I didn't know I had a problem with this when I was younger. I was stung by a scorpion in California, but it didn't bother me. Years later I was stung by some yellow jackets while out riding with my Dad in Oregon (we'd moved there). The stings swelled up and itched pretty bad, but I thought that was normal. A few years later, I was working at an elementary school as a teacher's aide. There was a bad problem with the yellow jackets attacking the kids at the school that fall - the kids had to walk to the kitchen to get their trays of food, then back to their classrooms (outside) and the yellow jackets were going after them.

      The state government even came and put poisoned hamburger out on the roof of the school to kill them. Before it was over, I managed to get stung. I had been wearing my coat during recess duty because I didn't want to get stung even though it was hot. Wouldn't you know, one crawled up my sleeve, and when I bent my arm to open the door to the teachers' lounge (recess was over), it stung me behind my elbow. I couldn't believe it.

      Before long, I started to feel *funny*. It was noticeable enough that some of the teachers started asking me if I was ok. I said I was, but I wasn't. Eventually it kind of wore off, and then my arm swelled up like a balloon for a month. That was awful- horrible itching.

      It wasn't until the summer after my first year of college, and Clarence and I were planning our wedding for August, I got stung by a honey bee in a lawn where Clarence was working. He took me to a doctor because I told him how it was making me feel funny. They gave me some Benedryl and Actifed, and said I also needed to get one of the bee sting kits to keep with me.

      So, Clarence dropped me off at his apartment downtown which was just a few doors down from a pharmacy. I had taken the Actifed, and then walked to the store. I was standing at the counter, talking to them about the kit when it hit me. I was reacting to the actifed like the bee sting. I didn't know it, but I was also allergic to anti-histamines. I almost blacked out right there in the store, but I managed to just back up and walk out. I made it to the apartment, called a friend and told her to call me every 30 minutes to check on me, then blacked out for two hours. When I came to, I called her to see if she'd called, but she'd forgotten about me! I was glad that I seemed to be ok anyway.

      That evening I had a babysitting job for a family, and before I left, I took the Benadryl, thinking maybe it wouldn't bother me like that other stuff. My hand was all swollen up from the bee sting. Clarence went with me that night, and it was a good thing. When it hit me, I fell apart for the rest of the evening. I was overcome with a feeling that I was going to die before we were married, and I sobbed and sobbed for hours. Later we found on the papers with the Benadryl that one of the symptoms of extreme sensitivity to it is a "sense of impending doom". It took about 24 hours for that to wear off. Clarence was up with me all night.

      Years later, when we were farming with his parents, I had a bad sore throat. I went to a doctor in town, and he gave me a prescription. When I got to the pharmacy, I noticed it said actifed. I had TOLD that doctor I could not take anti-histimines. So I asked John, the pharmacist (I knew him), what that was, and he said antihistimine. I told him what I told the doctor - so he called the doctor's office. The doctor said, "It's not what she took before." Well, HE didn't know. He wasn't even in the same town, for pete's sake! He was treating me like an imbicile. I asked John to just give me the fewest tablets he could, and I would try *one* at home.

      After I took one at home, for about 30 minutes I thought I was going to be ok. We were living in a single wide mobile home with a hallway that went to the bedrooms and bathroom. Next thing I knew, I was walking into the wall, bumping it as I tried to go down the hallway to the back room. Oh, great. I managed to get back to the living room and call my mother-in-law who lived just next door and was a registered nurse. I don't think she ever believed me, either, when I said I could't take anti-histamines.

      Well, after sitting with me for hours that night, she came away a believer. She said for a long while she thought she was going to have to take me to the hospital. I laid on the couch just *flying* - I had this feeling that if I went to sleep, I wouldn't wake up. It was all really weird, and took about 24 hours to wear off. I called the doctor's office the next morning, and told the receptionist that I TOLD that doctor I couldn't take these things, and I was just coming down off a trip like you wouldn't believe and my mother-in-law had to stay with me.

      She talked to the doctor, and came back saying there was another prescription waiting for me at the pharmacy. I drove the 8 miles to town later, and when I picked up the bottle, I asked John what it was. He looked at it and said it was a tranquilizer. !!! I gave it back to him and never saw that doctor again.

      Sometime after this, I became pregnant with our son, Cody (after just losing a baby the month before). That summer, at three months pregnant, I was bitten on the arm by a brown recluse spider - I didn't see it, they just knew by the bite what it was. It was out in the open. I had taken the mare out of her corral earlier and gone for a ride. We came back after dark, and I was leading her back to the gate when it felt like a electric voltage hit my arm. I knew whatever it was, it was bad. I thought a wasp had run into me or something. My heartrate was up because I'd galloped home so I was hurrying to get the mare put up so I could get to the house and get Clarence to take me to the hospital.

      By the time I got into the house (trying to calm myself down) and grabbed some ice to put on my arm, I told Clarence, "Get me to the hospital NOW." He took one look at me, and knew it was bad. That 8 miles seemed like eternity. I began having trouble breathing, and I suddenly became aware that I could be dying. I began to cry out to God inside. Clarence was driving at high speeds - not a cop around when you need one.

      When we got to the emergency room, I heard him telling them, "She's allergic to stings/bites and to anti-histimines, and she's 3 months pregnant." One nurse said, "Oh, great." I thought they would just give me a shot or something and I could go home. That didn't happen. I was covered in hives before I knew it - it looked like I had a sunburn. They gave me a shot of steriods after consulting over the phone with a doctor. I kept asking my husband when they were going to give me something to help me breathe. He said, they already did. I didn't even know it.

      They came in and said, "We're going to keep this one" and up the elevator to a room we went. I spent the next few hours in a living hell, trying to stay alive. Every muscle in my body was contracting, including the one on top of my stomach that holds in your food. I started to vomit even though I had nothing to vomit. They finally gave me a shot to help stop that. Diareah, too. They had some machine on my arm where the bite was. Sometime after midnight it began to let up, and I knew I could go to sleep now.

      I told Clarence, "I would rather go through labor a 100 times than go through that again!" Which is pretty bad as my labor with Justin, our first son, was 30 hours and really rough. I awoke about seven, aware someone was standing next to me. It was a nurse. She smiled and said, "You don't remember me, do you?" I said no. She said she was in the emergency room when I came in, and was about to go off shift and wanted to come up and see how I was doing before she went home - then she got real serious looking and said, "We weren't sure you were going to make it." I said, "Make it?"

      That's when it fully hit me how close to death I had come. Well, I wanted to go home. But the doctor came in and said the last girl he sent home with one of these bites like this, died the next day. I thought, there's that die word again! Stop that!

      My hives were subsiding, and I felt fine other than itching some. But that afternoon, while the nurses were doing something with the elderly lady in the bed next to me (they had the curtain drawn), I began to feel *funny* all of a sudden. Here we go again - I kind of piped up and said, "I think something is happening to me." Boy, that curtain yanked open and they were MOVING! We went through another attack for several hours and a whole new set of hives - different pattern this time. The next day they were bringing other doctors in to see me and talking about putting me in a medical book. And they were adamant about that machine staying on my arm at all times. I still have a scar there, but not too bad.

      Later that day, another attack and another set of different hives. This time, my uterus started contracting, and I was trying to lose Cody. They gave me another shot to try to stop that. It did, thank the Lord, cause I'm kinda fond of Cody now. LOL! It was attacking a different part of my nervous system each time.

      The fourth day they eventually did allow me to go home, but they told Clarence and my father-in-law that when I went to sleep, someone had to be with me for when I woke up - that I might have trouble waking up or might slip into another attack about that time.

      So someone was babysitting me most of the time. LOL! I was still on the steroids. I had minor attacks at home, but nothing so bad that I couldn't handle it. It took about a week for me to start feeling like it might be *over*. Needless to say, I'm not very crazy about spiders. LOL! Now my husband's family finally believed me when I said I could not get stung by things!

      Cody was about three years old when God moved us to Arkansas. A year later, He moved us to this farm. Only then there was nothing here - we lived under a tree from April 1 to mid-November, then moved into our 8X20 building Clarence had built.

      While we were outside that summer, there were these big black and white hornets flying around that would catch flies and eat them. We used to see them alot every summer, now we hardly ever see them. We had the little building up, and were using it mostly to cook in. The walls were not finished - it was just sheetrock still, and I had taken a black felt marker and written Bible verses all over the walls for our wallpaper. :-)

      Over the summer, Clarence and both boys were stung by these hornets - I knew they were bad and mean by the way Clarence and the boys acted. Stings usually didn't bother them really. We had to sleep in the barn on the hay for a few nights as it was raining at night. That was fine except you woke up in the morning with all the insects bothering you.

      One of those mornings, I woke up to a sting on my leg - one of those hornets got me. We had no gas for our van, no phone, no close neighbors (still don't), and no money for a doctor even if we could get to one. So I looked at Clarence and said, "Maybe this time it won't bother me." So I went up to the little building, and got some ice to put on it, and for a while I did think it might be ok. But I was wrong - when I felt it coming on, I called to Clarence and he came running.

      At first, we sat at the little table, and just kept standing on the verses of healing that we were reading off the wall. We knew that this was where the rubber met the road - it was do or die. Clarence was praying in the Spirit. Pretty soon, I was bent over on my lap, unable to sit up or speak, just trying to keep breathing and not black out. Something in me knew that if I blacked out, I wouldn't wake up. I would die. It must have been a good half an hour - seemed like eternity. Only Clarence was praying. SUDDENLY I literally felt something LIFT OFF OF MY BACK. Until then, I didn't realize that I was being pressed down.

      Then the symptoms just stopped. I cautiously raised my head to look at Clarence, and I said, "I think it's gone." I spoke like *it* was something - later I realized that I apparently had been delivered of something. So I sat up, and we took it one step further. The next thing that should have happened is my leg swell completely up for about a month and itch like crazy and drive me nuts. We spoke to the poison in my body and commanded it to be neutralized and to the sting site to not swell or itch, in the Name of Jesus, and we annointed it with oil.

      By that evening, you could hardly find the spot where I'd been stung. It never did swell. All day I kept catching Clarence looking at me funny. Finally it was bugging me. I asked him, "Why do you keep looking at me like that?" His face changed and it filled with amazement and awe as he said, "Because I know you should be DEAD." That's when it fully hit me for the first time what had happened that day in the middle of nowhere on a tiny farm in Arkansas. God is so GOOD.

      I have been stung many, many times since then - even spider bites, although not brown recluse like before. At first, my body did try to react, but I aggressively got onto it and told it, NO, you have been healed and you are not going to react.

      Next thing I knew, it would all calm down and go away. Each time there was less attempt to react until there was nothing. Maybe a little swelling, but that's all. I have been stung in the WEIRDIEST ways - I know it's the devil trying to convince me that I am not healed. I did have to fight fear for a long time.

      One time I was stung in a CHURCH sanctuary - the only one in the whole place who got stung! By a wasp. It's been quite a few years now since that summer of 1982. Now I find myself laughing at the devil when I get stung...are you STILL trying that old trick? Are you stupid or what??!! LOL! I raise my hands and say, I'M LIVING PROOF THAT JESUS IS THE VICTOR!!! "For this was manifested the Son of God, that He might UNDO the works of the DEVIL." Devil, you and your works have been UNDONE! The works of Jesus are DONE, and your works are UNDONE! Glory to the Name of Jesus! :-) Now, if the devil's works have been undone....how can they affect us now, unless we let them?

*****Anita receives healing for her back*****

      It's been about 2 weeks now (mid-Sept 1999), and there is no doubt that I have had something supernatural happen to my body. Over a year and a half ago I sustained an injury to my lower back. Rest, etc. did not help, it steadily got worse. By this spring I was having trouble standing for very long, and couldn't even shop for groceries without my husband helping. By mid-August I was having trouble being able to sleep, and I couldn't stand upright. My left leg was going numb, and my whole back was radiating in pain. I was shuffling my feet to move, I couldn't pick them up and walk. A wheelchair was beginning to look very inviting.

      My husband was having to do all of his work, and my work, too. My heart ached for him. In all this time, I had held to the fact that the Holy Scriptures are the true Word of God, and they say that "by His stripes" I WAS healed (past tense). I determined in myself that I was going to BELIEVE that Word as a real and personal truth for me. People were praying for me, etc. And it appeared that nothing was happening.

      A couple of weeks ago I picked up and started reading where I had left off in a book called, "How to Heal The Sick" by Charles and Frances Hunter. I will not go into details here, but I can tell you that the Lord met me that night through a chapter in that book.

      When I went to bed, I noticed that I wasn't hurting so bad. I was thankful! I dozed off, and suddenly came awake again - I had the very real impression that the Lord Jesus was sitting on the bed by my head. I wasn't sure if I was imagining this or what - there was no reason for me to do that. I was wide awake for awhile, and was very comforted and peaceful. I again noticed that I wasn't hurting so bad.

      When I awoke in the morning I wasn't hurting at all. Over the next few days I improved dramatically. And now I am completely recovered - even my leg is not numb anymore. I have been standing, walking, bending over, even walked the entire length of a parade!

      At the end of that parade my husband, with sparkling eyes and a big smile, told everyone that they had just seen a miracle - he had seen with his own eyes the terrible pain wracking my body when I tried to just walk to the bathroom and back, and he KNEW that it would have been impossible for me to have walked that parade. Standing to wash dishes is pure joy - because I CAN! Listen, people, Jesus is REAL, and His Anointing is REAL and it's for YOU today.