David Heflin (00:01)
Well, want to welcome you back to In the Seams. We're a little late in releasing this episode. Part of that had to do with the holidays. Part of it had to do with we struggled scheduling an interview in terms of and once we got it lined up, it fell through. And so there's not going to be anyone on the interview with me on the call with me today. It's just going to be me. I'm to share some things with you. And I'll just be honest with you, I'm not working from a script.

⁓ I'm going to just basically be sharing my story and the story of broken amended. There is a version of this story that is the very first podcast we ever recorded back in 2022, but it's changed and you know, the stuff in the past hasn't changed, of course, but you know, it's been another ⁓ three and a half years since I first recorded that episode. And so it'd be good to kind of update you.

On everything my story my story and broken amended story are inextricably linked if you didn't know the story You'll you'll hear that in today's episode I'm also getting ready to go do a seminar in Michigan and another one in Florida in both of those seminars I'll be telling a version what I'm telling you today. So to be honest, it's good practice But also I hope that my story is meaningful to you because God has been in it with me and I hope

that you can relate to some of it. My story is neither unimpressive or unimportant or anything like that, nor is it unique in terms of it being some unbelievable story that, you know, I went through some kind of suffering that someone else hasn't gone through or lots of people haven't gone through. The truth of the matter is my story is a normal one. It's my story.

But it does come with suffering, does come with pain, it comes with heartache, disappointment, and a lot of losses in my life because of what chronic illness and chronic pain have brought to me. So you may be listening to this and your situation may be that you're bed bound, I mean, and you are really just in the thick of it. so your story is, in some ways, played out worse than what mine has to this point.

Or you may be on the other end of it and you're just now in the beginning stages of finding out that you even have a chronic illness or trying to understand that diagnosis. And so I want to try to be able to relate to all those different aspects of what's involved with what's involved with chronic, just the whole story of having chronic illness. ⁓

So we'll go for that. But I do want to let you know we do have a plan to resume our interviews this coming month. So it'll be released on the first Monday of October. We already have that interview scheduled. I think we're having it on something like September 26.

I have Laura Silverman and she has one of those really incredible stories. And I'm reading through her book right now and that's part of the reason we're going to have her on the podcast is to talk about her story and to let her share a little bit about that with us. Obviously to encourage people also to get her book. I think it's well worth it. I'm more than halfway through with it at this point and talking about having a story in which a chronic illness can become all consuming.

and completely turn your life upside down. So if you're more in that category of chronic illness, then you'll definitely want to hear our podcast in October. So I just wanted to give you kind of heads up on what's coming here within the seams. All right. Well, let me get into, you know, my story and how it all began. So my story began in really in 2000. Of course, my story goes back to as everyone's through their birth, but the chronic pain part of my story begins in 2011.

So what is that now? 14 years ago, I was physically active at that time. I was involved in martial arts, takwondo, which was important to me because that's what I grew up doing with my dad and with my brother, even a little bit with my mom, was involved with takwondo and martial arts, know, growing up. And that was a big part of our lives. And so I had to, I gave that up. didn't have to give it up, but I gave it up in my, when I was in high school.

around my sophomore year because I got more interested in other things and I regretted that really because I was only one rank below black belt and I never did get that black belt. So going back to taekwondo for me wasn't just a curiosity. It was something I was wanting to go back and get my black belt and eventually also incorporate my kids, which they did for a little bit take taekwondo with me. So what my dad did with me, I was doing with my sons. It was a really great deal in Portales, New Mexico where we were living at the time.

It was only like something like $30 for the first person and then for each family member, an additional $5. I you can't find anything that cheap when it comes to martial arts and the guy that was teaching it, I don't remember his exact rank, but I know it was at least a seventh degree black belt and he might've still been going up the ladder even when we started taking it. I was also just kind of before this, I was out of shape, needed to lose weight. And so I, I kind of went all in and I started running as well. I thought that would.

Compliment my training and talk one dough and which it did and but I was also we had in Portales something called heritage days or heritage something like that I think that's what it's called heritage days and which included a 10k race and I didn't really care about the race aspect of it but I did want to try and run in that 10k and to run in it and not have to walk the entire time so I began running and I increased my distance pretty rapidly

You know where eventually I got up to where I could run for eight miles, you know, and part of my training so that I could run something that was a little over six miles in the actual contest. And, and again, it wasn't really the contest aspect for me as much as just being able to, be a part of it. As it turned out, I did win second in my age group. There were three of us. So there weren't a whole lot of people my age. I know this is my thirties. I wasn't, wasn't real old or anything, but there just wasn't a lot of people in my age group running.

But back to the talk window, it was in March. So I'd been in it a good couple of months at that time. And one day we were doing kicking drills. And if you know kind of how sidekick works, you know, where you're rotating on your plant. So one leg is kicking, the other leg is your plant leg, and you're rotating on that back hip to get power in your sidekick. And so I was doing that. I've always had a good sidekick, even going back to when I was a kid.

So, you I've enjoyed doing that sort of thing. But on this particular day, I was on my left leg, so kicking with the right, and I felt something sharp, sharp pain in my left hip. I mean, it got my attention. I mean, I didn't drop down and start rolling on the floor or anything, but I thought that that was not good. And my first thought was, okay, I'm really inflexible. And maybe I pulled a muscle. We had a, you know, we had all kinds of stretching drills that we would do.

And I was pretty surprised at how little I could push my knees down to the ground in an exercise called butterflies. If you don't know what that is, you pull your feet together with your knees pointing out, you put your elbows down on to your knees and you try to push your knees down to the floor. If you're really flexible, you can push your knees all the way down to the floor. Well, I wasn't really flexible at that time anymore, although I had been when I was younger. But I couldn't move my hips at all without pain. And I should have...

I'd probably been aware at that time that that indicated that there was something sinister going on or something to be concerned with. But I didn't think much of it. I thought I would eventually stretch out and it would be fine. But then I had that sharp pain in my left hip and I thought I'd a muscle, strained a muscle in that hip and I would just try to protect it going forward. But I would continue doing taekwondo. So I think our class was Tuesdays, Thursdays. So this happened on a Tuesday. Two days later, Thursday, I'm back in class.

And the same thing happens in my right hip. Not quite as bad, not quite as painful, but it was exact same kind of phenomenon. I knew that the same thing had happened. And again, I thought, well, maybe I just pulled a muscle in that hip as well. I realized that would be unusual to pull muscles in both, know, symmetrically in both hips within two days apart from one another that maybe I should have again been clued into something being a...

more sinister, something being worse going on than what I was thinking. But that's all I thought at the time. And I kept doing taekwondo, by the way, and my hips kept getting worse. And people kept telling me, was probably just your back. It's not really your hips, you know, because I couldn't imagine I could have done anything really to hurt my hips. And so I even went to a chiropractor. And I say that because I'm not a person who has ever generally gone to chiropractors very much.

And so it took some convincing to get me to do that, but nothing the chiropractor did worked and the hips kept getting worse. Well, the good news was that happened in March. We follow this, this Taekwondo school followed the school semester system because our karate or not karate, taekwondo, it was truly taekwondo. When I was growing up, it was really more of a mix of karate, taekwondo, but this was truly taekwondo. And so our taekwondo master, ⁓ he

worked at the university there in town, Eastern New Mexico University. So we followed the school schedule. So we got a break in the summer. And so really sometime after May, and we, you know, they shut it down. And so I ran my 10K. It didn't really hurt me to run at that time because I wasn't twisting my hip. I could just keep my hips pointed where I'm running and there was no problem. And so we shut it down.

At that time and I thought after the 10k, I'm gonna shut myself down completely no more running no more martial arts for two months until we restart and That I figured that by then I would be better. I would be completely healed from these what I thought were muscle injuries two months go by I'm up in Riedoso, New Mexico up in the mountains when I decide that hey I'm gonna now start trying to work out again So we were doing we had a retreat church retreat and then we were doing a vacation

Thought I would just stay, while I was staying up there, that I would go ahead and start doing some jogging, doing some running again to get back into shape again, start stretching again, start doing some of the kicks again. And that very first day, within a few minutes, I recognized that my hips felt no different than they did when I had shut them down a couple months earlier. So now I realized that there was something truly wrong, that this was not normal, and this was not going to have a quick solution.

But I went back to talk one dough anyway, and I started seeing a sports doctor. That sports doctor was not very helpful to me. And at one point, I even suggested that because I was doing physical therapy, continuing talk one dough at his advice, my hips were continuing to get worse. And I kept coming back to him telling him this. And he basically told me that you need to. ⁓

that it's in your mind because I was requesting to see an orthopedic surgeon and he basically told me it wouldn't do any good. But I did see the orthopedic surgeon and immediately within five minutes he recognized that something more was going on than what my sports doctor in New Mexico had thought. So these doctors were over in Texas, over in either Lubbock or Amarillo. I think it was Amarillo. I can't quite remember for certain because this wasn't the doctor that ultimately operated on my hips, but it was the doctor.

that diagnosed me through some imaging and contrast, using contrast and all that with a torn labral tear in my left and in my right hip. So these are labral tear, but I think when you refer to it in the noun form, it's called a labrum, same as in your shoulder. It's kind of the part of your, kind of a cartilage-like substance that holds your hip together. So it's pretty important.

And the reason why this was happening to me is because I had extra bone growth on my ball and socket joint of the joint. And that was basically when I was rotating on that hip, that extra bone was cutting into the labrum causing what they call a labral tear. So I needed labral repair and I also needed to fix the hip impingement issue that I had in both hips. Well, I was kind of glad to get a diagnosis and I was kind of glad now that it felt vindicated for those who

didn't believe that there was something really wrong with my hips, including medical professionals, but also others around me who just thought that not necessarily I was making it up, but that it certainly couldn't have been my hips. And I kept saying, no, it's in my hip. So I was sent to a doctor in Albuquerque, a guy that ended up being maybe the best doctor I've ever had. And he was reviewing my x-rays and took his own x-rays, of course, but also reviewing the imaging work from the previous

Doctors the reason why had to go to him is because he specialized in arthroscopic hip surgery It wasn't wasn't done a whole lot back then in 2012 now we were in 2012 I did have to quit talk window after December of 2011 I just could no longer go on my hips were hurting too bad I did my last belt test with the criticism I got back on my belt test from you know The the judges the people grading my test was that hey I wasn't kicking high enough and I just had to tell them look I know

I can't kick any higher than when I'm kicking and I really realized that at that point that I was not going to be able to continue to do that at least until this problem was resolved. So when I went to Albuquerque, New Mexico to see Dr. Franco was his name, is his name, I believe that we would be able to get the surgery and get this fixed and I would be able to have my normal life back. I'm still under that illusion if you will and the Dr. Franco was looking at my x-rays and

He made the comment at that time and I remember he said something's not right. Well, this something not right that he was referring to was that in my SI joints on the x-ray, it was showing almost no space. It looked as if it had been fusing. And so he first said to me the words, looks like ankylosing spondylitis. Now, if you don't know what that word is, I don't blame you.

I didn't know what it was at the time. I did actually know someone else that had ankylosing spondylitis. So the term sounded familiar even though I didn't understand what it was all about. But ankylosing spondylitis is an arthritic autoimmune inflammatory disease that causes extra bone growth, bone spurs because of inflammation in places where it should not be. In other words, it very likely was the underlying cause to what was going on with my hips all along.

and now was showing up in the SI joints. Ankylosing spondylitis, one of its hallmark features for diagnosis is that your SI joints begin to fuse. But many people have ankylosing spondylitis and they're trying to get it diagnosed even before this will show up radiologically. And that can be very frustrating for them because they know something's wrong and they keep getting told that nothing's showing up on the X-ray. Well, in my case, I think it had been going on.

longer than I had realized and I just hadn't realized it because for whatever reason it had kind of started off in my hips and therefore until I started doing martial arts did not even know that there was a problem and that's what eventually revealed the problem. And so and then because I tore those labrums then it then added inflammation and really seemed to kick the disease into overdrive. And so when I did have my orthoscopic surgery the labor repair went well the hip impingement repair went well.

But I did not recover well from that surgery because the inflammation just would not go down. And I was sent to a rheumatologist in Amarillo again. And she was in the room with us just for a few minutes when she said yes. And she said it with a kind of certitude that was a little bit, well, it just kind of knocked us sideways a little bit, to be honest with you. And she said,

Yes, you have ankylosing spondylitis. We thought, well, we might discuss the various different things that could be. And no, she said, no, you have ankylosing spondylitis. And so we began to adjust to a new reality that I had a chronic arthritic disease. you know, at the time I didn't know what that means. I didn't know what it meant. And what I was really surprised about, though, in this appointment, my first time with my rheumatologist, she wanted to put me on something called sulfasalicine.

which can help with some autoimmune diseases. And she was hoping that it would help. But really, it was a means to an end. She wanted to clear the way for me to be on a biologic drug. At the time, for me, it was emerald. And she wanted me to be on sulfasalazine. And I guess maybe the insurance would only approve it after I had tried a lesser therapy. Something to that effect. But on that very first appointment, we were told that, yeah, you're going to be taking injections for the rest of your life.

⁓ Embrol, if I remember correctly, was a weekly injection. It may have changed by now, by the way. And this was done by a pen. So not quite like a syringe, but you put it against your leg, your skin, and you just push the button and it does it. And so very quickly after I saw her, I started taking Embrol. And I just want to say at this stage, and maybe you can relate to this, if you have been through something similar, I would call this the stage of disorientation.

because every time I went to the doctor's office, it was something worse. We start out thinking it's a pulled muscle. We start out thinking that physical therapy will help. I end up with an orthopedic surgeon and the orthopedic surgeon that I first meet with doesn't even do the kind of surgery I need. I meet with the orthopedic surgeon who will do the surgery that I need and it turns out that he says, well, this looks like it's not just hip impingement, it looks like ankylosing spinalitis. So meet with a rheumatologist and the rheumatologist is saying, well, now you need to be on this expensive medicine.

It wasn't the price that was a big deal at that point because they have co-pay assistance. But still, it was this kind big-time medicine I was going to have to be on that would suppress my immune system maybe for the rest of my life. And so it just was just bewilderment and confusion. And it got worse for me from there because in 2013, so now two years after the original hip injuries,

I'd adjusted to have an ankylosing spondylitis when I began to have very significant GI issues and, you know, and I mean the things that come with GI issues, the cramping, pain, diarrhea, just I can remember on a few occasions just lying on the bathroom floor in agony and pain. My brother, by the way, has crones and so it wasn't

maybe a shock that that could be happening, but I also just kind of couldn't believe it again. It kind of like, are you kidding me? Now I got to deal with this. And it actually started while I was on an anniversary trip. So really it was March, March 16th is my anniversary. And that is almost two years to the date that I had injured my hips. So I didn't know that it was Crohn's course. And so I began to see a GI and the GI course wanted to do the tests that GIs do.

And when they do those tests, they take biopsies. And, you know, so he took biopsy. So I'm going back to the doctor to hear about my GI results, not really expecting that it's going to be anything remarkable. Maybe I have Crohn's, maybe we'll get to the bottom of it. And instead, what he tells me is that in the biopsy, what was revealed is that I had eosinophils in my colon, in the tissue. And so eosinophils is something that we all have.

And I'm not going to claim to be any kind of expert on eosinophils, but I do know that they have to do with allergies. And so we have these eosinophils, they're a type of white blood cells that help us fight off allergies. But they're not supposed to be too much of them in our blood, for one thing. If so, then if you do have it high in your blood, then you have inflammation. And number two, they are not supposed to be in your tissues. I had them in my esophagus as well.

That was not so uncommon, but to have them in my colon was a diagnosis at the time, eosinophilic colitis. So different than Crohn's. Well, this gets even weirder for me because at the same time when they were doing some, know, my liver kept having issues on the blood test. you know, and so they sent me in for a liver biopsy and yet another test that I wasn't expecting to have to get. So I go get the liver biopsy.

And it comes back, go meet with the GI, and tells me it was stage two fibrosis of the liver. Well, stage four is cirrhosis. And it's my understanding, unless I'm misunderstanding, stage four is irreversible. Well, stage two is still reversible, but nonetheless, my GI in Amarillo began to think, well, I pretty convinced of that I had a problem, eosinophilia, which means that these white blood cells were invasive to even my organs, potentially even my liver.

Which could mean a lot of really bad stuff including liver transplant could even be a life-threatening if they got into the heart that sort of thing of course I'm Not the most self-discipline person it comes to this sort of thing So I was googling things and when you Google stuff you often see worst-case scenarios or at least that's what your mind latches on to My wife at the time though wanted to take it with step at a time. She was probably the wiser one in that But she wouldn't let her mind really go

to the worst case scenarios of what it could mean. But my doctor had said that we needed to go to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. And at this point, yet again, we're just kind of bewildered, we're confused, maybe angry. I don't know. I don't remember really truly being angry at God, just confused with God. you know, at this time, if I didn't make clear, I don't think I did early on as I'm telling my story, I'm a full-time preacher, minister.

and or you might just say pastor in a church there in New Mexico in Portales, New Mexico. And, you know, I'm still trying to carry on my, you know, my role with that while all this while all this is going on. But my whole idea when I got back into martial arts was that I wanted to get my black belt and eventually move to a different city, start my own talk window studio.

And through that and the context I was going to make through that, I wanted to plant my own church. In fact, just recently I came across a document that I had been working on back before all this happened. And it was a document about sort of the theological, ⁓ you know, things that we wanted to hold to when we had this church, sort of the theological foundation, if you will, for the church that I wanted to plant in some of the doctrinal things and.

that I wanted to emphasize. And so I was already working on that and working on what that might look like. And Taekwondo had become a very important part of this. That was long forgotten by the time I got to this point. Whether or not I could plan a church or not was something I couldn't even really think of because I had to keep my job. By the way, I also had insurance that was not very good because when we first moved to New Mexico and I got insurance there,

I was in the best health of anyone in the family, you know, not that anyone was in bad health, but you know, there's no risk of me getting pregnant, right? And so I got the emergency only top of health insurance and we were being hammered at this point. And even to go to the Mayo Clinic was going to be another $2,000 out of pocket. So eventually my wife went back to work a year early because of all this as a teacher. And when she went to work, she got us on a group insurance, things got slightly better.

But we rolled up over $30,000 in medical expenses in the first three years that this was going on. I'm talking out of pocket medical expenses, so not talking about premiums. Yeah, I'm talking about what we paid out of pocket, which of course we weren't really paying that because we didn't have it. So we were going into debt in various different ways in which that was happening. And so I'm saying all this not just because I want you to feel bad for me and what we were going through, but because you, the listener, can probably relate to some of this.

You have your own journey of bewilderment, your own financial struggles that came out of your own just confusing disorientation, wondering about your diagnosis or diagnoses. You know, maybe even wondering if some of them could be life threatening and how your whole life gets turned upside down and the dreams that you had held on to and that you had wanted to pursue, you're having to let go of because you have a new reality. By the time I went to the Mayo Clinic,

late into November 2013, I, so 12 years ago, almost, little less than 12 years ago from now, but I knew that my old life was something that I was losing. And that was difficult for me to accept. And I it probably has been for you as well if you have been on that journey. But it's a point I try to make to people is that we do not only lose our health when these things are happening to us,

We lose financial security, we lose peace of mind and sometimes our mental health. We lose our dreams, you know, that we had the life that we had envisioned living for ourselves. Sometimes we lose relationships with people. And there's even the sense in which we lose dignity because of all the different things that we have to go through. And of course, there are the extreme stories where people, you know, either extreme but not uncommon, they lose.

ability even to control things like bodily functions, know, and just horrible things like that. But there's just all these losses that they did just pile up on you when you're going through something like this. When I went to the Mayo Clinic, I had been on another day, switched me from emerald to humera. I was on another drug. This was kind of interesting. But the doctor, my GI and Amarillo had me using the same medicine that an asthma person, a person with asthma uses, an inhaler.

except instead of breathing it in, I was trying to swallow it. So it kind of has the steroids in it and then it would go down into myosophagus. I didn't mention that along with the other GI issues, I was having trouble swallowing food. And so he was trying to treat that directly in that way and somewhat maybe experimental, but for whatever reason, it seemed to have good effect. And it was kind of interesting when I went to Mayo, they confirmed the earlier biopsy. So it wasn't until the first GI was wrong.

But when they repeated the colonoscopy, there were no eosinophils in my colon. There were no. As a matter of fact, my esophagus was already looking better. So things were looking a lot better. It made me even wonder at the time why I went to the Mayo Clinic. I mean, I know why I went, but should I? But did I really need to go? Because I was doing better than I had since this whole thing began. So it's just kind of one of those weird things, weird timing. But I have in retrospect began to look at that as an answer to prayer. There were a lot of people praying for me at that time.

We didn't know if could I end up with a diagnosis of autoimmune liver disease or something like that to go along with the ascentophilia. And so we had these concerns and none of those concerns played out. And I'm thankful to God and believe if there's ever been healing in my story, that was really the case where it was most evident. That does not mean I was healed from ankylosing spondylitis and I was not healed from what was eventually and finally diagnosed as Crohn's. So moving forward, came home.

Maybe a little bit confused this time because now I was feeling better than I had previously but I was settling into a new normal and we were managing the Crohn's and we were for best we could managing the arthritic symptoms. So I got to skip up a few years here and recognize that you know, maybe this is already getting a little long but hopefully just just hang in there with me because I think you'll see why this ministry exists.

when I talk about where I came to in my story. In 2015, my family and I were on vacation. We were going to Padre Island. My friend from church owned a condo there and graciously let us stay there for free. Honestly, it's probably the best vacation we ever had as a family, except for one thing, which I'll get to in a moment. So Padre is down by Corpus Christi. So I remember we went and toured an aircraft carrier there.

which in itself was really cool, that was docked there in, you know, an old one that was out of commission, of course, that was just kind of used basically as a floating museum now that was there in Corpus Christi. And I remember all the hard surfaces that we were standing on there. I remember all the stairs we had to take from one level to the next. And the pain just building and building while I was on this trip. And by the time I got back from the trip, I was in a full-on flare.

And it was the worst it had ever really been, especially authentically. And so when I got back to work in 2015, it was a struggle for me to even make it through the day. Every day, sitting in my chair, trying to write sermons, trying to write Bible classes, trying to read, trying to study. If I had to travel anywhere at all, it was difficult for me. In fact, sometimes going anywhere more than 15 minutes could be...

very hard and all my doctors were far away. So when I had to go back and see my orthopedic surgeon, Albert Kirke, that was a three and a half hour drive. It was a two hour drive to see my doctors in Amarillo. We didn't have any of those kinds of specialists in Portales. And so I was going to Albert Kirke. There were some times where I would have to just let my wife drive and I would just lie sideways in the back somewhere. We had a van at that time, a Dodge Caravan. And so I would just lay down somewhere in the back. And that was the way I would get through that.

But as this carried on into 2016, it really began to take an emotional mental toll on me. And my hip was also getting worse. You remember I mentioned I had surgery on my left hip in 2012? Well, because I recovered so poorly from that, I never fixed the right hip. And now the right hip was starting to bother me more and more. It was starting to cause me to lose sleep. So during the day, sitting in my office in pain, I would just think about getting home to lay sideways on my couch.

⁓ And at night I would have to fight off the hip pain and realize I was going to have to go and get that other hip surgery that I had put off Well in the midst of all this I tried something new tried seeing a pain management doctor and We started doing radio oblation, which you know, you burn certain nerves in your back ⁓ In order to to get some relief from the pain. I did get a little relief

but it wasn't a lot of relief and it didn't last that long. And part of the problem was my insurance company, I guess, because you would do each nerve at a time and there was a certain amount of nerves that the insurance company would cover. And basically they were saying that they would only pay for four and there were six of these that I needed. And of course we couldn't pay out of pocket for them. By the way, the way that this all impacts stuff, just kind of as an aside here, but when I had the first hip surgery,

I needed physical therapy. My insurance would not pay for physical therapy. So I went to two sessions that we paid out of pocket for, and I tried to do the rest on my own at home. So you might imagine why I had a difficult time being able to recover from that first surgery. So was facing a second surgery. And by the way, in the middle of all this, let me back up a little bit to 2015 again.

This was not had anything to do with chronic pain and chronic illness, but it also needed hernia repair surgery. So that was fun. And then we had a, I had a mission trip. was working with a, not working for, I used to work for this ministry actually, but at this point I was just going as a short-term missionary. And I was going with my best friend at the time, Chris is his name and an elder from our church named Jim. And we were going to Shanghai, China.

I had to share the story of Jesus with people through conversational English in a coffee shop right there in Shanghai. So it was pretty exciting. And yet, the plane ride over there was about 15 hours. It was probably the most miserable 15 hours of my life physically. And during that 15 hours, the effect of that would just carry on through the two weeks that I was in Shanghai.

That was a really negative experience, even though I remember the trip itself in a positive way because I believe in the work we were doing there. There was like this other side of me that said, that kind of said, yeah, the trip was good, but this other side that said, yeah, but you were miserable as well. And those two things can be true when you're going through chronic illness and chronic pain. There are things you can enjoy, you know, that in one sense and yet in another sense, you just feel almost divided because physically you're not able to enjoy it.

So by the time I got to 2016, facing that second hip surgery in October, I was feeling ⁓ what can only be described as depression. And I started to look for Christian resources. Particularly I was looking for support groups for people that had chronic pain. I was looking for something from a Christian perspective. And honestly, I could not find anything. I do know that, I believe her name's Lisa Copen had a...

ministry that was support group organized and she had several different places where these support groups existed. ⁓ But I could not connect with that ministry. It seems like it had kind of gone defunct at the time and I couldn't even get the book which Lisa had written to help people start these kind of support groups. And so I really was without any resources whatsoever. And so I was bothered by that. I was depressed about that. ⁓

Decided to open up to my church and a sermon they knew what the journey I had been on but I had never told them how it really affected me and So I was very honest very open emotional that it's particular Sunday in October Sometimes I could even tell the exact date. I can't I don't quite have it right now, but 2016 in October one Sunday that became a turning point really in my life because I told that story and we give a traditional invitation in our churches and so

People can come down and confess faith, be baptized, or people sometimes just come down to ask for prayers because they're struggling with something sometimes related to sin, but sometimes just stuff going on in their lives. And that day, five of us responded, and I say of us because I was one who responded to my own invitation to ask for prayers. And then four other people from the church came down. All four of those people had chronic illness or chronic pain. And even as their

pastor, I did not know that that's what they were struggling with. And at that time I felt this sense of conviction that people really had a need for this to be acknowledged. People had a need for there to be support and Christian resources to help them through this. And if I couldn't find it, then maybe God was calling me to do something about it. And that really was the genesis for what became Broken and Mended. ⁓ You know, I see we're nearing the 40 minute mark. I'm not going to

do the whole story between 2016 up to when we started Broken and Mended in 2018. You do need to know that I moved, took a new preaching job in Woodward, Oklahoma, which is where I live today. I'm no longer the full-time preacher there because I'm now working full-time for Broken and Mended. But at the time, I started Broken and Mended in 2018. It was just as a local church ministry. And I was just writing the material as we went along.

And I remember that first group that we had, especially the first night when we had our broken amended meeting, there were a lot of people there. There were a lot of people that were emotional about being there in a good way because they felt that their pain was being seen for the first time by others who understood. And it was very affirming to me to know that people needed this kind of support. And so we pressed on and continued to create sessions for

the group leaders, which for me at the time was just me, of course, but with the idea and with the vision one day that maybe we would be able to share these with other people so that they could have their own chronic illness, chronic pain support group. so, you know, was kind of making it up as we went along with God's help. But eventually we had enough material that we could start to envision pulling it together for a book and really two books because we were going to make a leader's guide for the group leader.

And then the other thing we were calling a participants guide for, you know, the group participants. And so we began to work on that. And in 2021, still at the height of all the COVID stuff going on, we incorporated as a nonprofit. And at that same time, we were meeting virtually on, you know, and so I'm going to virtually online, I realize that's redundant. We were meeting virtually through Zoom. And we started that from the beginning, but actually in 2018. So before COVID,

had happened, we were meeting in person, but we also had participants on Zoom. Well, during COVID, we had to meet Zoom only for a while. And that actually ended up kind of expanding our geographic reach because it was no longer just tied to Woodward, Oklahoma or Northwest Oklahoma at that time. And we began to have participants from all over the place. And in 2022, as we had our first group start in Kenya, had a guy contact me on Facebook and said, hey, can we do this in Kenya?

I thought, why not? sit on the material. And, you know, so that really began to, take off there. ⁓ and we had the books now that we could share with people. I did not expect it to take off in Kenya like it did. Okay. But, but the guy that started the group there eventually had three groups, eventually had six groups. Eventually we had to record re recruit more support group leaders.

Today, I don't even know how many groups we have active. I know that we've had in excess of 250 total groups in Kenya alone. And that's not to mention what we've had in East Africa as a whole and other countries like Malawi and Tanzania, Uganda, South Sudan. And so it's been this tremendous growth in Africa that has really underscored the need for what we're doing. In the States, we have support groups as well, some online, some in person.

still really waiting to kind of hit that critical mass point where we have many many churches starting broken amended support groups. One day I believe that will happen. In the meantime we have our support groups here. We have some virtual options for people that just need to connect from places where we don't have a support group. And we are doing things like having our broken amended conference on October the 18th. It's a free virtual conference. I will link the registration in the show notes. You do have to register for it.

But I'm excited about it because it's going to be Dave Furman, Veneetha Reisner. You might know those names in the chronic illness community. I don't know if you know the names, Shannon Kramer and Arne and Trina Bahadurian, but they both have very important work in this topic of ministry as well. And they have really powerful, compelling, but also heartbreaking stories that they will be sharing with us when they give their sessions. And so.

It's really going to be a great event. And I didn't say all this and tell my whole story just to make it into a commercial here at the end. ⁓ But I just wanted you to be aware of that opportunity and some of the things that we're doing here. Now we do the podcast, of course, in the seams. Right now it's only a monthly deal. I hope one day we have more people that can help us with broken amended and we can dedicate more resources to maybe doing the podcast once a week. But right now that was just too big of a stretch because

We don't have any staff besides myself. We do have volunteers. We do have board members, but we're still in the initial phases of really getting us into being a fully functioning nonprofit that can meet the needs of churches everywhere in order to help people with chronic pain and chronic illness. And I hope one day even to help those that have children that are going through chronic illness. That's something else that's in my heart. My own son, by the way, and I'll link his story in this podcast. He

And another young woman got on and shared their stories as teenagers But my middle son has ankylosing spondylitis and has been dealing with the repercussions of that since he was 16 That was heartbreaking for me to go through as a parent More heartbreaking than everything I had been through up to that point. And so I got that in my story as well You know since I had gone through all those things up to 2016 And then like I said, we moved over to Woodward in 2018

When I came to Woodward, things were still pretty bad for me physically, but things started to get better. Medication changes, doctor changes, and all that kind of stuff, I think were helpful to me. And in 2022, I did have to have a right hip replacement. So the hip that I had put off replacing ended up, I mean, having the initial surgery to repair ended up being the one I had to have replaced first. And so maybe that says I shouldn't have put off that initial surgery.

The hip that I did have the surgery on earlier in 2012 is still working, although with some pain and within a very, very likely we'll have to replace it in the not too distant future. On the other hand, I thought I was going to have to have it replaced the same year as I did the right one because it was bothering me just as much as the right. And after we fixed the right one, things got better. And I'm still going on that original wheel there on my left and we'll see how long that happens.

I'm doing better. I'm in as good a place as I've been physically. I still have symptoms, of course. I still deal with the chronic issues and the financial fallout and all the different things that are related to it. But every day I have a pretty good, ⁓ I have pretty good energy levels. I had terrible energy levels for a while and I thought it was all related to chronic illness and basically chronic fatigue, but it actually had a different cause or at least it had an additional cause that needed to be fixed. And I had sleep apnea.

And so once that got fixed, actually did help my, started treating, it's not fixed, not healed, but started treating that as well. ⁓ Things got a lot better for me in that department. And so I'm able to invest physically, emotionally and everything into Broken and Admitted. I'm thankful to God for what he has brought out of my own story that has now helped in some way, small or large. And now we could say thousands of people around the world. It's going to continue to do that, God willing. We have a Spanish translation of our Leader's Guide

Now we call it reflection guide that is about to be out in as I said in Spanish and so we'll be able to reach an entirely new demographic there continue to reach people in Africa and here in the US and as God is willing and opens more doors for us will continue to expand this ministry and so that's the story my story it's a story of broken and mended you know I I guess for me at some point when it was really bad

I wanted to believe that something good could still come out of it. And I didn't know what that was going to be at the time, but I wanted to find some purpose in it because I was going to have to go through it anyway. If I could have opted out and not gone through it, that's what I would have done. But it turned out not to be a choice. I did pray for healing. I'm sure you have to. And I would imagine almost all my listeners have and maybe you're still holding on to hope for healing. If that's you, that I want to encourage you to keep praying.

For me, I came to a point of acceptance that that was not going to be the answer from God, that He was going to heal me completely. But He has given me better health and better management of my symptoms. And so I thank God for that. And in the meantime, I want Him to use what I've gone through and what I'm still going through to be a blessing to others. And that looks different for every person, but I really do believe that even

with all the losses that we experience because of chronic illness and pain, and even though we wouldn't have signed up for those, and even though it's hard for us to make sense of any of it at times, that God can still do something good in our suffering. I really believe that, and I hope that you can hold on to that hope. So I know that it's gotten me through. And that happened to turn into a chronic illness and pain ministry. It doesn't mean that's way it's going to look for you. It could.

But it may just be that you're able to be there for others in your life in a way that you hadn't been able to be with them before. Or you're able to give a testimony of how God walks with you through the suffering. Or how as we talk about even in our brokenness that we are mended because of how God's strength is made perfect in our weakness. So I hope it's of some encouragement to you. ⁓ As I say, it's my story and I'm sticking to it. And my story's not over.

Neither is yours if you're listening to this. And God continues to do things in our lives. We just have to open up our eyes and hearts to that and trust Him even when we don't see what those things may be. Sometimes we get to see, sometimes we don't. Either way, we want to trust in the goodness of God as demonstrated through Jesus Christ on the cross. So thank you for listening. Obviously encourage you to go to the website. Register for the conference. We'd love to have you. It's free. Just have to register.

Love to have you a part of that. Virtual conference begins at 12 p.m. on October the 18th. One day conference only. So adjust for your time zone wherever you're listening from. But that's that's when it will start. And also encourage you if you are in a position to be able to help us financially. You've heard all the things we're doing. You've heard all the good that I believe God is doing through broken amended. And if you're in a position, even as a one time donation, you know, I can announce that we're

We're working on a $50,000 campaign. We haven't publicly announced until just now. if you are in a position to help with a $25, $50, even a $10 donation would be helpful. And so you can do any of that at brokenandmended.org. I also ask for you to rate and like our show. You may prefer the interview form instead of having to hear me the whole time. And so that's what I usually try to bring. But this is just the way it worked out this time.

Thank you for listening and being a part of the Broken Amended community. Thank you for being here and in the seams. And we look forward to being able to share with you next time.