During this Lenten season of reflection — a time when many grow closer to the Lord — a local young woman was asked to share, “What has Jesus done for you?”

“What hasn’t he done for me?” was her immediate reply. “If it wasn’t for my turning back toward God, I don’t know that I’d be here today.”

Jennifer Price — Jen or Jenny to her friends and family — has seen a lifetime of difficulties for someone just approaching her 30s. Jenny was born “in a brown brick house on Main Street in Nappanee” — literally — as the church her family attended at that time did not believe in doctors. She grew up with six siblings — four brothers and two sisters, a loving mother and an abusive father.

Jenny doesn’t hide the facts of the abuse suffered by the family at the hands of her father — a man who was on the worship team, preached and testified on Sundays — confusing the daughter who’d just witnessed him abusing a family member on the way to church. (Her mother divorced him when Jenny was 16).

But she said she was able to forgive him when he was on his death bed and whether he ever confessed his wrongdoings and asked for forgiveness she can only hope.

In addition, Jenny’s been plagued with hearing and balance problems, multiple ear infections since she was a child. When she was asked while getting an MRI if she suffered a traumatic blow to the head as a child, “Probably!” was her sardonic reply.

Despite all that, to those who knew her she seemed to be a pretty positive person. There was a time in her life though that she admits to turning her back on God, to being angry with him, almost denying his existence. Yet she knew that she must believe in him or how could she be angry?

She was beginning her journey back to a relationship with God when a traumatic event occurred in her life. She was in college at the time and described herself as “a very active girl, hard worker, high achiever and goal oriented.”

But all those labels changed drastically as a result of a car accident. The accident happened on Nov. 5, 2004, and within two weeks of the accident she was very ill and said, “I never got normal.”

It took several months (August 2005) before she was diagnosed with neurocardiogenic syncope — a neurological condition that, according to Jen, sends wrong signals to the heart causing blood to pool in the arms and legs and not enough going to the heart.

It’s a condition that her mother and one of her brothers also has but Jen still believes that injuries to her C1- andC-2 vertebrae in her neck, which is located in front of the medulla (lower half of the brain stem) that controls cardiac and respiratory functions, caused the condition to appear in her.

The condition devastated her. She was physically exhausted. “I slept 18 hours a day. I couldn’t walk. I’d literally crawl into the kitchen. It was real scary. I couldn’t be who I was anymore. “

Because it took so long to diagnose, she wasn’t treated seriously at first. Then she was given two options — medicine or a pacemaker. She didn’t respond well to the medicine and she knew the pacemaker was causing major complications in some patients. She was told there was nothing else that could be done.

“I couldn’t help but think, ‘Is this it?’ Any day could be my last. I felt the medical community had hung me out to dry and some family and friends started shifting away because they didn’t know how to respond. It’s at times like that you’re forced to believe in God or not.”

Jen said it was during this time that she started truly believing IN him and not just of him. She grew up a believer, attended church, read the Bible, but it was during this time of illness and weakness that her faith became strong.

“I truly started exercising my faith walk with God,” she said. “Before then it was word without action, which is meaningless.”

Jen admitted that before her illness she was a full time college student, she’d been married to her husband Jason for two years, getting straight A’s, had her white picket fence and was defining her worth by her achievements.

“If I’m honest, I didn’t want God to be number one. God rearranged everything in my life and rightfully so,” she said.

Losing her physical capabilities, her achievements, even her home she looked around and asked, “Is God still there and does he love you? And he is. God slowly built me back up,” she said.

There were dark times when she would cry out to God asking, “Do you know how much pain I’m in? Heal me or give me peace,” she’d pray.

In those times she said she felt God’s presence more than ever. Price had some intense spiritual experiences that included feeling herself surrounded by holy ministering angels. “God reassured me it wasn’t my time to go,” she said.

She has been working her way back to health and is still not 100 percent, but experienced another miracle in the birth of her daughter, Moriah, Aug. 24, 2007.

“It was absolutely a miracle of God,” she said. “I prayed every day for specific things about my pregnancy and every prayer I prayed God answered.”

She wanted to have her child delivered by mid-wife at Fairhaven. But because of her heart, they feared she needed to be at the hospital with a cardiologist on hand. She knew that her heart could stop at any moment during the delivery and possibly not restart, but there were no complications and within two hours of getting to the hospital Moriah was born.

She’s also realized that both her recovery and her spiritual journey has been a slow, gradual progress, but said “it’s the perfect speed for me. The first thing I pray when I get up in the morning is for the Holy Spirit to be with me and direct my way.”

“Every time God allows healing I’m ready for it. I believe the affliction was allowed so that I could mature in Christ. I need to have a solid foundation so that when the storms come, I don’t crumble,” she shared.

Jenny said she’s learned more compassion and mercy for others through this ordeal. “There are so many people hurting out there and not feeling love from those around them,” she said and wants them to know that Christ loves them. “I definitely feel like I have purpose.

“I do not take a day for granted,” she said. “I honestly wake up thinking I’m so blessed to be where I’m at.”