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CBN.com – "I went from a cane to a walker into a wheelchair. I lost the use of my legs slowly, then immediately regained them again, then lost them again," says Delia Roman. "I thought God was playing games with my mind. I grew up in the church but never felt like I knew God at all."
Growing up a preacher’s kid, Delia Roman saw her childhood as strict and legalistic. She viewed God as a taskmaster and the church as a prison to which she was confined.
"I grew up knowing a God that was sitting on a throne with a belt -- 'Don’t do this, don’t do that, or you’re going to get struck down,' " she reveals.
Delia hated it all. She rebelled against everything and everyone. She ran away from home, got into drugs, and got involved with the wrong crowd. At first, it was fun. But soon, her season of fun turned into years of heartache and despair.
"Everybody expected something of me as the pastor's kid, and I failed at it, yet I failed at living out in the world, too. Here I was out in the world, involved in drugs, running away from home, and I’m attempting suicide, but I failed at it," says Delia.
It was God who helped Delia see past her failure and see His unfailing love.
"I came to know the Lord as my friend, as my Lover, as Somebody who is there to embrace me," she explains. "But it took my parents not being around me, and nobody influencing me, but me realizing that this is a choice that I have to make for myself."
And for once, she found refuge in the very place she spent her life running away from -- the church.
Says Delia, "If you would have told me that my destiny would have been in ministry, I would have been like, 'NOOO!' "
Delia became a youth minister. Soon she found herself visiting prisons and ministering to kids who were just like her.
“There I was on Christmas day going to the prison in the morning and ministering to the inmates," she says.
Then while driving home to visit her parents, a drunken driver smashed into Delia’s car.
"What was intended to be a weekend ended up being eight months that changed my life forever," says Delia.
Where is God? she wondered.
" 'Did I do something wrong? Have I failed You in some way?' " Delia recalls asking of the Lord. "You start to question everything. Here I am leading the youth, preaching, singing. I have it all together now. I’m found, with the loss of the use of my legs. I would try to walk, and the feeling of broken glass would be shattering inside my legs until it would be like cold fluid running down and there would be no feeling at all."
She felt helpless, hopeless, and confused. The only words that kept playing over and over in her mind were those she spoke to her kids in prison: "Don’t let the four walls that surround you control your being with God. You can soar beyond this."
"That’s when I realized that faith goes far beyond what my eyes are seeing; faith goes far beyond what you’re feeling, far beyond what you can imagine," she says.
It was her faith that would be put to the test. During her nine-month hospital stay, Delia started to experience headaches so severe she wanted to die.
"I go to the doctor, the neurologist," Delia explains, "and he tells me, 'You have a tumor in the back of your head.' You’re sitting there, like, What? This can’t be happening. I just survived a car accident. I came to the point where I said, 'Lord, if You’re going to take my life, please take it.' "
God decided to do a miracle instead.
The doctor met again with Delia to give her the full medical report.
"The good news is that you will no longer need the surgery that will leave you in a coma," Delia recalls the doctor saying.
Delia then braced herself to hear the bad news.
To her amazement, the doctor, after showing her the two MRIs and two X rays, said, "See where the tumor was? It’s no longer there!"
God had healed Delia completely.
It has been 14 years since Delia's accident on Christmas day. While she may never walk again, God has replaced her legs with wings to fly.
Today, Delia travels all over the world ministering to people through song and worship. The same songs God used to lift her up out of despair she now sings to others, to help them discover the glory of the Lord.
"We can choose life, or we can choose death," she says. "We can sit there and say, 'I don’t want to celebrate Christmas. What do we need to celebrate Christ for?' Christ didn’t just come to show us the way to get saved; He came to be our friend. He walked on the earth to be our friend. He wants you to talk with Him."
Recently married, Delia spends her life sharing the goodness and mercy of the Lord through music. She has just released her second album, appropriately titled Whole Again.
"I will say this," says Delia. "I found His presence through it all, and that has meant more to me than walking. I have learned to walk with Him in a way that I may not have learned with both my legs. I have learned to depend on Him."
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