn’t recognize it.

Meanwhile, Lisa’s problems continued to get worse. She was seeing a doctor who was able to refer her to a specialist dealing with infertility and who was also trained to remove fibroid tumors. Lisa had surgery to remove the fibroid tumors in early February. Since she was very sore, her mom came up to help with the recovery. After a couple of weeks, Lisa was doing better and that was good because I had accepted a new job and we needed to make yet another move.

As a result of the buyout of Columbia Energy Group by NiSource, I had contacted all of the companies that I had previously interviewed with when I first graduated from Virginia Tech. Again, I received several job offers and the decision was made to move to North Carolina to work for Corning Cable Systems. We would be leaving Ohio the end of March, 2001.