Bad news travels fast. Especially in a hospital.
I should know; I’ve been a registered nurse working in hospitals for more than 35 years. And that morning, the bad news was mine.
I’d just sat down in my office at the VA Medical Center and logged on to my computer when my friend Wanda walked in.
“I heard,” she said. “One of the other nurses told me. I drove here like greased lightning just to see you.”
Wanda Fay Neaves is about the cutest thing you’ve ever seen: Blue-eyed and petite, with graying strawberry-blonde hair, she always wore a hat to match her outfit. I’d met her 15 years earlier when she had an appointment at our medical center.
We hit it off right away. She was a Vietnam-era vet–she’d been a hospital corpsman in the Navy, where she drove an ambulance and served as an X-ray technician. But at the VA Wanda was best known for one thing: her prayers.
Whenever she had an appointment here she stopped by my department. She’d lead us in a prayer of protection for the day, or ask if anyone had a special need. Or she’d bring us inspiring poems she’d written. I always felt closer to God when Wanda was around. That was something I needed more than ever right now.
The day before, I’d had my annual mammogram. The moment the radiologist walked into my room with the results, I knew something was wrong. Terribly wrong. He fiddled with his pen and stared at the floor, just like my mother’s doctor eight years before when he delivered her diagnosis.
Next to lung carcinoma, breast cancer is the leading cause of cancer deaths in women. It killed my mother. I’d known I was at risk because of my strong family history (Mom’s sister also had breast cancer). Still, the diagnosis was devastating. Especially considering what I’d already been through in life.
I’d endured 32 surgeries due to neurofibromatosis, a genetic disorder that causes benign tumors to grow on nerves, mostly in the head and neck. Thirty-two times, I’d pleaded to God for healing. And 32 times, the answer had been a resounding no.
Wasn’t it enough that my cranial and facial tumors had disfigured me and made me feel “less than” as a woman, like I wasn’t worthy of love? My husband had left me because he couldn’t handle my illness and now I was all alone. Did I have to suffer even more?
Wanda’s voice pulled me back to the present. “Tonight my church, Christ Temple, is having a healing service,” she said. “I really want you to come, Roberta. People have had their hearing restored, depression relieved…cancer healed.”
Healing service? Been there, done that. Several years earlier, when a tumor in my brain returned, I went to one. The minister asked for anyone who needed healing to gather at the altar. I couldn’t get there fast enough. That night, others around me proclaimed they’d been touched by God and healed.
Me? I didn’t feel a thing. Nothing. The pain, the tumor were still there. I couldn’t understand it. Why were they healed and not me? If God loved me, didn’t I deserve to be healed too?
Afterward, friends wanted to know what had happened at the service. “My tumor wasn’t healed,” I told them. “I’ll need several more surgeries. But I received a different kind of touch. I was healed of the need to be healed.” I must have sounded convincing because they believed me.
But deep in my heart, I didn’t believe it. I longed, desperately longed, to be healed. Still, if God hadn’t chosen to heal my body in the past, after all my pleas, why would he heal me now?
I couldn’t confess my doubts to Wanda. She was so excited about this service.
“Okay,” I said. “For you, I’ll go. I’ll meet you at your church at seven.”
After work, I stopped at my friend Sue’s. She played the piano at my church and we often talked about our faith. I told her about Wanda’s unwavering conviction that I would be healed.
“That reminds me of that story in the Bible,” Sue said. “The one where the friends of a paralyzed man took him to see Jesus. Remember? They carried him on a mat but they couldn’t get him to Jesus because of the crowd. So they made an opening in the roof, then lowered the man through.
“Jesus healed the man because of the faith of his friends. It was an active, humble faith–like your friend Wanda’s.”
I thought about that all the way to Christ Temple that evening. But that was in biblical times, I decided. Not today. T he parking lot at Christ Temple was overflowing. I spotted Wanda in a yellow top, a long blue skirt–and blue hat to match.
She led me to a seat on the left side of the spacious sanctuary. The choir burst out into song. Wanda held me and rocked me to the beat of the music, whispering, “Jesus cares, love. He wants to make you whole again.”
The minister’s message centered around healing Scriptures. Then he asked for anyone who had sickness of any kind to come forward. “This is your time, Roberta,” Wanda whispered.
When someone cares for you, really cares, even the way they say your name is different.
Wanda headed toward the front of the sanctuary. I trailed after her, walking slowly, as if I already knew the discouraging verdict. The crowd was huge! We didn’t even make it close to where the minister was standing.
“Let’s just leave,” I told Wanda. “There are so many people here, he’ll never get to me.” “That’s okay, love,” she said. “We don’t need to be where the minister can see us. God knows where you are.” She stroked my hair, then tucked a strand behind my ear with great tenderness, the way a mother does.
I leaned in to my friend’s touch–and even more, her words. I’d never felt more loved. God knows where I am, I thought. God knows who I am.
Wanda took my hand. “Oh, precious Jesus, heal my friend Roberta,” she said. Just at that moment, a strange warmth surged through my body, almost like an electrical current. At first I was confused, on the verge of being frightened. It was a feeling within my body that wasn’t actually me.
“Wanda!” I shouted. “Something’s happening…. I’m burning up!”
“I know, love,” she said. “I feel it too!”
Another burst of heat pulsed through my chest. Fiery but not painful, no longer frightening, but comforting, warm and reassuring in a way I had never known. For a moment, I felt light-headed and weak-kneed. “It’s happening again,” I said to Wanda.
She squeezed my hand tightly and nodded.
The minister addressed the congregation. “There’s a blonde woman here,” he said. “She’s in the back. When she came tonight, she had cancer. And she had doubts. But God just touched her body.” It’s me, I thought. He’s talking about me!
The next day I went back to the breast center and told the staff about the healing service. They exchanged skeptical glances. Still, I was determined. “Okay, let’s take a look,” the radiologist finally said. He did another mammogram.
I sat in the exam room, waiting for the results. The doctor walked in. This time he looked me straight in the eye. “It’s amazing,” he said. “I can’t explain it, at least not medically. The entire area of cancer is gone.” They ran a few more tests, and sure enough–there was no malignancy.
“You’ll want to have follow-up mammograms twice a year just to make sure,” he said, “but…” His voice trailed off.
Seven years later, with no medical or surgical intervention, the cancer has not returned.
God’s healing power will always be a mystery to me, a glorious mystery. But I know that he worked as great a miracle in my soul as he worked in my body. Through my faithful friend Wanda, he showed me that I am loved. Always.
Download your FREE ebook, A Prayer for Every Need, by Dr. Norman Vincent Peale.
