Good Purposes in Poison Oak

One Wednesday in May, we had our friends, the Rudolphs, over. All the older children took a hike in the woods. When we came back the little ones wanted to go, but we weren’t feeling up to it. Momma told us to take the two boys and so off we went. During our hike we had a lot of fun, and pretended that we were on a “lion hunt.”

On Friday we were at our uncle’s house, helping at his garage sale all day. During the day I started getting itchy. I wasn’t really paying attention, and kept on itching. Soon I noticed the red spots and an ugly rash was appearing. Soon I realized I was having an allergic reaction to poison oak. My face was swollen and I had rash all over.

My sister asked me, “If you had a choice to go on that hike or not, now would you have gone?” I said, “No!” Later on I talked to Momma about this, and she said, “God has some reasons for you to get poison oak. Remember how God blessed you in taking the little ones on the hike?”

For several nights I hardly slept. The first night, after everyone was sleeping, I started feeling sad because I wasn’t asleep. I cried out to God and read the Bible. And after that I was peaceful. The next night God gave me peace, and as I laid there and heard the time tick by, it didn’t affect me. The following night I had some cold rags to cool off my face, because it was hot. After doing this for awhile, I suddenly got this impression that I should take off the rags and give my pain to God. My face wasn’t hot anymore! The next couple days my body was really improving, and by the next week the poison oak was healing and I wasn’t itching anymore.

God used this testimony to talk to me in a special way. Our family had been listening to a lot of news around the world, and a lot of it was about Muslims. The devil was starting to tempt me that God wasn’t real, and maybe Allah was the true God. Well, when I got this rash I knew that God was real and I was ready to leave this world.

—Isabella, age 13