Unshakable Faith Beats Unbearable Pain

“Snow was coming down, it was treacherous, it wasn’t stopping,” Donald remembered.  “So they put the call out there: if anybody else can help and volunteer to do the plowing - they needed anybody, because the snow was not stopping.”

Donald didn’t hesitate to jump into a truck and help clear the parking lot at the Lancaster, NY hospital where he works.  But coming from the electrical department, he had never worked a snowplow and kept hitting the curb.

“I guess the more experienced guys know to raise the plow when they come to where the curbs are.  But I kept feeling the jolting of my body every time I hit the curb.  Just every time…it just like, I was beating myself up.”  

Donald started having minor neck and jaw pain that went away after just a few weeks.  Then, more than a year later, in the summer of 2017, the pain came back – this time with a vengeance.

“There were a couple times I came home crying and I would just fall on the couch, and say, ‘Mary, bring me a block of ice. Bring me something. Bring me a heating pad.’  I did see many doctors,” he said.  “I went to chiropractors and I went to another TMJ doctor but the pain was increasing.  It wasn’t getting better.  All they did was prescribe pills:  muscle relaxers and sleeping pills, pain pills.  My whole life was messed up. I couldn’t plan anything, because I didn't know if it was going to happen.   It was really bad,” he said with tears in his eyes.

Donald decided early on to trust God for healing.

“In the middle of the pain, I’d say, ‘father, this pain is not going to stop me from believing in you. I’m not going to let this pain destroy my walk with you.’”

Then on Christmas day of that same year, Donald was at a family gathering when the pain became so unbearable he ran into a bathroom and cried out to God in desperation.

“I says, ‘God, this has got to stop… especially on a day like Christmas, this has got to stop.’”

Donald says, just a few days later, God answered his prayers.

I watched the 700 Club that Thursday morning.  Gordon Robertson had a word…

“There’s someone else, “ said Gordon on the TV.  “With nerve pain on the right side of your face that goes up in to your upper right part of your skull, and God’s just taking that nerve pain away from you.”

“I go, ‘wait a minute, that sounds like what’s going on with me.’  It wasn’t just me watching a TV show, that’s for me!”

Over the next week, the pain subsided until it was completely gone, and it has never come back.  

“To be pain free, to really be pain free,” Donald said with a smile.  “I got to understand what pain is, but God showed me that he can take away pain and he can heal.  He is the healer and it’s part of his covenant that he has for each of us. He is the one who does the miracles, yes. Yes.”