Healing...In His Way and Time

 When Healing Is Denied For A Season

“The surgery didn’t work”

I sat there, stunned, as the doctor’s words bounced off the office walls. I heard a few more words - I vaguely recall hearing “barely any movement” and “frustrating disease”, but all I really took in was that the surgery had failed.

I have had double vision for more than 20 years, the result of a disorder that causes progressive paralysis of the muscles around my eyes. When I look at things, I see the real image and then a duplicate, somewhere off to the side and floating above the real thing.

In the Spring of 2021, after years of headaches and motion sickness and a host of other difficulties, I was handed a lifeline and told that my vision had been stable long enough that corrective surgery was an option.

Great, I thought, sign me up! So they did and I first had surgery in June 2021. Notwithstanding a bad reaction to the anesthesia, the doctor was mostly pleased with the results and felt that with a second surgery, we could get the correction locked in place.

Only the second surgery didn’t work. At all. And I was devastated.

I don’t have it in me to go for a third try. I just can’t.

I wanted so badly to be healed. I wanted so badly to only see one of an image and to not have to blink to try and get things to clear up. I wanted to only see one of me when I look in the mirror. I wanted my outsides to match my insides.

But it is not to be, at least for now. As I’ve reflected on what I felt was my denied healing, the Spirit has walked and talked with me and has taught me powerful lessons about healing.

Prior to going in for my first surgery, I had my older brother give me a priesthood blessing. With hands on my head, JD pronounced a blessing of healing. I remember having a fleeting thought that the healing wouldn’t be physical. I wrote it off as my anxiety kicking into overdrive, but now I know that the greater healing he pronounced has come to pass!

Through my brother, the Lord blessed me with an ability to see things as they truly are, to have my eyes opened to people around me and to know where I needed to be.

The word “heal” has its roots in the Old English word hælan, which means to make sound or well.

In many regards, I have been healed, because I am sound and well.

I have gained a lot of confidence since receiving that priesthood blessing. I have worked my way back to feeling at home among the saints. I have made new friends and been inspired to live a life worthy of dwelling in the presence of the Savior.

It has been a healing experience for me in many ways, just not how I expected.

When we open ourselves to the possibility of healing as He needs, I testify it will happen in His way and time.

Oh, it is wonderful!

~Shari Phippen