And again, to some it is given to have faith to be healed;” (D&C 46:19). The Placebo effect is a well documented phenomena that more or less measures a person’s faith to be healed. In a double blind clinical trial, a certain number of people in the control group who are given a placebo pill that contains no actual medicine end up getting better. Science doesn’t have all of the answers for why this works, but I think the scriptures actually do have some of the answers. Faith is a principle of action. How many times when the Savior was healing people did He invite them to action? Stretch forth thy hand. Arise, take up thy bed and walk. Go and wash in the Pool of Siloam. If we have a sufficiently high expectation of our recovery that we begin to act as if we will be healed, then we are exercising the gift of faith to be healed and inviting the healing power of the Atonement. Exercising the faith to be healed is a real act of courage. Life can wound us and break us and damn near kill us in so many different ways, and just because we are healed once does not mean we might have to go through the same painful and humiliating process of recovery once more. It is one thing to fight off cancer once, but when you’ve got to drink down poison and get sliced open for the sixth or seventh time, it requires a whole other level of faith to be healed. One of the hardest parts of offering up the sacrifice of a broken heart is allowing our heart to be healed knowing full well that we are just going to end up doing something stupid and breaking our nice new heart too, and having to go through that pain of recovery and healing once more. Hanging onto our belief that we will recover without any kind of assurance that it will happen on a certain day or through a certain way is what makes it a principle of faith in the first place. The woman with an issue of blood had waited twelve years and still had enough faith to be healed. The woman healed on the Sabbath had been afflicted with an infirmity for eighteen years and still had the faith to be healed. The paralytic at the pool of Bethesda had waited thirty and eight years and still had the faith to be healed. If our healing comes soon or late, through agonizing effort or like a bolt out of the blue, if we treasure our gift of faith to be healed, then we will find healing again and again.
