All You Have to Do is Ask
There's a hunger in me to be healed like I've never felt. Growing up, I was taken to numerous healing meetings. I remember hoping, "Maybe it will happen this time." It didn't. So I went back to explaining to my classmates in school that I couldn't hear out of my left ear and asking if they would please change sides while walking next to me so I could hear them.
But a few nights before Mother's Day, this hunger that I mentioned began in me like I've never known after watching the Todd Bentley Healing Outpouring that's happening in Lakeland, FL on GodTV. I called up my friend to tell her about the amazing things I was seeing. People were being healed of thyroid diseases! People were hearing out of deaf ears! Tumors AND the BIOPSY SCARS themselves were being removed! I've even seen a man that felt his eyeball growing behind his glass eye - and he said he was beginning to see with the new eye THROUGH his glass eye! Also an double-leg amputee, this man also grew an INCH of leg! Whoa! As I kept watching, my faith began to gROW. And it's been growing to the point that I will not stop watching until God has healed me.
That same night I heard Todd Bentley announce that "a deaf ear was opening up in Ohio." Suddenly the old me who didn't understand healing and had accepted my deafness, claimed my miracle! I'll tell you now that my ear didn't hear that night (and still hasn't yet) but my faith GREW, I felt tingling in my deaf ear that went on all night long, and the presence of the Holy Spirit was in my home at a level that I've never experienced in my married life.
I began to tell Jesus that night that I didn't understand healing, but I wanted to hear out of my ear among other things. Then I started remembering when the Lord healed my depression years ago (another post coming soon) and I started asking myself why God touched me then and why I haven't yet been healed of my deaf ear or of other things I am struggling with. I think the answer is partly, as I mentioned earlier, because I never accepted my depression diagnosis but I've accepted being deaf (up until now) because it's all I've known. I have no idea what it's like to hear out of both ears.
And to be honest, I've learned how to use my deafness to my advantage - for instance, it's quite handy to sleep on my good ear to drown out my husband's snoring and or to turn my bad ear towards people I want to tune out. ;)
I suppose another excuse I've used in the past is that, because I was told that all of the parts in my left ear look brand new except for the nerve that is dead, I started expecting that science and technology would one day come together to rewire my nerve into working order and that would be my miracle.
But as I continued watching this revival, God began placing an increasing desire in my heart to be immediately and totally healed. I went from carefully watching with a discerning heart as to if what was happening in Lakeland, FL was for real, to constantly thinking about having 100% hearing.
...Which made me more and more aware of how much I DON'T HEAR. Until recently, I've never stopped to realize how much of a hindrance my ear really is. It hit me one day that I am not even aware of what's happening on the whole left side of my face. Things happening on the left side of me are like things happening at my back. Then it dawned on me, "I've been missing out!" I thought I'd learned to compensate with my good ear and my average eyesight for what my left ear doesn't hear... but I was wrong.
One day my husband put his stereo from his old car into my car and wanted me to come out and check out the "new sound system." I was not at all impressed. It wasn't any different to me than my old one. I had to remind him, "Um... honey, because I don't have two ears, I can't hear the stereo effect." (I started thinking here... hmm...)
Another day he complained that the background noise that plays while my daughter sleeps was too loud. I didn't think so. And he pointed out that it WAS loud; it was just that I couldn't hear the actual volume because of my ear. Then when I went back to really listen, I learned he was right (becoming angry now that I can't hear....).
And a few days after that, I lost my cell phone. I called my number a few times to find my phone and heard the ring coming from my closet. But I couldn't determine what direction the sound was coming from. I called my phone 7 times. SEVEN TIMES! I still couldn't find it. So I decided to call my two-eared-hearing husband to find it. Sure enough, his LEFT ear found it immediately. (Sigh... now I'm discovering that failing to hear is wasting my precious time when I need to find something.)
THEN I began noticing how easy it is for my daughter to raise her left hand to her ear when she picks up the phone as a natural left-hander would and change ears when she pleases. I'm a left-hander and I don't know how that feels. I've never, changed ears. She did it with ease. I was so happy that she could, but was suddenly so jealous that I couldn't. A jealousy... maybe I should rephrase... not coveting, but my DESIRE turned into a hunger. I want my daughter to have a total hearing mom. A mom who doesn't miss a thing.
After all of this focus on hearing, I was excited to watch this amazing documentary about a deaf couple. Both hadn't heard a word since birth. They found one another, married, and had several children - all who could hear! That, in itself, was amazing. They were never able to hear their children or each other and at the age of 65, they both decided that they wanted to hear and learned that cochlear implants would allow them to do it. So they both got the surgery.
Watching the surgery made me see that I never want someone cutting my ear open unless I'm old and can't hear anything. It was intense. After the surgery, the husband could immediately hear but the wife couldn't. For each, however, the look on their faces when they heard their first sound was incredible. They were sobbing. I was sobbing.
It made me think,"Why would I wait for medical technology to fix my dead nerve when God can fix it in a moment?"
When they recovered from the surgery, the film showed them hearing ordinary sounds the hearing community takes for granted. Light switches. The woman was turning them on and off just to hear the click. She never knew they made a noise. The grocery store background noise was too much for her because she couldn't distinguish the noises (a difficulty for me at times too)... but she noticed around her how it wasn't bothering anyone else.
Both gradually had to learn (I mean it took YEARS) how to make sense of the "noises" they heard into sounds. But the wife became more frustrated as she saw her husband hearing and understanding while she couldn't make sense out of many of the noises she heard. So the loving husband that he was, decided to take off his implant so that he wouldn't learn faster than her and they would resume together. Why would he hinder himself? He wanted to share it with her. He replied with a simple smile on his face the reason he chose to do the surgery was because he had nothing to lose. He said, "If it doesn't work, I'll be back to square one. I'll still be deaf. So what?
And that settled it for me. For so long I have unconsciously avoided the possibility of being healed to protect my heart from being hurt if I didn't end up getting healed. But the man is right. What do I have to lose? Even if I don't get healed, I'll still have had the opportunity to welcome the Holy Spirit in a greater way in my life. I might still be deaf. But so what? What do I have to lose?
What do you have to lose? What do you need healed? As my dad always says, "All you have to do is ask!"
Matthew 7:7 Ask and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and the door shall be opened to you.
