Healing Unaware: An Inspirational Memoir of Trusting God's Grace

By Cheryl Jacobo

Is your heart heavy with unanswered prayers? Witness one woman’s journey as her despair over a fierce illness exposed
what truly needed healing.

Is God putting your beliefs to the test? Have sickness and suffering worn you down? Feel as though you’re a lightning rod for tragedy? Enduring many agonizing years of chronic Lyme disease, Cheryl Jacobo went through the wringer and came out the other side with an even stronger devotion to the Heavenly Father. And now she’s here to share her inspiring voyage from victim to victor to encourage you to open up your own spiritual transformation.

Healing Unaware: An Inspirational Memoir of Trusting God’s Grace reveals a sometimes messy and unconventional path to reclaiming courage on a hard walk of faith. With a scripture-based perspective born from her search for ways to address painful physical symptoms and persistent emotional pain since childhood, Jacobo shares how she became empowered to face long-held grief. And by following her extraordinary example, you’ll be emboldened to rise above any challenge to live in the freedom provided by Christ.

In Healing Unaware, you’ll bring to light:
• What your anguish can teach you about what really needs repairing and how to emerge victorious
• Your own threshold for the testing of your tenacity to make it easier to confront challenges
• Ways to lead yourself through a health crisis and find your path to wellness
• Fresh perspectives to help pivot from feeling distraught to being determined
• How God specializes in the mending of our unknown and unseen trauma, the rewards from sticking with your hopes for the future, and much, much more!

Healing Unaware is an unforgettable memoir from unstoppable survivor Cheryl Jacobo. If you’re drawn to stories of life-altering breakthrough moments, then you’ll love this inspirational God story and its tender validation of your own challenging faith journey.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Sep 27, 2023
• ISBN: 9798385000272

Cheryl Jacobo

CHERYL JACOBO and her husband Marvin live in Central California. Cheryl is the creator of LymeLifelines.com. If you have been touched by this God story and know it would bless others also, please consider leaving an online review where it was purchased. For more resources check out LymeLifelines.com

Book preview

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HEALING

Unaware

An Inspirational Memoir of

Trusting God’s Grace

CHERYL JACOBO

Copyright © 2023 Cheryl Jacobo.

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 author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This book is a work of non-fiction. Unless otherwise noted, the author and the publisher make no explicit guarantees as to the accuracy of the information contained in this book and in some cases, names of people and places have been altered to protect their privacy.

WestBow Press

A Division of Thomas Nelson & Zondervan

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.westbowpress.com

844-714-3454

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 Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

ISBN: 979-8-3850-0028-9 (sc)

ISBN: 979-8-3850-0027-2 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2023910865

WestBow Press rev. date: 9/21/2023

Scripture quotations marked (AMP) taken from the Amplified® Bible (AMP), Copyright © 2015 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. www.lockman.org

Scripture quotations marked (NIV) are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com The NIV and New International Version are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.®

Scripture quotations marked MSG are taken from THE MESSAGE, copyright © 1993, 2002, 2018 by Eugene H. Peterson. Used by permission of NavPress, represented by Tyndale House Publishers. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked (GNT) are from the Good News Translation in Today’s English Version- Second Edition Copyright © 1992 by American Bible Society. Used by Permission.

Scripture quotations marked (CEV) are from the Contemporary English Version Copyright © 1991, 1992, 1995 by American Bible Society. Used by Permission.

Scripture quotations marked (NASB) taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. www.lockman.org

Scripture quotations marked (ESV) are from The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked (TLB) are taken from The Living Bible copyright © 1971. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked (RSV) are from Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright © 1946, 1952, and 1971 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright ©1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked TPT are from The Passion Translation®. Copyright © 2017, 2018 by Passion & Fire Ministries, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved. ThePassionTranslation.com.

Dedicated to my beautiful daughters,

Dayna and Danyel.

Whenever life calls my bluff,

you are my why-power

for squaring off and baring my teeth.

I love you so.

In honor of

my Mother and Grandmother.

Your sorrows are being redeemed.

I read this book in one sitting. It was gripping and drew me in as a fellow sufferer along for the ride. Several times I was brought to the point of tears as I shared the familiar feelings of acceptance, rejection, forgiveness, fear, shame, and being embraced by God. This excellent telling of a painful journey will likely cause you to reflect on your own emotional, mental, physical, and spiritual suffering. You will be able to identify with the core discoveries God led Cheryl into, and then walked through with her. This book will offer help, insights, and direction for steps toward healing. It’s written especially for those who are suffering and who have suffered for extended periods of time… and for those who are part of their journey.

– Wade Estes, Retired Pastor and Chaplain

An amazing story of a perilous journey. Honesty and vulnerability spatter the pages with descriptions of pain, loss, fear, and the confession of the ultimate need for God’s presence and healing of mind, body, and spirit. The reader shares the extraordinary journey of faith and submission through very personal moments and conversations with a personal God. The Bible tells us if we abide with Christ we will possess the heart and mind knowledge that we will never be alone, no matter what the circumstances. This book confirms that truth as clearly as anything can.

– Janet Akard Bishop, Experienced Grief Support Facilitator

What do you do when God doesn’t choose to heal and the suffering feels like an avalanche? Cheryl Jacobo has done a wonderful job expressing her life of pain and suffering in a way that we can feel the overwhelming darkness. Thankfully she does not leave us in that pain and suffering, but rather leads to a hope that is greater than the power of any discouragement. I thank God for Cheryl’s lifelong example of knowing God’s love, even in the most difficult of times.

– Jim Applegate, DMin, Pastor

CONTENTS

Preface

Chapter 1 The Back Story

Chapter 2 The Long Hallway

Chapter 3 The Mountain

Chapter 4 The Foxhole

Chapter 5 The Desert

Chapter 6 The Aftermath

Chapter 7 Epilogue

Acknowledgments

Notes

PREFACE

During the months of recovery following treatment for the chronic illness of Lyme disease, my previously scattered brain found itself collecting, sorting, and filing away numerous memories from the years of my mysterious suffering.

I would wake in the morning remembering a story that had been sandwiched in between so much other drama that I never had the opportunity to tell anyone about it. Still lying in bed, I would grab my phone and record the verbal story lest I forgot it by the time my feet hit the floor. After weeks of doing this, I listened to all those stories and was amazed. I then pulled out the journals I had written over the years of my illness and after reading through them, I put them down and just shook my head in wonderment. I’ve got to put this all together for my daughters, was my first convicting thought. They and their future children need to know these stories; these ginormous, suspenseful, miracle tales of God’s faithfulness.

As I began to piece my journal entries together, I was also observing God fashion them into a real-time story He was telling me. Realizing I was in therapy became quickly apparent to me. I was processing my memories of trauma and reframing them from God’s perspective and those precious whisperings of wisdom began to appear. I knew what was meant to bless me was never to be kept for myself. The impact of my story has gone beyond just me and my family, so it needed to be shared beyond it as well.

To those of you with chronic pain, I’ve thought of you often as I wrote this book and I’ve asked God to speak to you through my story. So many of us know intellectually that we should trust God with our health and well-being and desire to do so but struggle to reconcile that belief with our constant, haunting, never-letting-up, disorienting pain. It’s a hard journey you’re on but I want you to know you can do hard things because you’re not alone. The moment your last drop of strength leaves you is when you are being carried by the God who made you and loves you. He knows how to bind His strength to your frailty. His power is perfect for your weakness.

Because I am confident that the Holy Spirit, our personal advocate, will counsel, guide, and lead you into your personal healing, I have purposely omitted the names of doctors, clinics, and treatments I’ve received. I believe God custom designs our individual healing and sovereignly leads each of us on a unique path.

An unknown person once said, A friend is someone who knows the song in your heart and can sing it back to you when you have forgotten the words. I want to be that friend to you through the stories in this book. If you’ve forgotten the words, I’m singing them back to you now. Trust Him. Rest in Him. Love Him. He loves you so.

1

THE BACK STORY

It was a boy. The aborted baby was a boy.

During the early 1930s, Fern and Leroy found out she was pregnant before their wedding. With the scraping away of an unborn child, their confidence and courage were taken, and shame and trauma played out the rest of their lives. They never recovered from the devastating decision forced upon them by family members. They both died as alcoholics, and the stories that filled the spaces in between were intertwined with powerlessness and victimization.

A year after their wedding they had a baby girl. This girl grew up believing she was a disappointment to her parents for not being a boy and even felt a confusing guilt when her own firstborn was a girl.

Resenting that she was a girl, their second daughter, Juanita, grew up a tomboy.

The third born was a boy. From his sisters’ perspectives, he grew up favored and spoiled. After they left home his real suffering began, drawn into the same escape practices of his parents to buffer himself against the abuse. He was never really equipped for adulthood and eventually died by his own hands, having also struggled as an alcoholic.

When the three children were young, Leroy’s father came to live with them. He sexually molested Juanita, and when she told her mother, she was slapped and told never to tell such lies again. It’s uncertain what traumatized this little girl the most—her grandfather’s shaming betrayal or her mother’s stinging slap of rejection—but something shut down inside of her and never opened again. In that moment her voice was silenced, she was pronounced unworthy, and she learned that speaking up was an invitation for punishment.

She married two weeks after graduating high school, moved away, and at the age of nineteen had a daughter. This was me. Juanita was my mother, and the aborted baby boy would have been my uncle.

QUIETLY WAITING

One of the many health practitioners I saw during my years of suffering from a mysterious illness asked me to do a health timeline beginning at birth. What a fascinating assignment. I had heard the stories of how colicky I was as a baby and the endless holding and pacing I required as I cried and cried. My mom, dad, aunts, and grandparents would all take their turn with me. I guess I was a bother from the beginning.

The first real memory I have of being sick was having a sore throat and lying on the couch watching cartoons when I was four years old. The next memory was being in a hospital crib alone in the room; it was 1961 and my tonsils had been removed. I was trapped in a crib-cage with white bars on the sides and top of me. I was on my own, sitting and staring at the door, waiting for someone to come take me out of the cage.

What struck me about this memory is that I wasn’t crying or fussing. I wasn’t upset. I was just waiting. Quietly. I wondered why a four-year-old would be left alone in the hospital. It seems time was frozen there because I have no memory of anyone coming through the door and taking me home.

The lonely waiting continued. My mother’s parents lived in the beautiful Sierra Nevada Mountains of Northern California. It’s where I fell in love with the smell of pine trees and the sound the wind makes blowing through them from the safety of their backyard. Once, our family was led by my grandpa Leroy on a day of discovering abandoned gold mines. The car was pulled to the side of a remote mountain road where a trail started at a footbridge over a ravine that ran parallel to the road. Everyone jumped out of the car, ready for the next adventure.

My parents and grandparents crossed over. When I stepped onto the footbridge, I looked down and immediately pulled my foot back. It looked like a long way down into the stream below. I looked back at the long wood plank laid from one side to the other. It looked too narrow and wobbly for my feet. I watched as my two younger brothers passed me by and ran across. My parents were irritated at my hesitancy and yelled to come over. Sigh, I was being a bother. If any one of those four adults had just come back over and held my hand, I could have walked across, but I had already learned not to inconvenience any of them by asking. I tried—really, I did—to overcome my fear of falling in. I was told if I wasn’t coming, then fine, I could just stay put. And they all disappeared into the forest.

Time froze again for me, this time as a seven-year-old. I have no memory of anyone returning. All I remember is the terror I felt in that noisy forest, imagining the mountain lions and bears that were going to pounce out from behind a tree and eat me for dinner, leaving my family confused about my disappearance.

I was on my own. I had backed up all the way to the car and could feel it against my back. I stood there paralyzed by fear, staring at my feet. Waiting.

Like the toddler in the crib-cage quietly waiting for someone, I continued to live life waiting, staring down at my feet, believing I wasn’t worth the bother of being helped but holding my breath with the hope of it anyway.

EXPRESSIONS

As a colicky baby and then a sickly toddler with two younger brothers, I was an irritation to an ill-equipped, overwhelmed mother. How could she give me room to be expressive when she had never experienced it herself? She could not ask for what she needed; she had learned to dismiss her own feelings and then resented everyone else who did the same. So, I learned to hold in my words and repress my feelings to protect myself, just as she had with her mother.

During first grade I was quick to learn how to read but would be terrified whenever the teacher asked me to read out loud. My stuttering was always the worst when I was the center of attention. By the time I was in third grade I was referred to a speech therapist. By then my eight-year-old self had concluded the worst about myself because I couldn’t get my words out. But what this wonderful, kind lady said to me changed my perception of myself. She asked, Do you know why you stutter? I shook my head no. It’s because your brain is so smart that your mouth can’t keep up with it. But eventually it will. This was the first time I had been told I was smart, and it was as if I just learned I had a superpower the other kids didn’t have. I was a bother, but I was a smart bother.

Believing I was smart gave me something to hold onto. There was something good about me! It’s what motivated me to excel in school and do my best. Learning became my solace and being smart played in nicely with being quiet and unseen. Staying quiet meant I didn’t ask for what I needed to avoid being a bother. Staying unseen meant I didn’t draw attention to myself so I wouldn’t be rejected. Staying smart meant I avoided making mistakes so I wouldn’t be judged and condemned. It was a great formula for going along to get along. I could stay quiet, stay hidden, and stay smart all at the same time. Living life within the perimeters of this small safety zone worked to my advantage well into my fifties.

Still, the uncertainty marked my life. After starting junior high, I became depressed. Life just felt too difficult to navigate on my own, and I often wondered if it was worth it. My unseen, quiet,