I live with a neurological condition called migraine. It is a common malady, especially among women, that shows up with a variety of symptoms ranging from headaches and loss of focus, even to seeing, hearing and feeling things that are not actually there.
My experience with migraine was at its worst in 2019. I had just switched careers, moved to a busy, polluted city, and was trying to find my way through strained relationships. Every other day, I had a migraine attack. That meant I spent half the month writhing in pain and the other half in a daze as I recovered.
Since I believe in God, I prayed every day that the migraine would go away. It didn’t disappear altogether, but something did change. I began noticing patterns to the onset of migraine episodes. Before every episode, I had eaten chillis, thyme or apples. And every time I ate one of these ingredients, a migraine attack had followed. So, I removed them from my diet. The number of episodes I had reduced drastically, and I could live a pain-free and productive life once more.
However, when my church friends realised that I avoided these foods, they urged me to pray for healing. I told them I had already done so – and that, after my prayers, I had figured out what triggered my migraine. They suggested that perhaps I didn’t pray with enough faith. Their belief was that if I had prayed with the right amount or quality of conviction, God would have healed my body to such an extent that I could eat anything without ever experiencing another migraine episode. They also suggested that praying more ardently and eating what I was afraid of would be an act of faith which will surely be rewarded.
While my friends felt that I had not experienced healing, I maintain that I have. I feel that the insights I gained regarding which foods to avoid was answer to my prayer. And from this point of view, I couldn’t help but wonder if praying and eating known triggers was any kind of sign of faith as my friends suggested – or whether it would be brazen disobedience to the guidance God had already offered.
My friends’ response to my condition was upsetting, but it is through this experience that I have found a few answers to the question does God want to heal us?
There are three things that help assure me that it is God’s intent to heal.
Firstly, the way the body functions indicates that God wants individuals to heal. Our bodies have an unswerving propensity to repair themselves. Why would the Creator create self-healing systems unless it was His intent for them to heal? Further, as a medical student, I learnt that much of what we think of as disease or pathology is in fact the body’s response to something attacking it. For example, a sore throat, runny nose, or wet cough that accompanies a respiratory infection, is caused by the body’s battle against viruses or bacteria invading it. Our bodies are designed to fight against whatever harms it in order to restore the equilibrium of the many physical processes which work together to keep us alive. What each person’s body considers harmful varies according to the individual, their genetics and environment. My body, for whatever reason, sees chillis, thyme and apples as dangerous. The headache, vertigo, and visual disturbances I experienced were a part of my body’s way of handling the threat. My body is designed not to hurt me but to heal me and keep me safe. Understanding this has helped me see the migraine itself as evidence of God’s will to heal me.
Secondly, I suspect that the unexpected ways in which we find relief for our suffering may be proof of God’s will to heal us. Our world is becoming more contaminated by the minute. Numerous toxins are dumped into the air, ground and water every day. Noise and light overwhelm our senses even at night. And the food we eat is processed, altered, adulterated and exposed to chemicals intended not to nourish us consumers, but to prolong the shelf-life of the product. Our bodies are dealing with these poisons remarkably well. But just how much of the assault can our bodies handle? Isn’t it logical that every system, however well designed, may reach a point where it can no longer clear away what harms it? Research shows that in response to the stresses it faces, the body experiences long term changes.1 It fails to function as it could have under ideal circumstances. The genes that are turned on are different from what they might have been without the environmental pressure. As a result, hormone levels within the body shift, as does the way our organ systems work. These shifts can also contribute to discomfort and disease. Further, these changes don’t just affect us, they may also be passed down to children. In the book, Karma: A Yogi’s Guide to Crafting Your Destiny, Sadhguru asks, “After years of polluting our planet and refusing to change lifestyles, is it any wonder that so many other diseases are rampant in our world today? Are we not collectively responsible for these?”2 Considering what we have collectively been exposed to as humans over the millennia, should not living with chronic illnesses be expected – or even the norm?
Given all the matters we have discussed, we may still ask, “Why doesn’t God just heal us anyway? If God is omnipotent, He certainly can step in and heal us as it is He who has made the laws of nature and the created order of things, and He is certainly greater than those. Why couldn’t He heal miraculously?”
But I also wonder if perhaps our self-imposed definition of a miracle sometimes prevents us from seeing miracles? Consider that many of my acquaintances who are afflicted with migraine continue to live with its chronic debilitation. They either have no idea what is triggering their episodes, or they know the triggers but cannot avoid them. The way I see it, allowing me to recognise what instigated my episodes was an extraordinary answer to my prayer. I consider it a miracle.
But it was not good enough for my church friends. That is what got me thinking whether miracles often happen in plain sight, but because of our preconceptions of what miracles need to look like we don’t see them as such?
The third proof for me of the divine will to heal lies in a promise God made. My friends felt that if God healed me, my body will no longer have the tendency to react as it does to food. Perhaps one day He will heal me to that extent, but I understand the complexity of the request. Migraine is a condition that has innumerable triggers, involves the nervous system, and affects multiple parts of the body. Not having migraine would require a repair or rewiring that medical science is yet to even begin to fathom. God would have to recreate me without the effects of many generations’ worth of trauma. He would have to give me a new body that does not function and dysfunction the way mine does now.
Even if He does give me a new body, since the environment in which it exists is still toxic, won’t it over time become infirm once more? As long as we live in a world that is hurting, we will hurt too. The planet, like the body, is self-healing. If left to itself, nature will repair many of its wounds. However, just as my migraine buddies are yet to discover their triggers, we as a species are yet to understand fully how we wound the world. We don’t know what to avoid – though in many cases, we do know – but, for various reasons, don’t actually avoid them. Further, we do many of the things that we know harm our world and life in the long run.
Do we hold a similar expectation to what my friends held regarding food? Do we believe that we should be able to do whatever we want, misuse anything, and have God sweep it clean? What kind of freedom would it be if God really allowed us to be free without there being consequences from the exercise of that freedom?
In any case, for us to live disease free, we would need an updated world with a greater capacity to self-heal. Perhaps we need a new world. For me, the final proof of God’s will to heal is that, in the Bible, a new body and new world is promised.3,4 However, the question that unsettles me is Jesus’ warning: ‘And if you are untrustworthy about worldly wealth, who will trust you with the true riches of heaven?’6 Does our stewardship of our body and world affect whether we will witness the fulfilment of God’s promise? If I treat my current body and environment as garbage, how can I be trusted to a new body or a new world? Could it be that while my faith in God’s will to heal is important, so is my faithfulness in caring for His creation and following His guidance?
Thus, living with migraine has helped me see that God’s healing may not always look as we want it to. It may not involve out-of-the-world, and incredible experiences. And it might not happen to the extent we’d like or within the timeframe we want. However, God’s intent is indeed to heal. His willingness to restore is evident in the way our bodies and the world have been created, in the everyday serendipities that improve our existence, and in the promise of a new beginning in a new world that only the Creator can design.
Notes:
- Dupont C, Armant DR, Brenner CA. Epigenetics: definition, mechanisms and clinical perspective. Seminars in Reproductive Medicine. 2009 Sep;27(5):351-7. doi: 10.1055/s-0029-1237423.
- Karma: A Yogi’s Guide to Crafting Your Destiny. Penguin Random House India Private Limited.
- The apostle Paul, in his second letter to the followers of Jesus in the city of Corinth in Greece, chapter 5, verses 1-5 (this letter is included in The Bible).
- See the record of the Revelation that was given to John, chapter 21, verse 1 (included in The Bible).
- See the record of the life of Jesus, written by Luke (a doctor) after cross-checking everything with those who knew Jesus personally, chapter 16, verse 11 (included in The Bible).
