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Lori Ann Wood was young and healthy when she ended up in critical care with a heart failure diagnosis and only a few months to live.  We discuss that season of her life, the healing and reoccurrence she experienced and how the family of God interceded on her behalf when she had no words.

Questions Discussed During Divine Detour & Heart Health:

1. You experienced a near death health incident in 2015.  Will you share that experience with us?
2. You spent 16 months at the Cleveland Clinic, what was day to day life like for you?
3. How would you encourage people now to be proactive in their treatment of heart disease?
4. What shifted in your walk with Jesus, as you’re walking through this experience?
5. Tell us about your heart ejection fraction being restored.
6. You are releasing a book Divine Detour: The Path You Didn’t Choose Can Lead to the Faith You’ve Always Wanted, where you explore the questions of worry, doubt and fear. Pick one and explain in a little more detail how your personal wrestling impacted the writing of the book and what you hoped those reading would take away.
7. When your world was falling apart you learned questions didn’t destroy your faith, but strengthened it. Why are questions so important in our faith journeys with Jesus?
8. Let’s close with encouragement for anyone listening who may be walking through their own desert.

Divine Detour & Heart Health Quotes to Remember:

“I had a medical evaluation….And I was told at that time that I had less than 3% chance of ever developing heart disease, because all my numbers were so good. I had low blood pressure. I had low cholesterol. I exercised. I was a healthy person. I had no family history.”

“My PCP immediately took a chest X ray and he discovered that I had an extremely enlarged heart. My heart was functioning at about 6%.”

“I was flown to Cleveland Clinic and I became my doctor’s most critical patient for almost a year and a half.”

“I can look back and see that at least 10 years before my diagnosis, I had symptoms that I didn’t recognize.”

“Heart disease kills more people than all forms of cancer combined.”

“We think it’s [heart disease] something that we can avoid if we’re doing everything right. And the reality is you can reduce your risk by making good lifestyle choices and good health choices, but you can’t avoid all of it.”

“The only self exam for heart disease is awareness.”

“To be honest, I had a hard time praying, I had a hard time really digging deep into my faith and finding the stability that I wanted to find….But thankfully, and I think this is what the body of Christ will do, they rallied around me and they were my prayers when I couldn’t pray.”

“What I learned through that is I couldn’t give God the silent treatment for very long, because we had too much history. And I knew too much about him.”

“I discovered the questions I was asking were the ones that Jesus had to face when he was in the desert on his own detour.”

“God doesn’t promise that we won’t experience the worst this world has to offer, but when we do, he promises that we won’t be alone.”

“Questions…strengthen your faith because they force you to choose God again and again.”

“We like to think that the opposite of faith is doubt,…but the opposite of faith is indifference. If we put God up on a shelf and say, ‘I’m done with you’, and walk away, you’re done. But if you’re questioning, if you’re poking and prodding and questioning and wrestling, you get stronger….Our faith becomes more defined, it becomes clearer, and it becomes more real and practical, the more we wrestle with it.”

“I’ve learned that this God we serve is a God who desperately wants to keep the conversation going and questions will help you do that.”

Scripture References

• Matthew 4
• John 13:7

Resources Mentioned:

• Book: Divine Detour by Lori Ann Wood

Related Episodes:

• 191: Marcy Gregg | Life After Losing Your Memory
• 172: Christiana Custodio | When God Changed His Mind
• 162: Erica Baldwin | Invisible Illness Warrior