How God called me back: He healed my heart and chronic pain

By Meghan DeWalt

I was diagnosed at age eleven with bilateral hip dysplasia, which had me walking with an increasingly heavy limp, often with a cane, even using a wheelchair going to a local amusement park a few summers. I was living life — a hard but good life with chronic pain. 

The looks, the pitying words, all the questions, to a shy girl deep in those tender, awkward, formative years, shaped me greatly. I missed out everyday outings, such as ultimate frisbee, or hikes or bike rides, and that chafed and hurt my heart. 

Still other days I soldiered on, took ibuprofen, got coffee with friends and tried on fancy dresses in Macy’s. By the time such fun times were done, my teeth were gritted and I was sighing — sad and angry beneath the surface.  

I had learned in Sunday school the refrain, “God is good, all the time and all the time God is good.”And yet, what was happening to me was not good. It was miserable. 

I knew God was theoretically good to all who call on Him. Good in the sense that He couldn’t not be good. But I also heard what was left unsaid — and later, I discovered an untrue message — that God didn’t want any questions asked. 

Questioning God’s goodness 

At 22 years old, on my birthday, I had a major hip surgery that should have worked to partially relieve my chronic pain. But it was undone by an infection two weeks later, setting my recovery back six weeks. It turned my whole life upside down.

I struggled even more, and questions of doubt flooded back from my childhood: If God is good, why did He let me have malformed hips?

If God is good, why didn’t He let the first surgery work? Why did I need more surgeries? 

Not to mention, as friends dropped like flies in my early twenties finding husbands, I was left single.

If God is good — why hasn’t He given me this good thing, a husband and family, which I want more than anything in this world?

Deep in the throes of bed-rest, waiting on a hip replacement after an infection, I struggled with these questions about God.

In that confrontation, a part of me shut down. Unwilling to face the fact that I, a good church going Christian girl, did not trust God for much more than my eternity. That I did not fully trust and believe the whole truth of the Gospel — that it was for both my past sins, present struggles, and future sins.

Four surgeries and 11 months later, I was quite literally back up on two good feet, and I started to live life furiously near my South Hills of Pittsburgh home. Getting a new job, making new friends, trying online dating. I had a life to live and I desperately wanted to find a husband. 

Living a life without chronic pain, free from the confines of having to measure energy and weigh decisions and options was honestly something I took for granted and ran with.  

I had brief moments of gratitude: “Huh, I’m walking through a bookstore browsing at my leisure, and in no pain. Thank you, God!” I would think.  But more often than not, honestly, my emotions were tangled and suppressed in a knot in the deep recesses of my heart. 

It wasn’t until a really tough holiday season six months after my last surgery that my heart began to turn, however. Unwittingly, subconsciously responding to God calling me back to Himself — His true self, not who I grew up thinking He was -- and I responded. 

Beneath my loneliness and longing for a husband was a deeper longing for a church to call home. I never felt I had fit in at the churches I grew up in, but this time, I wanted to find a church that fit.

God is good, and good to me 

I wasn’t sure what I was wanting in a church. A denomination starkly different than what I’d previously been in appealed if only for the uniqueness, but also — going somewhere completely by myself was intimidating. 

And freeing, at the same time. 

I Googled and read church websites until I happened upon one in a cute little borough twenty minutes away called Dormont. I promised myself I’d go at least three or four times, and not just church shop at someplace different every week.

I never left. Because there on the red plush pews of an early 1900’s Presbyterian church — now a community church —  my heart healed. 

I began to experience and then know deep in my bones that God was good to me. 

God was good not because He’d healed my hips, not because He gave me a church home and months later guided me to my now husband and a Haiti missions trip.

No — God was good because he became real to me. The Gospel took root in a deep way.

I encountered God on Sundays in church, then more often during the week during my daily Bible reading, and then in small group Bible studies with people who exhibited the welcome and love of God. 

Despite having prayed the sinner’s prayer at age five — it took four surgeries in eleven months as an adult to break my heart as well as my body, and for me to surrender my whole heart to Him. 

God was so tender and good to pick up all the pieces, and put them back together into a beautiful whole.

Meghan DeWalt is an author of stories about remembrance and redemption. A full-time writer, she is passionate about theology and discipleship, encouraging others to know and love God wholeheartedly in order to live according to their Gospel calling. Meghan lives in Pittsburgh with her husband, Jeff, where they cook, practice hospitality, and adventure together. Connect with her online at www.meghandewalt.com, and her Facebook and Instagram pages.