God's Brave Women - Anessa's Story

“We don’t know why she is not in a coma right now,” the ER Doctor told my mother. “What do you mean? She was coherent enough to give me directions to this hospital,” was my mom’s reply about me. Bravery is found even at moments you least expect, especially when facing a critical health crisis.

This was January of 2013. After years of being sick with random symptoms, my body had finally had enough and started to go into “crisis”, also known as shutting down. I was 35 years old at the time, married with two young children and facing a reality I had never encountered before.

After my second child was born in 2008, I did not bounce back as quickly as I did from the first. Everyone said it was because I had two children to care for, so of course it took a while. I knew differently, however, as the Holy Spirit often times presents Himself as that little voice in the back of my head. As I went through those years of rearing little ones, I was continually catching every germ that the kids would bring home from preschool. While they would get over their illness quickly, I would be trudging along for weeks with the same persistent cough or sinus infection. One awful winter, both children had the flu that, of course, was shared with me. I would resolve to get better, only to relapse a few weeks later. This was an awful pattern that persisted for months. In the summer of 2012, it went from bad to worse with a case of pneumonia that took over 3 months to overcome.

Now, we enter the stage of random symptoms. During this time, I was also dealing with major stomach issues. My stomach would just hurt regardless of what I ate or drank. An endoscopy and colonoscopy found nothing significant. Next up, a panic attack in the grocery store that had me thinking it was a heart attack (that was not a fun afternoon in the doctor’s office!). Dark spots were discovered on my gums in my mouth. I was told it was from “aggressive flossing” (*insert eye roll*). My skin was also starting to have darker pigmentation. I’ve always tanned very easily, but this was late autumn and I had not been on a beach vacation. Finally, I had a chronic sinus infection that would just not heal despite multiple rounds of steroids.

"As it turns out, this was the best decision I’ve ever made because I finally discovered what was wrong. It was another directional guide from Him."