I usually don’t do movie reviews on this website, but I just watched Miracles From Heaven recently and connected with it on so many levels. I wanted to share with you why anyone with a digestive disease, whether it be Ulcerative Colitis, Crohn’s Disease, or even Celiac Disease, should watch this movie.
Check out my review of Miracles From Heaven below.
Warning: Spoiler alerts below. Also, if you aren’t a Christian you might not relate to this. Negative comments will be deleted.
Miracles from Heaven – Hollywood touches on digestive diseases
Miracles From Heaven, starring Jennifer Garner, Kylie Rogers, and Martin Henderson, is about the true story of a young girl suffering from a rare digestive disorder and then finds herself miraculously cured after surviving a terrible accident.
The young girl, played by Kylie Rogers (Anna Beam in real life), suddenly is diagnosed with chronic intestinal pseudo-obstruction (CIP). This is is a rare, potentially disabling gastrointestinal disorder characterized by abnormalities affecting the involuntary, coordinated muscular contractions (a process called peristalsis) of the gastrointestinal (GI) tract. And currently, there is no cure. Just like with Ulcerative Colitis, Crohn’s, and Celiac, there is no cure. It’s an excruciating disease.
Story
In the movie, you see Jennifer Garner, who plays Christy Beam (the mother), almost lose control as she watches her 10-year-old daughter go from being completely healthy to suddenly having an enlarged stomach and having to be fed from a feeding tube. And the worst part of it is there is no cure, and the young girl is in pain almost 24/7.
The movie does a great job, in my opinion, of showing how this disease affects an entire family, along with her two sisters. The father missing to take the older daughter to her soccer trip because he is so busy working overtime simply to pay for his little girl to get treatment, which is very expensive.
You follow the mother and daughter on their trip to Boston’s Children Hospital to visit a specialist that deals with CIP. There is one point in the movie where I will admit it; I started crying. The young girl is lying in her hospital bed, crying, holding her stomach, because the pain is just overwhelming. And then this conversation happens, and I quote:
Young Girl: “I want to die. I want to go to heaven where there is no pain. I’m sorry Mommy, I don’t want to make you sad. I just want it to be over.”
Wow! I think a lot of us with Ulcerative Colitis or Crohn’s can really relate to this. I know I have personally been there, on the hospital bed, just wanting the pain to be over. At some point, all you can think about is the pain and it’s almost too overwhelming for a human to bear.
The movie shows how the mother’s faith came into question as she didn’t know where to turn. She was frustrated that God wouldn’t heal her child. After Anna has a freak accident, an extraordinary miracle unfolds in the wake of her dramatic rescue that leaves medical specialists mystified, her family restored, and their community inspired.
How I related
If you haven’t read my personal story of what I went through with Ulcerative Colitis, I encourage you to do so. As a Christian myself, I connected with this movie on so many levels. I felt like I have been that girl and gone through the same experiences. I know what it’s like to live in pain 24/7. People don’t realize how much your digestive system can affect your entire existence if it isn’t working correctly.
My faith has also come into question, but it’s also what got me through my toughest times. In the movie and in real life, the little girl Anna has her family rallying around her.
My family has always been 100% supportive. However, I don’t live near any of my family. So when I went through my struggle, I feel like my faith was one of the only things I could rely on. Doctors were trying to simply push pills on me, and so I had to rely on God, or my other option was to give up. I spent countless nights, laying in bed, in pain, contemplating how I could ever endure more of this.
Thankfully, by the grace of God and the healing power of nutrition, going gluten-free, along with a few tricks, I have now been medication-free for over five years. Am I cured? No, there is no cure for Ulcerative Colitis. But I’m no longer in pain, and it no longer affects my daily life.
My heart goes out to anyone struggling with a digestive disorder. It’s one of the reasons I started this website. I want to help make eating gluten-free one of the biggest factors in my healing, the easiest it can be! Going gluten-free can be overwhelming in itself, and it shouldn’t be.
Summary
The movie, Miracles From Heaven, is not just another cheesy Christian flick. It has great music too! In my opinion, it was done really well and I think Jennifer Garner and Kylie Rogers did an excellent job at capturing the emotions between a girl struggling in pain and a mother battling with her faith and stopping at nothing to help heal her daughter.
Buy Miracles From Heaven on Amazon
I encourage you to watch it. If you have or are currently suffering from a Digestive disease, you will connect with this movie on so many levels.
Thank you, Brian, for sharing about this movie; I have a friend that suffers from Crohn’s and will recommend it to him as well.