I remember I had just been diagnosed with scoli 10 months beforehand. The deformity skips every two generations in our family – and it was my turn. My brace was painful and uncomfortable, as all people with a scoli brace know. I was in 8th grade and just beginning to care what I looked like – what I wore – and then my brace ruined it all. I suppose it was the price to pay for vanity.

I had not fervently prayed for my Father to heal me. Though I was a Christian, the idea never crossed my mind to beseech Him for help. The most I did was complain to Him. How could he have let me endure this? What was the purpose for this pain? What terrible sin had I committed that I deserved this? Why, why, did my ‘loving’ God put me through this?

Every Wednesday at my school, we hold a Chapel service. Often a special speaker is invited, and we suffer through 45 minutes of dry preaching. But this day was different. Mikey Cheshier was preaching, and his words were powerfully intoxicating. The message: healing. I listened with hopeful, but not eager, rapture.

And then Mr. Cheshier asked the question that changed my life. ‘Anyone who needs healing, please, come down.’

It would make a great story to say that I was the first one down there. But I wasn’t. I hung back, aware of my peers waiting for one of our classmates to break free and dare to walk to the center gym where Mikey stood, welcoming the brave souls that had come from their cliques and friends and staring eyes to dare to be healed.

That nauseating feeling, followed by alluring power, always comes after throwing away the stares of your peers. So I felt empowered as I made my way to the front center gym with about 20 other students. I limped – my legs were uneven because of the curvature of my spine. My shoulders were out of whack, looking like someone had sat on one of my shoulders to make it lower.

We all formed a disjointed line, somewhat bloblike in appearance but a likeness of a line nonetheless. I remember crying because I was so nervous – for what, I have no idea. I cannot put my finger on it.

Mikey encouraged others to come down and pray for us, so it was not a surprise to me when I felt my best friend’s hand on my back and I heard her praying to God to heal me. Mikey took his time with each student, praying for the healing they needed, whether it be for themselves, a friend, a dying mom, or their emotional needs. No student’s wounds were too little or too big.

He finally reached me. I was steadily crying now, but luckily the sound of others’ prayers and the steady flow of guitar music coming from our school band drowned out my undignified sobs. I told him that I had scoliosis through heaving breaths. I can’t say why I was crying – I really don’t know. He confirmed that I need my back straightened (not everyone knows what scoli is, as much as a lot of us would like to think). I nodded, deciding that I shouldn’t speak for fear of embarrassing myself.

Mikey put his hands on the top of my spine through my brace and began to pray. I don’t remember his exact words, but they were simple. Beautiful. And wonderful. I was crying, but praying, too. My friend’s voice melded with his, and together the three of us implored God to heal my crooked spine, to take away all of the pain and fears it had caused me and would cause me.

I remember feeling heat flash up my spine. It was quick and intense, as though someone had suddenly lit a match at the middle-lower section of my spine. The burning spread, covering all of my vertebrate, until my back was sweating with the heat. The invisible fire was not painful, but rather comforting. Not weak, either. I remember feeling the power of it, the power that I had felt only once before, when I was baptized.

He prayed for I don’t know how long, but when he removed his hands, I felt the heat ebb away. The fire stayed in my vertebrate the rest of the day, and I did not care if anyone saw my red eyes or I wasted a box of tissues. I was elated.

A month later, I was went in for a scheduled x-ray to measure the curvature of my spine. After it had progressed 5 percent a few months earlier, my curve was now holding at 30.

Six months later, I went in for another x-ray. My curve had minimized by 4 percent.

Now, I am scheduled for another x-ray in two weeks. I have no concerns. No worries.

Do not make the mistake of assuming that Mikey Cheshier healed my spine; rather it was our God Jesus Christ. It was purely His power and mercy that left me healed.