Lifelong Defect Healed Instantly

For as far back as I can remember, my left foot turned outward when I walked (technical term: out-toed gait or external rotation). It can be problematic, and over a lifetime can have significant negative effects on all sorts of muscles in the thigh and hip and back. But I apologize if the term “lifelong defect” in the title suggests something much worse than what I experienced. Yes, it was a (presumably genetic?) “defect,” but so far as I could determine it had not caused even insignificant trouble. I have had many major back problems, but other factors have always appeared to be the precipitating causes. The primary negative for me was aesthetic. I felt that I looked weird while walking because my right foot would be turned out only a tiny amount, but my left foot would turn out significantly. I tried and tried to force myself to walk “correctly.” Especially when there was snow on the ground and it was easy to check my progress, I would walk a moderate distance, consciously forcing my left foot to turn more toward the front, then turn around and look at my prints in the snow. And almost inevitably, that was frustrating—I was certain that I had been forcing my left foot into its proper orientation, but my prints still showed that it was turning out!

A dozen years ago, a woman at our church (a Ph.D. clinical psychologist) spearheaded an effort to have a city-wide healing service. A number of people spent months in the planning.

On the night of the service, there was a light dusting of snow—but enough for me to observe, once again, as I had observed for well over half a century, that my freakin’ left foot was turning out. But I didn’t think anything about it, because it was always that way.

During that healing service, groups of two believers were stationed all around the walls of the very large room, ready to pray for anyone who approached with a need.

I decided to ask for prayer for my “metabolic syndrome,” i.e., combination of high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, and high cholesterol. I found two friends, a husband-and-wife team, who were available to pray, shared my request, and they prayed for me.

Fast-forward an hour or two. The service was over. I had done whatever seemed appropriate to help straighten things up, and headed for home. As I walked out of the building, I looked down at my feet. And I was bewildered. It seemed like both feet were pointing just a little off of straightforward. I looked behind me at my tracks in the light snow, and saw that my tracks looked completely normal. My left foot was in no way turning out.

That has remained the case ever since. When I walk, both feet point nearly straight toward the front. Every time I check my footprints (in snow or whatever), the result is the same—no outward turning of my left foot. It’s been twelve years.

God healed me instantly of something for which I had not prayed, and which (so I imagined) was not a problem. I was not healed in any way, so far as I could determine, of the disorders for which I requested prayer. It is my guess that, if God “bothered” to perform this healing, it probably was significant—i.e., it likely would have led to major back problems, or whatever, in later years. But that’s just a guess. Basically, I have no clue. I know only that God is gracious, that he does heal today, and that he also has a pretty cool sense of humor.

P.S. A number of years after this event, God again healed me instantly of a significant health problem after I had asked for prayer concerning a matter totally unrelated to the healing. Please read Larynx Healed Instantly.