Here’s a report of someone healed from Irlen Syndrome, which we heard about at Newday in Norfolk earlier this month.
Gabby Smith from High Wycombe explained what had happened to her at Newday the year before . . .
She said: “I had a really severe case of Irlen Syndrome. I’d had the condition for 5 years. I couldn’t see the most simple things. I couldn’t read a book. The words were too small. I couldn’t see the words on the screen. It hugely affected my life at school.
“So for 5 years, I had glasses that have really deep blue lenses for reading. The colour helped me see better. Imagine bottle green, but blue. I got bullied for them a lot at school. It really affected me. Let’s just say that when you’re in Year 6 going into Year 7, it’s not the coolest thing to go round wearing glasses with blue lenses.
“For distance, I had different glasses for that. They were prescription glasses. They weren’t tinted.
“So I walked round for years with both pairs of glasses. Blue lenses for close-up, and non-tinted lenses for distance. And I’d switch between glasses depending on what I was doing, but I’d always be wearing one pair, with the other pair in my bag.
“I have to admit that because I had Irlen Syndrome, I sometimes would deliberately not wear the blue lenses because if I did people would make comments. Of course having no glasses was even worse, cos I really needed them.
She then described to me what had happened on the night I prayed for people to be healed at Newday 2013. Gabby said:
“I was in the big top on the Thursday night. People were being healed all around me. People I knew were being healed. For example, a guy who’d been injured, was doing press ups on the floor cos he’d been healed.
“I started crying because I wanted to be healed. Well actually I just needed not necessarily to be cured, but I just wanted help about it, because I felt really insecure about wearing these glasses because I’d been bullied about them for so long. So it was just like I wanted help.
“So during the healing prayer, I was crying. I was sitting down. In fact, I didn’t stand up for the rest of the meeting to see the words on the screen because I just had this thing where I wanted the Bible to be the first thing I read. And I wanted to read it in my tent on my own, so when I got the chance I went out of the big top and I just went back into my tent and opened the Bible and read perfectly without the blue glasses!
“When I realised that I was healed, I just ran back into to marquee hugging everyone, telling everyone. I was just so grateful that I didn’t have to have these glasses anymore.
“Then I went off on my own and called my parents. My mum started crying down the phone. My Dad was just silent in shock really. Because I’d never been to Newday before, I was a new Christian. I didn’t know what to expect really. They were very pleased for me. They knew I’d had a lot of problems with it – not just with my eyesight, but with people reacting to it.
I always ask anyone claiming healing if there is any independent verification of a healing, and so next Gabby told me about the most recent of her many visits to a local optician . . .
“I went back to an optician for a general check up – it wasn’t a specific thing. I was due to go anyway. Of course I went to the appointment knowing that I could see perfectly, but I knew this would be the ultimate test. I walked in. I did the test. You look down all the different columns. The optician just couldn’t believe it. He was astounded. He was like: ‘But you’ve improved so much!’ He was a bit confused by the results. My mum explained about Newday.
Finally Gabby summed up the impact of her healing upon her everyday life . . .
“The difference the healing has made has been enormous. Because I had moved to a new school thinking ‘this will be a fresh start.’ And it just wasn’t. I was still getting bullied. I’d been bullied about my glasses. Then I came back from Newday to the same school in September, a month after Newday 2013, and I didn’t get bullied anymore because they had nothing for me to pick on about.”