My son Jacob, then 10 years old, failed a hearing screening test at his regular checkup in the fall 2005. Over the next two years he was tested every three months, and at every visit his hearing got worse. Extensive tests failed to explain the cause of hearing loss, but that is not uncommon. His loss was sensory-neural, and therefore untreatable. All the tests and doctor’s visits were helpless to correct the problem, and only served to monitor his continuous loss. The specialists all explained to us that whatever hearing was lost would never be restored, and the best that we could hope was for his loss to stabilize. At first it was just his left ear, but then by July 2006, both ears were dropping rapidly and he needed hearing aids. His loss was now classified as severe, and at the rate he was losing his hearing, it appeared that he would likely be profoundly deaf in a matter of months.
In October 2006, we attended a Father’s Touch prayer meeting where believers laid hands on and prayed over him. Over the next few months we continued to pray for him, and by Christmas both Jacob and I noticed that he didn’t seem to be struggling to hear. That’s a very subjective opinion, so I didn’t let myself hope too much until he was tested again. On January 20, 2007 he was tested, and he had regained 40 decibels of hearing, putting his hearing in normal range! The audiologist was very surprised, perplexed, and could not offer any explanation for his improvement. She said that she had never seen anything like it in her experience, nor read of anything like it in any of the research literature. Jacob and I smiled at each other and said that we knew the explanation was answered prayer. I am so grateful for this miracle, and I pray now that whatever my son faces in the future, he will always remember this miracle as proof that the Lord loves him, cares about him, and is powerfully involved in his life.