Teena Myers

I hated missing the Louisiana State Women’s Ministry Convention. I’d planned to write Rhonda’s testimony. Sonya, director of Women’s Ministry Unlimited, told me not to worry—Rhonda would speak at our church next Sunday. I met Rhonda in my church’s conference room, pressed record, and listened as she unfolded a story of endurance, bitterness surrendered, and hard-won healing.

Rhonda grew up as a Pentecostal preacher’s daughter, moving whenever her father was assigned to, usually another small, struggling church. He stayed until the congregation steadied, then moved on to the next crisis. Between pastorates he evangelized, and during one of those in-between seasons the family lived in Claremore, Oklahoma—where Rhonda was born.

The hardest assignment of her father’s ministry came when Rhonda was nine. “My parents were under tremendous stress, and I felt their pain,” she said. “One Sunday night Dad preached about drawing closer to God. When we prayed, the Spirit settled over the church. I knew I needed more, so I kneeled between the first and second pew and asked the Lord to come near me. The next thing I knew, I was speaking in tongues.” She smiled. “Something life-changing happened that night—not just for me. My mom needed to know God was with us. If she were here, she’d tell you my baptism in the Holy Spirit redeemed that difficult pastorate. It was God’s way of saying, ‘I’m still here.’”

Her family returned to Claremore during her senior year. “That’s when I met Larry Rock,” Rhonda said. “We dated for two years, and when God confirmed he was his choice for me, I married him. God knew I’d need a rock—and not only as a last name. The first twelve years of our marriage were long and brutal.”

A few months after the wedding, Larry rushed Rhonda to the emergency room—she was hemorrhaging. After four hours of surgery, the doctor found the source. When she woke in recovery, he didn’t soften the news: “You have two uteruses, and you’re full of tumors the size of grapefruits. As soon as you’re strong enough, I’m scheduling a radical hysterectomy.”

“Larry and I believed children were a gift from the Lord, and we refused to let that blessing be taken from us,” she said. “We prayed, and I took a step of faith. I told the doctors to remove the tumors but leave everything necessary for me to carry a child.” Three surgeries later, the tumors were gone, but the surgeon still didn’t know which uterus functioned. He pushed for a hysterectomy. Rhonda argued—finally, he gave her three months to become pregnant.

She conceived within the deadline. The pregnancy was painful and precarious; her body carried the baby off to one side, like a football wedged under an arm, with little room to grow. When their daughter arrived nine months later, doctors removed more tumor than baby—but the child was healthy and beautiful. Again, the doctor insisted Rhonda schedule the hysterectomy.

“I knew I was tempting fate when I refused,” she admitted. “I’d seen one miracle, and my faith was strong.” After two more tumor-removal surgeries, she gave birth to a son in 1980. This time she agreed to the hysterectomy, but the damage had accumulated. Multiple surgeries and high-risk pregnancies left her immune system compromised.

Her doctor prescribed hormone injections and medication to stabilize her body. Instead, her world narrowed. Sunlight made her sick. Breathing became difficult. Foods turned hostile—first migraines from potatoes, then a swollen throat from bananas. Each time she learned what was safe to eat, new allergies appeared. Eventually she reacted to thirty-nine foods, leaving almost nothing she could tolerate.

“I believe God heals,” Rhonda said. “The doctors told me I’d never have children, and I had two—miracles. So I asked God to heal me, again and again.” But the years dragged on. Six years later she weighed eighty-nine pounds and considered suicide. “When you seek God for something and it doesn’t happen on your timetable, it’s easy to stop trusting Him. I felt abandoned. I believed the lie that God didn’t love me.”

One night, Rhonda slipped out of bed to take a sleeping pill. She filled a glass with water and set it on the kitchen table. She twisted the top off the bottle containing the pills and heard, “Don’t take one, take two; you will sleep better.” Rhonda took two pills from the bottle. “Why not take all of them? Then you won’t feel anything anymore.” Rhonda poured the pills onto the table in a little heap, then reached for the bottle of pain pills. She emptied those pills on top of the sleeping pills and then opened every bottle of medication the doctor had prescribed.

“I don’t know how long I sat looking at that mountain of pills before I scooped up the pills in one hand and grabbed the glass of water with the other. My hands were shaking so badly that I dropped the glass. It shattered. A spiritual battle raged. My thoughts were out of control,” said Rhonda.

Rhonda stared at the shattered glass. “It’s okay,” the tormenting voice whispered. “There are other ways to kill yourself. Pick up a shard of glass and cut your wrists.”

Rhonda reached for a shard. This time she heard the comforting voice of the Holy Spirit cutting through her depression: “The enemy comes to kill, steal, and destroy. I have come that you might have life. Is this the way you want to die, Rhonda? Do you want the children you prayed for to find you dead? Do you want the husband I gave you to be alone? Is this the legacy you want to leave your family?”

“God’s voice returned me to a place of sanity. I thanked God for intervening and decided to live for my children and husband, whether or not God healed me. I set my shoulder to the plow and endured another six years.”

In 1997, news of a revival in Pensacola, Florida, reached Oklahoma. Stories of salvation, healings, and deliverance abounded. Rhonda’s church chartered a bus to attend the revival, but she wasn’t interested. She had made peace with her lot in life, and it no longer mattered if God healed her.

“I was still mad at God. My husband forced me to go to the revival. We watched fourteen hours of video on the way to Pensacola. People all around me were being blessed, and that made me even madder. We arrived to stand in the hot Florida sun for hours. Then it rained. I was hot and sticky, then soaked and seething with anger by the time the church doors opened. Hundreds of people lurched forward, eager to be included in the main sanctuary. Larry and I were the last two allowed in before they diverted the crowds to another building to watch the service by video. The only seating left in the sanctuary was in the Deaf section, and we could only sit there if I interpreted for the deaf.”

Rhonda felt empty inside but recognized the heavy presence of God’s Spirit filling the building as she signed “Draw Me Close,” written by Kelly Carpenter. Halfway through the song, Rhonda shook so badly that another interpreter replaced her. Rhonda stood between the first and second pew—the same place she had asked God to draw close to her when she was nine years old.

“Larry told me I looked like a rag doll God shook and then dropped on the floor. I lay on the floor, aware of everything going on around me but unable to move. I heard God say, ‘You are full of anger, bitterness, and unforgiveness.’ Then I saw the last twelve years of my life like a movie. Every time I watched my family eat and I could not. Every time I went to the bathroom and cried. Every time I cursed because I did not have the life I wanted. Then God said, ‘If you repent, I’ll forgive you and heal your body.’”

The moment Rhonda cried out in repentance, the shaking stopped. Warmth traveled like liquid heat throughout every part of her body. Four hours later, she stood to her feet, transformed by God. She felt like the little girl who had asked God to draw close when she was nine years old. The following morning, Rhonda ate pancakes for breakfast with no adverse effects but didn’t tell anyone that God had healed her.

“When Larry and I arrived home, I asked him to buy me a double cheeseburger from Sonic. He looked at me as if I were speaking a foreign language, but he bought me one and prayed over it before we ate. I dived into that hamburger. When I looked up, Larry was crying. He said, ‘You’ve been healed, haven’t you?’ That was fourteen years ago, and I haven’t had one physical reaction to food since the day God drew me close to him again.”