During my childhood our family lived on a farm in Corinth, Mississippi. One day while I was working in the cotton field, a truck driven by a good-looking boy came along, and although I did not know him, I made the remark: “Do you see that boy? I’m going to marry him one day, and I will not be a farmer’s wife but a doctor’s wife.”

Three years later, Howard Thomas and I were married. Eventually he decided to become a medical doctor and started attending college. We went to church regularly but were not born again.

We began drinking and frequenting medical fraternity parties. I felt guilty but did not stop.

Howard finished fifth in his medical school class, and we moved first to Atlanta, Georgia, then to a small town in west Tennessee, where he began his practice. We bought a 10-bed clinic and almost immediately became very busy.

Howard began taking stimulants to keep going through the busy days and nights. This led to using downers and sleeping pills.

We became involved with a wild social crowd, many of whom were workers in our church. One night after a party, I asked Howard to give me something to help with severe anxiety and guilt. The shot of Demerol made me feel so good that soon I was giving myself regular injections.

During this time, our third son was born with a serious addiction and other problems I knew I had caused. I carried such guilt that I tried to commit suicide. Even electric shock treatments didn’t help.

Howard was battling addictions himself and had been committed on separate occasions to a prison ward and an institution for the insane. After we had moved around the country for years, attempting to run from our problems, I was sent to an institution at the point of death.

My unsaved mother went to a Pentecostal church where the women were in a prayer meeting and asked them to pray for her daughter, who was in a hospital in Memphis, Tennessee.

That same hour I was set free, never to use drugs again. Howard continued his addictive behavior for six more years. Finally, I left him and sued for divorce.

After we had been apart for about three months, Howard came by and said he had been to a Christian men’s retreat and had received Jesus Christ.

Three weeks later he came back and said he was going to share his testimony at church and asked me to go. I knew he had stage fright and couldn’t speak well. He didn’t look any different, so I decided to go and see if he had really changed.

For the first time I heard about being born again. Howard hadn’t finished the altar call when I ran forward and accepted Christ.

We started a new life. Soon our three boys began wanting to know this Jesus who had become so dear and precious to us, and they were all saved.

For many years we have shared Christ all over the United States and in other countries. Our desire is to help others who are searching for a life that is worth living.

On a Thursday in June 1987, three days before my due date, I was disappointed when my doctor told me he thought my baby would not come for another week. My husband, Andres, and I had been trying to have a family since we were first married two and a half years earlier, so even a few more days seemed like a lot.

On Sunday morning I awoke with light cramps. At daybreak, my husband and I began timing the contractions as we got ready to go to the hospital.

When the doctor examined me and listened for the baby’s heartbeat, I sensed that something was wrong. Quickly, I was prepared for a Caesarean section.

When I awoke from the surgery, Andres stood beside my bed and told me that the baby was in critical condition. I spent an agonizing night.

Early the next morning, Andres left the room for a time, only to return with the news that the baby, Anne, was gone. Somehow I knew she had not been born alive. But my husband had carried the burden alone all night in order to break the painful news to me little by little.

We felt devastated. The day we left the hospital I was overwhelmed with grief.

This should have been a victorious homecoming with a baby in my arms, but I was going home empty-handed. I felt as though I were returning home from a great failure.

Our grieving was made more difficult by the cultural pressures of living in Mexico. There, children are highly valued, and I sensed women who were childless were looked upon as inferior.

Also, spiritual issues added to our inner struggles. We were serving in a Christian youth ministry and had dedicated our lives to this cause. Friends tried to comfort us, but the most treasured help was from those who simply cried and hurt with us.

I couldn’t bear to see friends from my natural childbirth class. It was hard to be around our friends who had children, especially those who had given birth at the same time I did.

A Christian counselor helped me to see that I was repressing mourning. I needed to face the reality of our loss in order to begin to experience healing, so I began visiting pregnant friends and new mothers I had once avoided.

Most difficult of all, Andres and I visited Anne’s grave for the first time, a year after her death. There we experienced more release as we cried openly. Andres broke down and sobbed for the first time.

Having a child was still my greatest desire, but I was able to release it so that it was no longer an obsession. I asked God to take first place in my life again.

We continued seeing fertility specialists, and I had laser surgery and another procedure. After taking fertility drugs and becoming pregnant a second time, I had a miscarriage.

Finally, on March 31, 1994, after nine years of infertility and seven years after the loss of our Anne, a baby boy, Daniel Andres, was born to us. We brought him home from the hospital on Easter. Just as spring brings new life in nature, his coming meant new life for us.

My life as a grandmother started with a whirlwind of excitement, much like Steve Martin’s in the movie, Father of the Bride Part II. I identified with his situation because two of my daughters were in labor at the same time and gave birth 66 minutes apart.

I’ll never forget the Thanksgiving Day when Kathy, my oldest daughter, announced that she and her husband, Foster, were going to have a baby after waiting five years. A month later Dori, my youngest daughter, announced that she, too, was pregnant.

OK, I thought to myself. I have two pregnant daughters. No problem. I was to have a grandchild born in July and one in August. I often teased the girls, saying: “You better not have your babies the same day. And if you do, you better have them in the same hospital!”

I felt the tension of having two pregnant daughters. I jumped every time the phone rang and slept with one eye open.

“Mom, what does labor feel like?” Dori asked one day, seeming a little more than curious. As she explained her symptoms, I decided that we should go to the doctor, who admitted Dori into the hospital in Central California immediately.

I walked out of Dori’s labor room to find that Kathy was being admitted also. Oh my, I thought, as my mind raced excitedly. They’re going to do it after all! They’re going to have their babies at the same time.

The girls were in a large room with only a curtain as a divider. I asked them if they minded if we opened the curtain so I could be with both of them. I paced and prayed at the foot of their beds that were beside each other.

I watched their monitors making large hills at two minutes apart as they had their contractions. It was as if they were both connected to the same monitor. I felt my whole being tense up, and I held my breath until the contractions eased.

It was time; Dori went first. Standing outside the delivery room I could hear the baby crying at the top of her lungs at 12:59 a.m. I heard through the doors, “It’s a girl.”

When I went into the room, there was little Miss Tiffany, weighing 5 pounds, 14 ounces. As the doctors settled Dori, I went to check on Kathy.

Suddenly Kathy’s nurses rushed her out of the labor room and headed for a delivery room. They called the doctor out of Dori’s room, and he hurried to Kathy’s just in time.

Again, standing outside the room with my heart now racing from the adrenaline, I could hear a baby crying loudly. “It’s a boy,” I heard through the doors at 2:05 a.m.

When I was finally allowed to see my daughter, she had my new 9-lb. grandson, Marcus, with her. Kathy was released to take Marcus home that afternoon.

Tiffany’s breathing wasn’t normal so the doctor wanted to keep her for observation. Then the call came. Tiffany had a hole in her lung.

We headed for the hospital immediately. My heart broke when I saw our precious little girl in an incubator alone in the empty hallway with tubes everywhere.

Moments later, I drove Dori and her husband to Valley Children’s Hospital in Fresno, trying to keep up with the ambulance. Dori asked me to pray for Tiffany. “And pray out loud, Mom,” she said.

“Dori, I can’t pray and drive at the same time; I’ll cry,” I replied. But I could see that she was sincere so I prayed for Tiffany, crying and driving 70 mph down the freeway with blurred vision.

When I said “Amen,” I remembered a Scripture from Jeremiah 31:16, which gave me hope that Tiffany wouldn’t die. I shared it with Dori: “Refrain your voice from weeping and your eyes from tears, your children shall return from the land of the enemy.”

In a few minutes Dori began to recount the testimonies of miracles she had witnessed at church and said with strong faith and determination, “Tiffany’s going to make it.”

Tiffany remained in intensive care for two days and was home on the third day, healed and gaining weight.

The special “twins” are 14 now, and Marcus is more than a foot taller than Tiff, but she will always hold it over him that she is the older of the two-by 66 minutes!

When I was 14, I injured my head in a diving accident. Three days later, my parents discovered me in the middle of a grand mal seizure.

After I had nearly continual seizures for more than three months, my parents were given no hope that I would recover. But I became conscious and seizure-free without drugs after many days of prayer.

Within several months, I went back to classes and scored higher on intelligence tests than I had before the accident. I’d lost a year of high school, but ultimately I finished and went on to earn a degree in elementary education and psychology.

My parents were told that my seizures could recur because of stress. College, marriage to my husband, Roger, and a teaching position had caused no problems. But moving to a new town was outside my comfort zone, and the seizures returned.

There were no teaching jobs, so I decided to work as a lifeguard. The day I was to begin my job, my unfamiliarity with the town brought on stress and a seizure; I drove my car into the river. Thankfully, I was pulled from the car by a man who just happened to be at the water’s edge.

Nothing could stop the seizures. I had two major breakdowns. Then a friend took me to her church, where I found Jesus.

God’s plan for me has included a healthy boy and girl. The doctors had said no children, but they were wrong.

For more than 16 years, they also said that medications wouldn’t work; and they were right. It was a long struggle, and we learned what faith was all about. I knew I would be healed, but I had to let go of the problem.

In God’s time, a door opened for a new treatment. After being on it for a year, I got a license to drive.

My doctor said that I could gradually try getting off one of my medications because of its side effects. But I moved too quickly, and driving home one day, I hit a tree and totaled my car. I walked away without a scratch or bruise anywhere.

Eventually, the medication began working correctly. Through it all, my faith grew stronger, and I fell more in love with Jesus. I can’t wait to see what He has planned next for me.

Having been raised by an alcoholic father and an enabling mother, I learned to see God as harsh, unbending and unaccepting of me. I believed that He would harm me at His whim and that He was never pleased with my efforts or gifts. I thought He was like my father.

As a 30-something mother of four, I was falling apart emotionally. I had seen numerous counselors and been on medication for clinical depression. But despite all my efforts, I could not find freedom or peace.

At my lowest point, a good Christian friend mailed me an awesome worship CD that was full of songs extolling God as the lover of our souls. Inspired by thoughts of His stubborn love for me, I was compelled to search the Scriptures to see what I could find about the true nature of God.

For more than 15 years, I’d searched for an answer to my constant pain, but it took only three months of studying God’s goodness for me to find total healing. Now I can love the Father who adopted me and calls me His own.

Without knowing my desperation, my friend had reached out to me. She had heard the voice of the Lord and obeyed. I believe in the miracle of small things. This “small thing” brought enormous healing to me.

Our 16-year-old son, Zachary, was blessed with athletic abilities. He has been an all-star athlete since he was very young.

In the month of November 2001, Zachary had been practicing basketball on the days before and after Thanksgiving. On the following Monday morning he awoke with a swollen arm. We anointed him with oil and prayed for him.

Shortly after he was taken to the doctor, and medical tests revealed the presence of a germ-cell tumor in his chest behind the sternum. On December 3, 2001, the tumor was removed, and surgery was followed by four five-day rounds of chemotherapy that ended in February 2002.

We were informed of all the possible side effects of the medicines Zachary was given–nausea, hair loss, lung function loss, hearing loss, appetite and energy loss. But God was gracious and merciful.

Zachary had no nausea. There were spots of hair loss, so we shaved his head for uniform regrowth.

Hearing tests showed normal hearing at all levels before, during and after completion of his treatments. And pulmonary lung function tests run after the treatments showed 100 percent lung function.

Before his illness, Zachary had been chosen for a starting position on his varsity basketball team but was unable to play in the 2001-2002 season. His doctors said sports were out of the question for the rest of the year, but Zachary was there for the opening day of baseball season–starting on second base.

Watching him run from home plate to first base on the first hit of the game, I remembered our walking the hospital halls pushing a pole with intravenous fluids attached to it. Glory to God for His healing power that was so evident in our son’s life!

The Lord reminded me that my prayer had been “to glorify His name in all the earth.” Since Zachary’s illness, we have been able to witness to a lot of people.

We’ve talked to his classmates about their need for a Savior. In June Zachary went on a 17-day missions trip to Estonia and gave his testimony. Also, we shared our story at the Major League Baseball All-Star Game, thanks to the Make-A-Wish Foundation. An unsaved friend of ours read an article on Zachary, written by a local sportswriter, and called to tell us that God so convicted him that he gave his heart to the Lord.

Many miracles have happened to us in the last year. God has been so faithful. He’s shown Himself strong on our behalf.

For the first 12 years of my life, I fought to be free from asthma and to win my mother’s love. Oh, how I wanted to please her!

I won the victory over the asthma but lost the battle for my mother’s love. When I was only 14, she died.

Shortly after her death, my father moved out of our home, leaving me and my three sisters all alone. I felt abandoned, broken and scared.

At 14, I was raped by a neighborhood boy, who victimized me in order to win a bet. The rape led to an unwanted pregnancy and an abortion. I became very bitter and angry.

After two abusive marriages and the death of one of my three children, I was sure my life was in vain. I believed that my only purpose was to suffer.

In 1990, after I’d been out all night, I returned home at 6 o’clock on a Sunday morning and heard the voice of the Lord. He said to me, “Go to church.”

I thought I was imagining things, but He spoke to me again, “Go to church.” I went and saw a friend of mine there who was praising God with such fervor that I said, “I want what she has.” That day I received salvation and was filled with the Holy Spirit.

Since then, I’ve had my share of challenges, but God has directed me by His Spirit and led me into the truth of who I am in Him. The Lord has used me to minister to others who are lost, lonely, abused and rejected.

Today I’m preparing for full-time service as a missionary. I have found that the unconditional love I’ve sought all my life can be found only in the Lord.

Although I was raised a Southern Baptist, I was full of spiritual questions after my mother’s death and the end of my 18-year marriage. On one occasion, while visiting an Assemblies of God church I observed the congregation praising the Lord in a way I had never seen. As they lifted their hands in worship, I joined in.

Each week I returned, knowing that God was drawing me closer to Him. At first I raised only one hand in worship. Then the Lord asked me, “What’s wrong with your other hand?” In total abandonment, I raised both arms. God’s Spirit worked in me, and freedom was released through my surrender.

Before, I learned about the prophets only in the Old Testament. My newfound freedom brought people into my life who would say to me, “The Lord told me this…” or “The Lord told me that…” Eventually, I learned to listen to God’s voice and move accordingly.

One Sunday a minister delivered a personal prophecy to me, telling me things no one could have known without divine revelation. Consequently, my interpretation of his prophecy about a recently ended relationship hurt me. Contrary to the Spirit’s leading, I eased the pain following this breakup by constantly telling myself that my ex-boyfriend and I would someday reconcile.

One day at work I learned that he had married the previous weekend. I was devastated, and I immediately went home and threw my collection of prophecy tapes across my living room. That night, after putting my 6-year-old son to bed, I went back to the living room. In renewed anger, I threw my Bible to the floor.

Suddenly, a Christ-like vision appeared to my right. At the same time, a black-hooded figure to my left exclaimed, “I told you we could do it; I told you we could make her lose her faith.”

Looking from one visitor to the other to my Bible, I soberly recalled that all my life God represented good and Satan evil. Though angry at God, I whispered that I would not let Satan win. Immediately, the two visitors vanished.

Dumbfounded, I slid onto the floor and attempted to sing my favorite praise songs. I choked on each word, and then I numbly retreated to my bed.

Weeks of praising God in the midst of my pain followed. In time, my healing and my understanding of a sovereign God who was looking after my best interest was renewed.

Looking back on that night, I realize that I learned the meaning of a “sacrifice of praise.” I had to die to my feelings and praise God anyway. Amid my pain and confusion, I remembered that God is good and His mercies endure forever.

My husband and I built our relationship on God’s love and understanding; however, I always had a struggle with the concept of oneness. Satan was out to destroy both our marriage and our connection to God.

During our 19th year of marriage, Satan came in at full force, causing chaos and devastation. Blindly, I thought that having the attention of a man other than my husband would enhance my life. An affair nearly destroyed our lives, as well as our daughter’s. Through God’s grace and others’ prayers, the veil of deception was removed. By the means of a vision, I was made aware of the enemy’s hand at work in our relationship.

In this vision, I was standing in the center of a room and a current of energy flowed out from within me to those nearby. When the current ran uninterrupted, everything was in harmony. But broken connections brought sorrow to everyone.

I acknowledged my sin, and I begged God to forgive me, take control of my life and restore my marriage, family and friendships. Through it all, God was merciful and caring. He touched my husband’s heart and gave him the strength to stay by my side.

During this time, the Lord spoke to me in a church service. As our pastor prayed for married couples, He reminded me of the beauty and sanctity of marriage. I understood the joy that God feels upon seeing a husband and wife united in love, and I listened as He told me again that a marriage without Christ at the center would fail.

God is faithful, restoring relationships and lives. Divorce is not the only option when things go wrong, and love seems at an end. God heals and enlightens those who truly seek His face, bringing the clarity of mind to see the way through and the way out.

If God did this for my husband and me, He can do this for everyone. We have recently renewed our vows and celebrated the restoration of our marriage. My love for my husband continues to grow stronger as we both allow God to be the center of our lives.

In 1991 I was an assistant buyer for a large department store. One morning when I was preparing to go to work, an overwhelming sensation came over the left side of my body.

Starting at the top of my head, it traveled slowly down my body to my extremities on the left side. It took me at least a half-hour to get to the bottom of the stairs.

Numerous medical tests led to the diagnosis of multiple sclerosis. I could not believe that my life had taken such a traumatic turn.

I began to search the Scriptures concerning healing. I was experiencing periods of paralysis and spent much of my time in bed, nurtured by my husband and children.

During this period, I watched a lot of Christian television. Through it I received faith for healing.

For months, I continued to receive and believe the word of faith. Then during a Sunday morning praise service at my church, I was totally healed by the power of God.

I am 42 years old and born again, and I love Jesus with all my heart. He is my Great Physician as well as my Savior.

After I was healed, God called me to minister to women with an emphasis on total healing and restoration of body, soul and spirit. He made me well, and now He is using my experience to help others. How grateful I am that He “forgives our iniquities; and heals all our diseases” (Ps. 103:3).