Sat at the top of Snowdon, looking out into the pouring rain, I think that now is the time to start my blog. I have three hours to kill waiting for our Ride for Hope Team to reach the summit. Looking at the weather, I'm very glad I opted for the train but a year ago, I would have been walking up with them. This is the story of how a sudden illness, changed my life in an instant. It is the story of God's amazing faithfulness despite facing the hardest storm I have ever had to face and the journey has only just begun...

I want to focus my blogs on how God has worked all things for good and what he is teaching me along the way but I think you need some background on what happened first...

Back in June 2014, I was in the swing of my primary teaching career. I thought I was perfectly healthy, just a bit unfit! On one of the few evenings where I wasn't marking or planning, my husband Chris and I decided to have a date night in Cheddar Gorge, near Bristol. Everything was fine until we were on our way back down the gorge. Suddenly, I felt an excruciating pain in my left side and doubled over in pain. I told Chris but it did seem to ease, so we drove home and hoped it would be gone by morning.

The next morning, I could not move! I assumed I must have put my back out somehow but couldn't think how! I'd been messing about on the rocks at the gorge just posing for photos but surely that couldn't have done it. Anyway, after phoning in sick, I tried to have a bath and almost passed out. From then on, I couldn't walk but just had to slither along the floor as the pain in the side and my breathlessness just got worse and worse. If we had had any idea of the problem, we would have called 999 but still focused on back problems, Chris somehow managed to get me to the doctors.

Much to our shock and horror, the doctor announced that I must have a clot on the lung and sent me up to the hospital. They started to treat that, with no effect but eventually decided that I had a collapsed lung. After an x- ray however, it was clear I had pneumonia. It wasn't until afterwards that we realised how life threatening this actually was!

Despite being put in High care and being told I was at risk of being put in ICU, as soon as they started the IV antibiotics, all the pain left and I felt fine. Apparently my lungs were 3/4 full of fluid at one point and I almost died...but I was oblivious and quite happy chatting away to visitors or reading the Hobbit. God definitely had his hand on me and I felt such a peace through the whole experience. After 5 days I was off oxygen and back home. The only worrying thing was the possibility of an underlying lung condition that would need to be investigated in September.

Despite this news, we trusted that God was in control. He was faithful through the pneumonia and we knew he would be faithful again. After another week I was back to work.

Being a considerate person, I waited until the end of the school term for the next fiasco to take place. On the last day, I started to get twinging in my back. This got worse and worse until eventually the doctor sent me to A&E. An x-ray showed a large lung collapse on the right side this time. Throughout the next few weeks, they tried to fix this with several drains (a piece of wire pushed through your chest wall, designed to pull out the air- excruitiating!) and then when this didn't work, they operated to keep my lung up.
Painful and scary though all this was, it was nothing compared to the realisation that I had a serious lung condition called LAM (http://www.thelamfoundation.org/)
I was told:

* You need an immediate lung transplant to survive.
* Your life expectancy will be shortened.
* This is degenerative.
*There is no cure.
* You will need immunosuppressant drugs for the rest of your life.
* You're oxygen saturations will never get above 90% so you will need additional oxygen for life.
* Having children will be dangerous.

Wow- what statements to make over my life! Without my faith in an awesome healer God, I would have been crushed. Yes, we were shocked and upset but we had God's peace which passes all understanding. Chris, my family and friends were amazing; I felt so loved, encouraged and covered in prayer throughout and still do today.

Eventually, after 3 weeks, I was home on oxygen. From the very beginning, we felt we should believe for a full healing miracle. One day, Dad was in the house of prayer in Barnstaple and God really spoke to him through this sign:

Since then, faithful God has done so much healing in me. We continue to expect a miracle, not just for me but for others too. Read my next blog to hear how God has been healing me and drawing me and my family closer to each other and closer to him.