Alice and Sarah's Story

Read the stories of two cousins miraculously healed of Miserable Malalignment Syndrome & one also healed of Thyroid Cancer!.....

We two are cousins, born just twelve days apart. Our mothers are twins and those twin girls married two brothers, so genetically we are very close, sharing all of the same relatives and ancestors. One more thing that we share is a physical condition that has caused us both a lot of pain throughout our lives. But by the grace of God, we were both healed of this condition in 2021! We spent our childhoods very close, and we have grown close again as adults and mothers ourselves. We wanted to share our stories in tandem, as the first healing was what led to the second healing taking place, and this has very much been a shared journey as we navigate our newfound strengths.

Alice

“But blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in Him. They will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit.” - Jeremiah 17:7-8

In late 2020, whilst pregnant with my third child, I noticed a lump growing in my throat. It was scanned but it showed no immediate signs of being suspicious, so the doctors decided to wait twelve months before testing it again to see if anything had changed. Within three months I had felt that the lump had grown significantly, and pushed for another scan, where it showed to have grown to three times its original size within that short time. After a biopsy I was given a 15% chance of it being cancerous, but it couldn’t be clear without the actual growth being removed, so we had surgery booked in promptly.

The doctors reassured me over and over that it wouldn’t be cancer, I was young and healthy, the chances were very low, we were going to be fine - but it was cancer. Specifically encapsulated follicular thyroid carcinoma, classified as high risk due to the amount of vascular invasion that it showed. We found out later that there was a second type of cancer (papillary) present within my thyroid too. The road ahead included more surgery to remove what was left of my thyroid gland, and radioactive iodine treatment over in Waikato hospital.

While not a huge treatment plan compared with other cancer patients, what made it most challenging was the fact that I had three children aged four years and under, and my job as a stay-at-home mother asks a lot of me physically - as any mother would know! I also had a physical condition affecting my hips that I was born with, which made lying down very painful for me - something that I would be doing a lot of with my hospital stays and treatments.

Miserable Malalignment Syndrome is where the rotation of the bones in my legs were abnormal (femur rotated inwards, tibia rotated outwards), and on both sides my femur entered the hip socket on an irregular angle. This became quite a problem particularly through my pregnancies, where the movement in my hips was not supported by good muscle development or placement. Everything pulled in different ways, and this had been an ongoing problem for me since my teenage years when an injury first diagnosed the issue.

At the point of cancer diagnosis, mid 2021, it is hard to describe what I felt. On some days I felt sick to my stomach, and I would silently cry as I watched my children play, feeling pain and wondering if I would be there to see them grow up. How can your mind not go there when faced with “the C word” - this huge elusive thing that is so feared by so many? But there were lots of days where I felt such an overwhelming sense of God’s peace. I knew that He had me in His hands, and that He wouldn’t be letting me go. I learned so much about trusting God through this time, because I couldn’t do anything but trust in Him. But you know, despite feeling like God had me in His hands, and praying for healing every day, my past experiences really dictated how I thought that healing was going to go. I could trust Him to heal, but I wasn’t prepared to trust Him with the details of HOW He would do that.

I’m sure that many Christians have had some experience with healing prayer. My first real experience was at a Pentecostal National Youth Conference that I attended with my youth group as a teenager. There was a guest speaker who took to the stage announcing boldly, “God has told me that ten people in this room have lower back problems, and they will be healed today!” Well at that time I was experiencing the lower back pain that I found out later was related to the Miserable Malalignment Syndrome. It was particularly bad at this stage, so I thought he must have been talking about me. I took to the stage nervously, and what came next was a very loud and well-crafted prayer with music swelling behind me, finishing with me being pushed backwards (“falling under the power of the Holy Spirit”) and being declared healed (to erupting applause). I walked off the stage afterwards in just as much pain as I had been in earlier but feeling unable to tell anyone for fear of being thought “faithless”.

My only other experiences with healing prayers are the kinds that I too have prayed. Faithful Christians gather together and pray for healing, even for immediate healing, but nothing happens. At least not immediately. I don’t doubt that this has an effect and that God certainly hears these prayers, but I had come to think of the resulting healing as coming from doctors whom God had blessed with the knowledge to help cure illnesses and ailments; as coming from making choices that aide recovery and promote good health; and I see now that I doubted whether God would ever heal someone immediately and profoundly in these “smaller” settings. Just to be clear that I was not asking God to move in a way that He didn’t want to move, I would tag “if it is your will” onto my prayers for healing. I knew without a shadow of a doubt that God COULD move in these amazing healing ways, but I really did not think that He WOULD.

Let me be the first to say that I was wrong!

I received prayer for healing over video call during a nationwide Covid 19 lockdown. I was not even in the same building as those praying for me, but I can tell you that God was there. It was explained to me that often physical healing can be blocked by evil spirits taking residence within us, spiritual matters that have physical manifestations. As we talked, the Lord identified to me some things that I needed to repent of, and also some spirits that I was giving space to in my life. The biggest one for me was the spirit of pride, but there were others too. Before even considering physical healing, we prayed for deliverance from these spirits, commanding in Jesus’ name that they leave my body! When I closed my eyes in prayer I could see myself standing with the Lord, a warrior dressed ready for battle, ready to force these spirits from the home they had made for themselves in me. As we battled each one I felt them physically leaving my body, causing me to break down in gratitude for the freedom I felt each time.

After exhausting myself with spiritual healing, I felt that my body was ready to be healed. My mind no longer stood in the way.

As I sat on the floor in my living room, with a video link to those praying with me, I felt God physically rearrange the bones in my hips and legs and watched as my feet straightened for the first time. After spending my whole life with feet outturned, God had straightened them! Hallelujah, Praise God! I tested them out a bit with a run around the room and a little dance of praise!

Next up was the cancer diagnosis. In Jesus’ name we prayed for every cancer cell in my body to be gone, and for no trace to be left behind. While there was no way of knowing for sure whether this healing had happened at this stage in the journey, I really felt that I had been healed, and knew that I could walk the path ahead with such gratitude and a newfound trust in the goodness of God.

There were bumps ahead in the cancer journey, things that made me question whether God had really healed me as I felt He had, but I knew I could trust in His promises, and would speak them out over my situation every day. God’s love and faithfulness are promises I can hold onto in the middle of the struggles. I would continue to wait on the Lord.

In January 2022, I had an appointment booked with my oncologist in Waikato following my radiation treatment. This oncologist had told me at our last appointment that after surgery my cancer had a 55% chance of recurrence within the next ten years, that it was aggressive and that we had to act hard and fast to improve our chances. Well on this occasion he shared that they had taken a blood test immediately before my radioactive iodine treatment, which he expected would show thyroglobulin levels (this is the thyroid “cancer marker” that shows the presence of cancer cells in the body) to be in the many hundreds given my situation. When the results came back, he was very surprised to see that the stimulated thyroglobulin count was 1. One! How is that even possible if not by God’s healing hand?! He went on to say that the treatment had rendered it undetectable, and I am now in remission!

God has healed me of Miserable Malalignment Syndrome, and also of Thyroid cancer!

Healing is something that I regularly claim and speak over my body, knowing that the devil would like to sneak in and take it back from me. But God is faithful and gracious and loving and so so good; I will continue to trust in Him.

Sharing my story is surprisingly hard, because I feel like I open myself up to critique, especially if the road ahead isn’t always smooth. But I draw back to the verse at the beginning of this testimony, which I will write again now. When I trust in the Lord I do not need to fear when things get hard, I will be like a tree that continues to bear fruit despite the drought.

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Sarah There is power in the name of Jesus. In Jesus' name I was healed! In Jesus name I was healed of Miserable Malalignment Syndrome. My feet had been turned in and as a result my joints and muscles weren't in the correct places. I had muscles overworking and others not doing anything. I spent years on crutches, stuck in bed, and in pain. I had been diagnosed then when I went back for treatment after healing prayer there was no sign whatsoever of the syndrome, I had lived most of my life with! I was a person who said I believed miracles but still had doubts because I had never experienced one myself. The day that I was physically healed, nothing happened immediately. That night I went to bed but woke up through the night with horrible, wonderful, pain in my muscles and joints…. I woke up to find God rearranging my muscles and resetting my joints in both my legs, my feet, knees and hips. In the morning my feet were straight! I was pain free! In Jesus' name I was also healed of depression and anxiety. Before healing prayer my doctor was testing me for things because I could barely stay awake to give my two-year-old daughter attention. I was on antidepressants and strong medication that put me to sleep during panic attacks. All of that was gone. In Jesus' name spirits who had no right to be there were cast off of me. Some held on tight, one to the point where I felt like I was going to be sick. like a heavy ball in my stomach trying to get me to vomit. But in Jesus' name we rebuked it and it eventually fled. Never have I cried so hard in my life than I did that day. It was a cry to God and a cry of relief. The weight that came off of me was huge. Most importantly, in Jesus' name I was brought home and I recommitted my life to God. I grew up at Bethlehem Baptist Church and remember as a child giving my life to God. As a child through to adulthood I suffered from anxiety, so even though I chose God as a young child I had the voice of anxiety talking to me, feeding me doubts about who I was, who God was, who or what a church was. I felt continuously judged by everyone around me, even my own family. Around the age of fourteen I asked to be baptised. I didn't really know what baptism was, but I went along with everyone else in the youth group - something that became a pattern for me. The songs I sang at Youth Group? I didn't know what I was singing! I didn't understand. I felt stupid, pathetic, self-conscious, and I used these words and cursed myself over and over just inviting spirits left and right to join in on the fun of my self-pity party, binding myself in chains. I was angry too. Angry towards Christians, towards all churches, and towards family. I believed I had been hurt by a church but that wasn't true. That was years of me getting in my own way with evil spirits in my mind whispering untruths. And now it all just doesn't matter because I have been set free of those chains. IN JESUS’ NAME he took all of that away and replaced it with the Holy Spirit, baptised me in the holy spirit. The day God healed me I had a lot to do. I had to confess my sins and ask for forgiveness, to humble myself before God. You might think that that would be easy, but it was really hard speaking them out loud. I had to forgive those around me who had hurt me… and the list was long!! It was the first time I had ever felt God's presence in me and around me. I learned how powerful words are, how damaging they can be but if the right words are used correctly, they can be blessings. I learned the power of Jesus' name. I learned how much God loves me for me. I learned that my sins are not who I am, and they are not who Jesus sees. He sees ME not the sin. After healing prayer: It has been a struggle getting into new habits like reading my Bible daily, praying daily, not sinning and falling back into those old ways that chained me up into a huge mess. I know I'm not perfect and believe me, I mess up occasionally, but I know God's got me. One day the struggle will be less as long as I keep actively seeking Him and building our relationship. I have learned that maintaining a healing is hard work, but it is so worth it. So, I have this typed up on my phone for when I'm feeling… sluggish, because it reminds me of God's incredible power, love, and peace. Part of my maintenance was to join a church and meet some people, make new friends... I am a quiet person; it's almost been a year and I'm only just starting to meet people now and build some relationships. I have wonderful people around me who I can share with where I am at or ask for prayer. I love having them in my life, they are such a blessing to me. I am so thankful that God met me in that room and will always meet me where I am.