excerpt from my chapter from Pastor Phil's book... my testimony of healing
IT IS WELL WITH MY SOUL
“This is my story, this is my song…”
I was born in Los Angeles , California
Then, when I was in second grade, my mom moved my sister and me away from our close family in Los Angeles to Reno , Nevada
I couldn’t stand how I felt or what I saw and hated who I had been forced to become. I certainly didn’t want grandmother or aunt or cousins or neighbors or teachers or friends to find out this secret. Childhood innocence was quickly lost by a gross violation that wasn’t or couldn’t be talked about.
As a teen in the 1970s, I found Jesus again. It was The Jesus Movement, and everybody was becoming a Christian. I found security and an acceptance which made me feel great on the outside but filthy and fake on the inside. This duality was with me through college and into my marriage. I was driven to do everything right, to be perfect, because inside was this suicidal self-destruction. I didn’t want to feel the disgrace and shame that failure often brought.
God created me and knew me in my mother’s womb. She carried with me her own secrets and shame. Her emotional pain was stamped in my being even before my birth. In my own third pregnancy, our second daughter Eva was being nurtured in my womb where the years of repression and self-hatred were being imprinted in her soul as well. She was born seven weeks premature and died eight hours later.
I was bound by my defenses. At church that Sunday, the choir sang a dramatic contemporary version of a song which would change my life: "It Is Well With My Soul." My body was screaming what I wouldn't let my emotions feel, and the MS was out of control. But this Word which stirred my soul soon became my restraint. It was September 16, 1982, when God showed me Jesus was more than a Savior; He is the Lover of my Soul. He was saying it was okay to feel and that my mind, will, and emotions needed to be restored. The pain and shame that had destroyed me was wrong. I could be healed, touched by His love and renewed.
A year later, I had a miscarriage; the MS continued to paralyze my body; and that song came up once again! This time I’m in the choir with weeks of rehearsals. It was my meditation and declaration. Still it wasn't “well with my soul,” but I was learning "a man's spirit can bear his sickness, but a broken spirit who can bear." I had a broken spirit. God wanted my soul well. He sent His Son so my soul would be well—saved, delivered from sin and its consequences.
A healthy soul sustains a healthy body. I've learned that to hold onto anger and unforgiveness turns into strongholds of bitterness and resentment which poisons everything. Your walk and your talk need to manifest JESUS. “To be carnally minded is death; to be spiritually minded is life and peace.”
My final pregnancy was difficult with many complications, but I had been healed of much...and It Was Well With My Soul!
Through miscarriages, the multiple sclerosis, and many trials, I’ve learned cleansing and applying the WORD. I know that HE never leaves nor forsakes me, and…When peace, like a river, attendeth my way,
When sorrows like sea billows roll;
Whatever my lot, Thou has taught me to say,
It is well, it is well, with my soul.
“Beloved, I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as thy soul prospers.”
3 John 1:2
MS: Many Scars-Many Stripes, and "by His stripes we are healed.”
--Debbie
Story behind the song
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