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CBN.com – "It consumed me. The pain was so bad. It was just living hour to hour. It was so tormenting. I was depressed."
Sharon Trainor first thought that she had sprained her foot while exercising. But, when her foot swelled and turned purple and cold, Sharon realized that this was more than a minor sports injury. Her fiancée, John did all that he could to help.
"John would have to create a 'tent effect' in the bed because I couldn’t have anything touch my feet without causing horrendous pain," she says.
Sharon had to wear kneepads to crawl around the house because she couldn’t stand on her feet.
"Just to do laundry, I had learned how to tie everything in a sheet and throw it down the steps, then crawl down," she says. Sharon learned to manage.
Sharon’s intense foot pain was a mystery to her doctors. Sometimes, her foot would hurt so bad that she would have emergency morphine drips just to manage the pain. A vascular surgeon diagnosed it as RSD then offered three treatments: steroids, nerve blocks or a sympathectomy where they go into the spine and cut the nerves.
Sharon opted for the nerve surgery to cure the disease: reflex sympathetic dystrophy syndrome also known as RSD.
"He came out to me after the operation," John recalls. "And said, 'John, as soon as I cut ‘em, it was done. The foot returned to normal colors.' And I said, 'Will we have to deal with it again?' He said, 'No, you won’t have to deal with it again.'"
John and Sharon married and started a life together along with Sharon’s three children from a previous marriage. But, it was only a few years later that the same old symptoms appeared again -- this time, in the other foot. Eventually, Sharon underwent another sympathectomy. She was pain free for another three years until it came back a third time in both feet.
It appeared as though it had no cure. Although she wasn’t a Christian, Sharon’s thoughts turned to God.
"He filled me with a joy that I had never experienced before," she says. "This overwhelming joy and the knowledge that I would be the vessel by which my family would come to know the Lord. I didn’t know the Lord. But, I knew that it would be ‘cause He said so.
"I had become an atheist," says John. "And then seeing my wife who I felt was a good person, a gentle, person go through this... If there were a God, why would He ever allow my wife to suffer? It almost became a stumbling block. It hardened my heart even more towards the Lord."
Sharon's friend, Jane who is a Christian, told Sharon that she needed to attend healing services at Jane’s church, Harvest Rock.
"They gave an invitation and asked if anyone wanted to receive Jesus," Sharon remembers. "I never heard that before, and I wanted to do that so I went up. I asked Him into my heart. That was the beginning of real change."
The Trainors went back to the church for a healing service. Pastor Che Ahn was the guest speaker.
"Then he asked if there’s anybody who wanted to receive Jesus. I thought, Oh, I’ll do that again. So, I went up, and I was shocked to see my husband standing next to me," Sharon says.
"God drew me up there," John says. "I knew I had to give my heart to Him. I didn’t know what that would mean but I just knew that this was the time."
After the service, Pastor Ahn called people forward for additional prayer. John and Sharon went to the front of the line.
Sharon remembers, "He prayed for me and then he stopped. He said, 'There’s a resistance.' He asked me if I had unworthiness, guilt, or shame. That’s my mark."
Sharon had been a victim of childhood sexual abuse by a family member. It started when she was only four years old. Because of her shame, Sharon believed that in some way her physical pain was a just punishment.
Sharon told Pastor Che Ahn about her past.
"He continued to pray for me. And then it happened. One minute I’m standing with my eyes closed in front of him and then the next thing I know, I felt like he had blown me backwards. I was on the floor. He bent down to the ground and he grabbed both feet.
The pastor told Sharon that her faith had healed her. "My whole body starts shaking," she recalls. "Then I felt this heat run up my spine. And when it did, I didn’t have anymore pain."
The pain was gone.
Sharon and her doctors say that she is completely free of RSD. She now does all of the things that were once impossible because of the pain. Sharon and John have also seen God keep His word in a very special way. All three of their children are now Christians. And as for Sharon’s emotional pain...
"It began to penetrate that I had been healed inside too. I felt loved, and I never felt that before completely," she says.
"And that was the biggest change in me," John says. "God wanted to have a personal relationship with me. He wanted to dwell with me and with my family. It wasn’t a God that you knew in your head."
Sharon adds, "I felt there is a God who is alive. He’s not up there in a cloud. He loves us."
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