Elisha's Miracle: A Story of a Little Boy Amazingly Healed

By Susan Wurlitzer

Elishas Miracle is the true story of an eight-year-old boy of the San Francisco Bay Area who had seizures take away his abilities to play, read, write, and speak. After seizures stole thirty IQ points and he could not answer basic questions anymore, doctors told his family to prepare for the worst. Many people came and prayed for the best for Elisha, and his uncontrolled seizures stopped. He survives his brain injury and lives his road to recovery and attends a normal public high school. The family lives knowing God intervened and healed Elisha from his seizures and continues to help him recover from the impossible.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Jun 27, 2013
• ISBN: 9781449796778

Susan Wurlitzer

Susan Wurlitzer has a master’s in counseling psychology as well as a master’s in education with an emphasis in educational psychology. Susan wrote this book to share her son’s miracle to provide hope and inspiration for others. She is married and lives with her husband and four sons in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Book preview

Elisha’s

MIRACLE

A Story of a Little Boy

Amazingly Healed

Susan Wurlitzer

logoBlackwTN.ai

Copyright © 2013 Susan Wurlitzer.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

WestBow Press books may be ordered through booksellers or by contacting:

WestBow Press

A Division of Thomas Nelson

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.westbowpress.com

1-[phone]

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Scripture quotations taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright 1996, 2004. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-4497-9676-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4497-9675-4 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4497-9677-8 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013909581

WestBow Press rev. date: 6/24/2013

Table of Contents

Prologue God Listened

Chapter 1   Called to California

Chapter 2   Is This a Seizure?

Chapter 3   Oh No, It Is a Seizure

Chapter 4   No Worries, It Is Just Normal Epilepsy

Chapter 5   Following the Doctor’s Orders

Chapter 6   The Storm Rages

Chapter 7   Will the Storm Win?

Chapter 8   Turning to God

Chapter 9   Remembering God’s Goodness in the Past Gave Me Hope for the Future

Chapter 10   A Time for Joy

Chapter 11   A Time to Weep

Chapter 12   The Suffering of a Child

Chapter 13   Live Like Everything Is Normal When Every Day Is Getting Worse

Chapter 14   Shifting My Focus

Chapter 15   Banished

Chapter 16   Our Hope Is in God

Chapter 17   Degeneration

Chapter 18   The Valley of Trouble Really Does Lead to the Doorway of Hope

Chapter 19   God’s Word Is Alive

Chapter 20   A New Beginning

Chapter 21   The End or the Beginning?

Chapter 22   Preparing for the Best

Chapter 23   The Diet

Chapter 24   Life on the Diet

Chapter 25   The Diet and Fifth Grade

Chapter 26   More Testing

Chapter 27   Staying Put

Chapter 28   A Miracle

Chapter 29   Standing in There

Chapter 30   A New Start

Chapter 31   Expanding Our Faith

Epilogue It Was Impossible!

To our brave son Elisha

T his story is true. The people in the story are also real, but I have changed the names of most people involved. I kept the names of our family members, closest friends, and the hospitals. We are grateful to Elisha’s doctors for all their desire and hard work in helping Elisha and want to protect their privacy.

Prologue

God Listened

I will return her vineyards to her and transform the valley of trouble into a gateway of hope.

—Hosea 2:15

M y name is Susan Wurlitzer, and my husband, John, and I have four sons: Joshua, seventeen; Elisha, fifteen; Josiah, six; and Isaiah, four. Seven years ago, when he was eight years old, Elisha developed a rare, degenerative form of epilepsy. Flashbacks of Elisha’s story came to me as our pastor reminded us recently that you can’t get to the door of hope without going through the valley of trouble. Boy has this been true in my life. I wanted to scream, Amen, but I am much more reserved than that; in fact, the whole church is more poised than that. So I visualized myself standing up, yelling Amen, and telling everyone the story of when our family was in the valley of trouble—or what we call the land of impossibles—and God provided hope for us.

We had two sons at the time. In 2005, Elisha developed a degenerative kind of epilepsy. In the spring of 2007, we were in our doctor’s office at Stanford, and our son could not answer basic questions from the doctor. He stared into space most of the time. Tests confirmed he had lost thirty IQ points, and at times during the day, he was unable to speak or write. He lost coordination and would often fall. He could no longer be in the regular classroom most of the day and was in a special class much of his time at the public elementary school.

The seizures caused by Elisha’s epilepsy also caused sclerosis of the brain. Special scans of the brain showed areas that had been damaged from seizures. Doctors expected the injured areas of the brain to spread as seizures continued. Elisha had seizures every morning, afternoon, and evening. Every day I was either picking him up from school because of seizures or finding out he had been asleep for hours on a cot in a room attached to the school office.

During this doctor’s appointment, the doctor and his assistant looked more somber than usual. They were up to date with Elisha’s condition, as they even had a staff person from Stanford regularly visiting Elisha’s classroom to check on him. We had seen this doctor monthly, so he was very familiar with Elisha’s increased degeneration with every appointment. He had hospitalized him and tried several different drugs and mixtures of drugs, or what they referred to as cocktails. Our doctor paced slowly in the small white room. His assistant, Mary, stood in the corner of the room, looking very serious as well. Watching his pacing made my legs and arms tighten with nervousness as we heard the words no parent ever wants to hear. He said Elisha’s state was too serious, and we needed to prepare for the worst. My husband and I asked what this meant, and the doctor just repeated himself and said to prepare for the worst. He did not explain, and we thought he meant the mental and physical degeneration was quickly spreading and looked like it was going to continue, so we needed to prepare ourselves for that.

In the spring of 2007, we drove from our tree-lined streets of Burlingame, nestled safely just thirty minutes from the city of San Francisco, toward Ingleside Community Church in San Francisco to have the church pray for Elisha. Pastor Robert Gorman was in a Bible study with my father-in-law, and he believed in healing and offered to pray for our son. You know, he didn’t just believe healing happened in the Bible a long time ago; he also believed Jesus’ name had the power to heal today. Although our town is sometimes called the town of churches, we were driving to Ingleside Community Church because we needed prayer. In fact, we felt like we were supposed to ask for God’s healing power, as we prayed every day and asked everyone we knew to pray for our son. As our son’s degeneration continued, people were asking less about how he was doing and were not offering to pray for him as much. We needed more people on our team to pray for Elisha, the way a city under siege quickly needs to recruit its men for war. It seemed ironic we were leaving the town of churches to drive to San Francisco’s inner city for prayer, but Pastor Robert was the first person to offer to pray for Elisha with Elisha present. Numerous people said they were praying for Elisha, but this man wanted to pray with Elisha.

We drove from our manicured suburb to the city, through rows of houses and aged stores, and found ourselves at the church. We walked up the stairs of the small building to be greeted by Pastor Robert with big hugs and welcomes. We felt like we were home. His strong belief and contagious hope made us love him. We are white, and everyone in the church was black, but despite our difference in race, we felt loved, safe, and accepted, like we were part of a family. Their sanctuary actually felt like a sanctuary, a place where I immediately felt protected, loved, and filled with God’s presence. You know the feeling you get when you fly a long way and drive a far distance, and finally arrive at the home of a loved one you’ve not seen in a long time? Your soul sighs a sigh of relief, and that is how I felt when we walked into the church. We walked through the foyer to the church itself and sat in some pews as light shined through the beautiful stained-glass windows right onto our faces. I felt God would enter with that light and heal our son. I was filled with peace.

Worshippers came in and sat throughout the sanctuary. Pastor Robert introduced us and told everyone we were there to seek prayer for our son. The small church circled around Elisha and laid hands on him as Pastor Robert faithfully and forcefully called on the God of heaven to come and heal Elisha. The way he prayed made you know he believed God was listening, and I needed to feel his confidence. I felt the sun shining down on us as it continued to come through the beautiful windows, and I felt God there in that church. The congregation’s big hearts and loud pleas made up for its small numbers. I had never called on God so loudly before and felt Pastor Robert ushered in God himself. All the people joined in, and the support filled the sanctuary and rose to God. Hope filled my heart and surrounded me. I felt like God would heal my son, as He had healed my heart by giving me hope. The picture of a window opening kept permeating my mind, using up all the space in my brain and erasing the doctor’s words to prepare for the worst. I felt their forceful pleas filled with strong belief got God’s attention, turned His face toward us, and filled me with faith. I knew things were going to get better for Elisha. This was our window of hope.

1

Called to California

T he warm months, especially the beginning of summer, bring up memories of fun times with family. For our family, warm days at the start of summer trigger