Miracles, Part I: Jana & Cara's Story

Wow, it's been a LONG while but I'm still here. Just been losing my blogging oomph a bit. Thought about posting a bunch of times but wanted something worth saying on here. :) Anyhow, our family has been learning so much about God lately and it's been sooo good! I hope to share most, if not all, that we've learned but wanted to start with some of the miracles that we've experienced here and give testimony to our awesome God!

Jana had perfect skin as a baby and had no allergies symptoms...until she was two. After we got back from our Taiwan trip, she started getting these funny bumps on her palms and in between her fingers. Sometimes it would pus, sometimes it would get raw and red and bleeding. :( And it would itch her to no end, which caused her to scratch it and create open wounds on her poor little hand. Sometimes it would get so raw that we would have to bandage her whole hand...and can you imagine being 2 not being able to use both of your hands. It was a sad state of affairs. So we tried out best to manage this situation. We tried aquaphor, neosporin, heavy duty moisturizers, cortizone creams, chinese stuff, and a host of other things topcially but nothing really helped. We were praying over it and had lots of people praying, as well. Then we tried the elimination diet but even that had no pattern to it. And we also found out she started having itchy patches on the back of her legs and arms and that one of her fingernails started getting all warped due to the rash. :(

So, we decided to take her to the dermatologist and the allergist. The dermatologist, predictably, told us it was ezcema and started her on a regimen of cortizone creams for flare-ups and a new antihistamine that worked well for skin issues. The allergist simply found dust mites as the only culprit for her skin condition. I thought, great, dust mites, sometimes you can't even really avoid. Ugh. Anyhow, we were hesitant to start the cortizone esp of the side effects, esp with long term use but we did a bit only during flare-ups to give her skin a break. We also cut the dose of the antihistamine to 1/3 [esp after reading the insert...scary!] to also give her skin a break. We were hoping that maybe her skin just needed a break to start healing itself since antihistamines/cortizones only suppress the symptoms. We also started washing her sheet more often, putting those dust mite containing covers on all her bedding, and vacuuming with this UV vacuum that we got. Yeah, we got hard-core...haha! Anyhow, after all that, her symptoms would only go away if she continued with the antihistamine and she would still get flare-ups now and then. So we knew that we had to do something else.

We had heard about this renown Chinese medicine doctor who specialized in skin issues and kids with eczema did great when seen by him, so he was our next hope. She was put on a regimen of chinese herbal medicine AM/PM and then topical chinese ointments for flareups. This was supposed to treat the root of the problem, so the doctor assured us that this regimen would not be forever. Jana was a real trooper and ate that really yucky tasting chinese medicine mixed in applesauce for a few months. She would even remind me about it, if I happened to get too busy and forgot. ;) Anyhow, this routine helped a bit but then there would be those big flare-ups and then no more improvement. I was getting so upset because she would wake up in the middle of the night because she was itchy and ask for medicine or crying from pain because she had scratched her hands til they were bleeding. Plus, she wasn't getting a good night's rest, which made her even crankier. She was also starting to use the itchiness as a stalling tactic at night. Sigh.

Now, Cara had no skin issues til she was 6 months. It was around that time, that she started getting itchy, dry patchs on her wrists and ankles. Then these spots started travelling up her leg. She would also start getting hives on her torso for no apparent reason. Thank goodness she was a good sleeper and didn't let those things bother her but while she was awake, she would try to scratch them, even through her clothes. Poor thing. :( We also tried a bunch of the same things on her and even cut out most of the dairy and started giving her coconut milk, which cut down on the severity of it all. She was also on the chinese medicine and responded to it somewhat but the itchiness would never really go away. So, now we have 2 itchy girls on our hands.

Then we heard about the healing rooms at church. Every Monday night at The Church of Grace & Peace, where we now go, there is a few hours set aside for people who are seeking healing to get prayer for it. There were teams training in how to pray and I heard they were getting great results. Plus, it was free!! :) So I thought, what do I have to lose? Kev and I took the kids and waited in line. Then we were ushered into a room where a healing team heard our story and prayed for us in the way they saw fit. It was nothing dramatic and very simple. The kids all did very well waiting around and getting prayed for. :) And then we went home.

But within a week, Jana's hand got about 90% better! We took her off the Chinese medicine [the antihistamine regimen was stopped a long time ago] and all the topical stuff and it still looks great! Her funny fingernail is back to normal and she sleeps well through the night. We even stopped vacuuming so often and zapping everything with the UV wand! Cara is 100% better and has not had a bout since. Praise the Lord!

It is really so freeing to be healed and not have to deal with just managing the symptoms and hoping that it would just go away when they are older. We've just been learning so much about healing lately - that even if it is something that's bee plaguing someone for a long time, they don't just have to accept it as a part of themselves. They don't always have to have that condition. For me, I was starting to think that Jana is just someone with sensitive skin who is affected by ezcema...but now I think she is a healthy child that had some symptoms that God wanted to heal her from. I remember praying but always thinking, would God heal her? And in the back of my mind, can God heal her? But now I know I have made God so small and He is not small. And because He is a good God, He always wants to heal. Slowly, my mind is being taught to rethink some old ways of thinking and I feel like I'm understanding God more. And it's a good thing. :)