Basketball Injury Healed

Perfect love heals an ankle injured while playing basketball.

By Dani Corbitt, age 15

Back in January I was playing in a basketball game. It was on the night before our biggest game of the season. That night the referees were horrible. They weren't blowing their whistles for anything! Everyone was getting really angry and upset. Since I was the only one scoring on my team, the other team targeted me. I started getting very scared that I was going to get hurt. Well, sure enough, a girl tripped me, and I twisted my ankle really badly. It hurt to put any kind of pressure on it. I became really angry and scared.

When I got home, I took a nap. When I woke up, I remembered my favorite Bible passage: "Perfect love casteth out fear" (I John 4:18). With that in mind, I took a bath. In the tub I started listing all the things I was grateful for. After that, I listed all the things I loved about basketball and the game I had just played. I also thought about fear. I thought about how when I was asleep I hadn't felt any pain. I realized when I wasn't focused on the pain and swelling and all the potential problems, my ankle didn't hurt. When I was asleep, I wasn't afraid, and when I wasn't afraid, I wasn't in pain. Slowly, after listing all the things I love, the pain and fear started to melt away. Soon I wasn't in pain at all unless I put pressure on my foot.

Then I remembered what my coach had said right after it happened as I was being carried off the court: "Dani will be able to play tomorrow, right?" I took off the question mark and the "right" and got "Dani will be able to play tomorrow." I thought to myself, "I will play tomorrow, and I will walk right now." So I stood up … and sat right back down. It was rather painful. Immediately I told myself to do it again because I didn't need to be afraid. I was convinced I could walk without pain. So I stood up, stepped out of the tub, dried off, and got in bed -- without any pain.

The next morning I played my game free from pain. On top of a pain-free game, I scored 16 points with 5 assists and 3 rebounds -- my best game ever!

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