My Testimony

Allow me to start with my health. Because of the likelihood that I would be born with a blood disease called Hemophilia, doctors suggested the idea of aborting me. After I was born, it was discovered that I did indeed have quite a severe case of the medical condition they feared. Doctor’s said I would not live a normal life; they told my parents that they would have to put padding on all the corners of the house and give me a helmet to wear whenever I went outside. They said that it was likely that by the time of my eighteenth birthday I would hardly be able to walk if at all due to bleeding in my bone joints which would soften them to the point to where they could not hold my own body weight. They said I would be in the hospital multiple times a month requiring blood transfusions and other special treatments; yet for the first five years of my life they were surprised when they only saw me maybe a couple times a year. Then since the age of five, they’ve been shocked to only see me on two or three occasions that were not regular checkups.

My lack of visits to the hospital was not the result of my parents fearfully locking me away in a room with cushioned walls never to see the light of day. It was quite the contrary. I rode bikes and I crashed, I skateboarded and I fell, I fought and I lost, I broke rules and I got spanked, and I rocked and I rolled. But out of all these things the only treatment I ever needed was to put ice on the swelling.

Then at eighteen it was discovered that I had contracted Hepatitis C through a blood transfusion I had received thirteen years prior. Again doctor’s told me that I would not live a normal life. My parents went to multiple doctors seeking treatment but none of them had ever before treated a patient with my so-called severe case of Hemophilia. The risk in doing so was that the side effects would greatly reduce my already low blood count making my chances of bleeding much greater. But finally we found a doctor willing to give it a shot.

The six month treatment began in January of 2003. During the treatment I had to give myself weekly injections and had to constantly go in for blood tests. I also encountered a variety of side effects. My hair started to fall out, I lost the color in my skin, I dropped a lot of weight, I often felt sick, and I even had to be put on prozac to control my constant mood swings, yet my blood count remained at acceptable levels.

But then on May 14th, my 21st birthday, I had to be rushed to the emergency room because I had gotten so ill that I could hardly move and my fever had jumped over one hundred degrees. While there I had blood tests taken and my dad gave me two Tylenol tablets. Strangely about a half hour later my fever had dropped and I was well enough to go home.

The next day I believe, when I was resting at home I received a phone call from my caretaker. She had just received the blood test results and wanted me to know that they showed no signs of Hepatitis C at all. A disease that was at the time thought to be incurable was one week earlier showing on all my test results, yet seven days later wasn’t showing up at all.

So now you may want to know where God was in all of this? While I had put my faith in Christ at the age of fifteen, I had also since turned my back on Him. I may have been a believer of God, but I was by no means a follower of God. So I don’t think that it was the result of my wishing or my wanting that healed me of Hepatitis C, but it was the constant prayer of my family and my friends; and I do not think it was my doing that sustained my health during my adolescence in regards to my Hemophilia, but it was the constant prayer of my family and my friends. It took me a long time to realize this and to truly be thankful for the faithfulness that other people had.

For me personally, my entering back into a relationship with God was a long and drawn out road. It started when I began reading more about science, and particularly Astronomy and relativity that God really started to make sense to me. You see, growing up I always thought of God as this mysterious old man in a white robe, sitting up on the clouds raining down lightning bolts on whomever disobeyed Him. But while many people today try to say that science disproves God, or that it shows Him as unnecessary, I found it to be the other way around. You see, science points to a creator. To say otherwise is a contradiction of science itself! So what is often used to destroy people’s relationship with God actually brought mine back.

It was science grouped together with the historical reliability of the Bible and the personal miracles that have been performed in my own life that brought me back into relationship with Christ. While doctors have repeatedly said that I would not live a normal life, it took me over twenty years to discover it wasn’t my health that would fail to normal, but the life that I would choose to live. A life that chooses Christ.

It is my hope that everyone I come in contact with will come to know and accept the message of Christ. While it is not a formula to make all of life’s problems magically go away, it is the only way that man can really know God and enter into His presence.