We are crying out for healing in our city!!!

      Wow....what a week is all I can say!  On Wednesday I started feeling badly, but I pushed through all the way until Saturday night.  I had a small fever on Saturday night and woke up to a 104.7 spike on Sunday morning!  We went to the ER and I was admitted to DCH.  My white blood cell count had dropped to 1,000 (normal is 10,000).  Lots of antibiotics and a couple special shots later and I left the hospital on early Tuesday afternoon with a count of 11,000!!! 
     While I was there, my co-worker and friend came to visit me and said she was already at the hospital and told me about this young girl (17 years old) who had been in an awful accident and was going to have brain surgery.  This little girl is in her husband's youth group.  The entire time I was there, I couldn't feel sorry for myself for having to be sequestered to my hospital room because there was a little girl from our community quite literally fighting for her life on the hallway just next to mine.  As I was rolled out of the hospital, I was more than a little overwhelmed at the mass standing in the waiting room on the 2nd floor.  I saw my co-worker and told her, "I believe in healing.  If I can believe it for myself...I can surely believe it for Olivia."
     Just a few days before I was hospitalized, I came across a request for donations for a little girl Kelsey (also 17 years old) who was diagnosed on Sept. 16th with an aggressive form of bone cancer.  They are collecting donations for her family to help them pay for medical expenses that they will be responsible for out of pocket.  In 5 days, their funds counter on the website has gone from $700 to over $10,000! If anyone wants to donate, the URL is http://www.youcaring.com/medical-fundraiser/kelsey-s-fight/89867  That is amazing!!!
    I've seen multiple pictures of their friends at school gathered together calling on the healing name of Jehovah Rapha (Our God the Healer)!!!!!  I've seen and heard so many comments calling for prayer and belief in healing for these girls!!!  I've heard of different high schools coming together for the cause of supporting Olivia and praying for a MIRACLE!  Their families are both boldly declaring God's divine healing and  protection over their precious little girls!
    There is also a college sophomore, named Libby, with Cystic Fibrosis who is also in the hospital fighting an infection.  The need for prayer in our little city is SO great.
    The prayer vigil that was held to pray for my own healing was so amazing!  I can't thank each person enough for their love and compassion and sacrifice to stand with me to believe that God is in charge and He has provided divine healing for me.  I'm just waiting for the manifestation.  I can't describe what it feels like to see people wearing a t-shirt with their commitment to pray for me scrolled across the back.  It's just overwhelming and my heart is filled with such gratitude and love for each and every one of these people.
     During the prayer vigil, I described a scene that had been playing over and over again in my head that was accompanied by a feeling of excitement.  Imagine standing in a wooded area, tall trees towering overhead with leaves the color of fall strewn across the ground.  Feel the electric charge in the air as the leaves lift off the ground and begin rustling and circling in the wind.  In the blink of an eye the leaves are so thick around me that I can hardly see from one side to the other.  All the color blowing with wind so strong and I'm just standing there with my hands raised.  This is my dream for our city!  There is something big coming and the leaves are just beginning to rustle and swirl, but I think we are seeing it happen before our very eyes!!!!  I've seen our community unite for a specific cause on a grand level before - in April of 2011.  I'm seeing us unite once more for the cause of healing!  We have so many more in our community that have the need for MIRACULOUS healing...not all the needs are even physical.  I want to see our churches come together and our families come together to agree that God wants us to walk in fullness and wholeness and I want to see a revival in Tuscaloosa, Alabama that the history books talk about!
     Please join with me in praying for an outpouring of the holy spirit in our city that will rock us to the core and that God will be glorified in all His splendor!!!! 

Prayers are SO Powerful!!!!

I want to take this opportunity to thank each and every person who has been an intercessor in prayer for me and my family.  I have had SO many people let us know that they were praying for us!!!!  It is overwhelming (in a good way)!!!  A friend from church designed the graphic above.  I LOVE it!!!!!  She designed it in connection with another group of friends from church who have come together to organize a 24 hour prayer vigil at my church (First Wesleyan Church).  Saturday, September 6th from 7am until Sunday, September 7th at 7am, they told me they want to have two people in our prayer room for one hour shifts agreeing with me in prayer that this horrible disease will be cast from my body.  I will update with details later, but I found nodules on the left side of my chest so they did a PET scan and the results showed a small lesion on my liver and on my right femur.  This metastasis moves the staging to level 4.  I've since visited MD Anderson in Houston, TX and have a regimen of chemotherapy to follow for the next six weeks.  When your cancer cells do not respond to certain hormones they assign a "negative" to that hormone in your diagnosis.  I happen to have been diagnosed "triple negative", which means that the cancer did not respond to any hormones.  This makes treatment options even more limited because if you test "positive" for any of the hormones, they can use medications that block that certain hormone sometimes, as opposed to only have chemo available in their arsenal of drugs.  Y'all know I'm really honest and I will tell you that what they diagnosed me with is considered terminal.  The doctor at MD Anderson made it clear that her goal was not elimination of the cancer, but extending the number of my years alive.  I do not accept that diagnosis or viewpoint. The God I serve is mighty, powerful and loving. I believe that He continues to heal us in the same awe-striking manner that He did when He walked this earth with us. I am boldly claiming healing for myself!  Please agree with me in prayer that God will cleanse my earthly body of cancer and I will walk in wholeness.  The group organizing the prayer vigil asked me to extend their invitation to my friends to join the vigil if they had the desire.  If you would like to participate, please email me and I will forward it to the organizer. :)  HeatherJRyan014@gmail.com

Please know how much I love you all and how much more God loves you!!!