Miracle #33 - All Illness Is Mental Illness

 

When my daughter, Bridgette, was born in 1999 she was beautiful and looked perfectly healthy, but her doctors told me that something was wrong.

Her blood sugar was too low because her body was not producing the hormone cortisol.

They didn't know why and they didn't know if they could fix it.

My whole world turned upside-down.

At that time I was living in Havana, Cuba. I had a great salary at my full-time job and free housing with a wonderful nanny. I had come to the U.S. to give birth, expecting to return in 6 weeks with my new baby.

I had to curtail on my assignment in order to stay in the U.S. while doctors treated Bridgette and I took a leave of absence from my job. 

Suddenly and without warning, I was a stay-at-home mom with no salary. 

My husband was newly hired in his job and making peanuts. 

Bridgette spent the first month of her life in a hospital located one hour from home.

Life was stressful and uncertain - we didn't know if Bridgette would live or die - and travelling to the hospital to visit her with 2 other small children and no support network was difficult. 

After a month she was finally diagnosed with Adrenal Insufficiency and we were allowed to take her home. We were told, however, that she would have this condition her entire life and always need cortisol administered daily.

Her doctors said that her brain would never "kick-start" and tell her body to begin producing cortisol, once we started giving it to her.

Fast forward two years later, when my husband was directed by his job with the State Department to move overseas.

He took Bridgette back to her doctors at Egleston Children's Hospital in Atlanta and asked that she be retested. She went off cortisol for 24 hours and they drew blood.

The result? 

She was perfectly healthy.

She did not need for us to continue giving her cortisol.

There was nothing wrong with her and no one could say how or why.

Her doctors basically said there was no reason to ever bring her back. 

Now, I don't know if they misdiagnosed her in the first place, or they were wrong and her brain kick-started her adrenal glands to produce cortisol, or if it was some kind of miraculous healing. 

But I do know this:  I never saw Bridgette as anything but perfect and whole. 

My heart flooded with love for her the first moment I saw her and I never resisted her diagnosis or condition, but accepted her exactly how she was.

It is my belief that this extension of love is what "cured" her.

A Course in Miracles says:  

Love extends outward simply because it cannot be contained.

Extending love is not a behavior. It is something that happens naturally when we are aligned with God through forgiveness - or accepting all things exactly as they are - so that we see the face of Christ.

Getting our mind in the right place resolves all things.

Thank You, Holy Spirit

Miracles occur naturally as expressions of love. The real miracle is the love that inspires them. In this sense, everything that comes from love is a miracle. - Chapter 1, Miracle