Healing Miracles, Great and Small
A Story of Faith Written by Cait Turner
A miracle. I wanted a miracle. And I believed God could give us one. It didn’t come in the way I expected or at the time I initially wanted, but it is unfolding in God’s perfect way. A great healing is occurring through small miracles.
When my oldest child was a baby, she developed symptoms consistent with food allergies. On her pediatrician’s recommendation, I cut dairy from my (and thus her) diet. Her symptoms didn’t fully resolve, but they improved. It was a small miracle. As she grew older, we realized other foods were problematic: a scrambled egg for breakfast, peanut butter at dinner, oatmeal served with walnuts. We became more careful with the foods she ate, but there were still accidental exposures.
When my daughter was two or three, she ate a Mr. Good Bar at a Halloween party. Miraculously, my husband found the wrapper nearby. He realized what had happened and gave her some Benadryl. Benadryl is a miracle, too. Just as we got home that night, she threw up in the backseat. This was actually a good development because her body was getting rid of the allergen. Vomiting was another small miracle.
Sometimes our miracles come in unexpected packages. Cleaning up vomit is no one’s idea of a good time, especially after an eventful night, but I had the most interesting experience: I felt so much LOVE as I did a very unglamorous task. I was genuinely shocked by my happiness as I cleaned the throw up out of our car’s carpet. Love–straight from heaven into my heart–for this girl and the opportunity to serve her.
Beyond Halloween, pretty much every party required some advance consideration about food. Would the pizza crust have egg in it? Did we remember to buy coconut ice cream? When her friends had birthday parties, she brought a gift for her friend and a vegan cupcake for herself. Fortunately, she usually had a great attitude about the food accommodations, even though she could have easily felt left out. This was a miracle.
I often thought about how grateful I was that we lived in a place and time with many food options for people with allergies. Almond milk? Check. Vegan “butter” and mayonnaise? Check. Vegan bakery? Check. These small miracles made life easier. Even so, I hoped for another miracle–one where my daughter would no longer have food allergies. I knew the Great Physician could reteach her immune system how to respond to certain foods. Was that His plan for her?
When my daughter was in kindergarten, my husband and I went to a special worship service on a Saturday night. While we were there, we ran into a friend who had moved away several years earlier. She remembered that our daughter had food allergies and told us about a medical clinic her children went to for their own allergies. It sounded miraculous. The clinic was run by medical doctors who had helped thousands of kids with their food allergies. Most of their patients could eat their former food allergens without restriction when they graduated from the program. Patients flew in from all over the world for treatment, and it was only thirty minutes from our house. God put so many miracles into place for us to hear about this clinic and for the program to be workable for our family. We signed our daughter up on the waiting list as we traveled home that night.
Our daughter started the allergy program in March 2020. This might seem like a bad time to start, but I see a small miracle. The treatment program requires a heavy amount of work from its patients and their families. Our daughter has spent hundreds of hours eating required food doses. (She currently eats about eighty food doses per week.) As parents, we’ve prepared most of those doses: special grocery store trips, separating eggs, grinding nuts, boiling milk. The slowdown of other demands of life during the pandemic made our family’s transition into the program less burdensome. God’s miracles can require great effort from those being healed and helped, yet when we look for His hand, we can see how He’s easing our burdens.
My daughter is moving steadily through her treatment program. She can now eat multiple foods to which she was once allergic. For those foods, she can eat as much as she wants without swelling, hives, wheezing, or vomiting. The miracles we’ve seen along the way may seem small in isolation, but, together, they are life-altering.
Miracles sometimes come all at once, and sometimes they come in measures of grace that build over time. On this food allergy journey, I see God laying the groundwork and walking with us–step by step, experience by experience, day by day, year by year. The Great Physician is working miracles great and small in our family. It may not be Jesus’s actual hands healing my daughter, as He healed so many during His mortal life, but I believe it was with His power that we were led to this path, with His guidance that this treatment program was created, with His grace that we have the stamina to participate in this program, and with His mercy that my daughter is being healed. Even if God had a different path for her, I trust that I would find His miracles there. It is easier to have gratitude and to praise God when the miracle I wanted is already manifesting, but I know He would be just as good if the miracle I wanted was withheld.
Ultimately, one day, we will all have a complete healing through the miraculous power of Jesus. Our mental, spiritual, emotional, and physical wounds will be gone. We will be made new by the One from whom all healing comes. Whether these great healings come all at once or by many small miracles, I trust the path God has for us. He has promised a brilliant, safe, pain-free future. Until that time, we can live joyfully because we can trust our Healer, our Miracle Worker, our Lord.
“But unto you that fear my name shall the Sun of righteousness arise with healing in his wings…” – Malachi 4:2 (KJV)
