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  • January 23, 2025
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A Heart Healed, Another Made New: Al’s Story

I grew up in a small town in Manitoba. I never really went to church. I knew nothing about the Bible. I knew nothing about God. I didn’t pay attention to any of it.

I lived mainly out of ego and instant gratification, oblivious to the people I was hurting around me. Then, about 7 years ago, I started to question my life, myself, faith—everything. I started having conversations with my buddy, Dave (who later introduced me to Alpha). Dave grew up as a Christian. I’ve always really respected him and the life that he’s lived—so, I looked to Dave for advice. He handled me with kid gloves because I was skeptical about everything. He listened and thoughtfully responded to my questions. One day, he said to me, “You know, maybe God’s trying to get your attention” and I shrugged that off. 

Then, in December 2019, God got my attention. It wasn’t in a way I was expecting. My daughter, Ava, who was 14 at the time, had been sick with the flu for four or five days. But we knew it was the flu. By the morning of day five, I was out at fire training at work, and my wife, Bobbi, was home with Ava. She just looked at her and said, “I need to take you to the doctor.” Ava was pale and pretty lethargic. Bobbi messaged me at work and said, “I’m taking her to the clinic, right across from the urgent care centre.”

As Bobbi was driving, she had a strong, overwhelming compulsion to turn into the urgent care center instead of the clinic. She did. When they assessed Ava, they took her in immediately because her vitals were tanking. As they started assessing her, she began to crash. Bobbi, who had been a nurse for 20 years, was watching what was happening, pointing things out, but the team couldn’t figure out what was wrong. She was going into cardiogenic shock.

Then, a doctor—an angel, I guess—stepped in. He wasn’t even part of the case, but he heard the commotion. He wheeled a portable ultrasound machine over to Ava, did a quick scan, and diagnosed pericarditis—fluid around the heart lining, preventing it from beating properly. At that moment, Ava started to code. Her heart was stopping.

Bobbi messaged me at work. Her message was: “You have to come here now.” I knew something was terribly wrong. As I was heading toward the urgent care center, Bobbi called again: “They’re rushing the PICU team from the Children’s Hospital to get her.” So, I just re-routed to the Children’s Hospital. 

As I was driving up Crowchild Trail, I saw the PICU team heading south to get Ava. When I passed them, I did something I had never really done before—I prayed. I said, “Please God, save my daughter and get her to the hospital.”

They rushed Ava in, and the doctors told us the flu had attacked her heart, causing swelling, which led to the fluid buildup. This compressed her heart and prevented it from beating properly. Days later, after they stabilized her, the cardiologist had a one-on-one conversation with me. She told me, “Ava was not supposed to survive that first night.” Then, she showed me the MRI, the scarring, and the extent of the damage. She said, “This is permanent. The heart can’t heal itself this way. She’ll need a transplant.”

That took us to our knees. Ava was a track-and-field star, a gymnast, a high-level athlete—and her heart was literally broken. We were sent home just before Christmas, but under strict guidelines. Her heart rate couldn’t elevate past a certain point, or it could throw her heart into crisis again. Even climbing the stairs in our house could kill her.

During this time, messages started pouring in—family, friends, acquaintances, co-workers, even people we didn’t know. And every message had the same theme: “We are praying for Ava.”

My whole life, those words—”I’ll pray for you”—had meant nothing to me. I assumed people just said it as a polite condolence. But now, we had hundreds of messages. My buddy Dave and my new Christian friends were praying. Even people who didn’t go to church were praying. I ran into an old friend, and he hugged me and said, during evening prayers with my son, we have been praying for Ava.

This interaction really drove home the impact of collective prayers and I realized in this moment that these prayers were no longer just words.

I started to understand what people were doing. I was also desperate—I needed something, anything, to hold onto. So, I started praying myself. I had no idea how to pray, but I talked to God in my car, in the firetruck, during workouts—all day long. I made promises to God about how I would change my life if He healed Ava. I didn’t even know if I believed it, but I had no choice—I was desperate.

We read every message to Ava, and she thanked each person out loud. We started to feel something in our home—a shift in our environment we couldn’t explain. Ava felt it too. She didn’t say anything was happening inside, but she could feel the overwhelming support.

After three months, the cardiologist wanted to do a stress test. They weren’t optimistic—she wasn’t expected to get through it without severe complications. They hooked her up to monitors and a defibrillator. She started walking. The cardiologist watched the monitors and Ava closely. She increased the speed, then increased it again. Ava remained motionless. The speed increased again. Eventually, Ava was at a full sprint. The nurse operating the treadmill said, “We’re maxed out—we can’t go any faster.” Ava kept going, determined. Finally, the cardiologist stopped the test. She turned to my wife and said, “Well, that was interesting.”

Days later, the phone rang. It was the cardiologist. “I’ve reviewed Ava’s test results and MRI, and I can’t find anything wrong with her heart. She has absolutely no scarring. The damage is gone. She has a perfectly healthy heart.“

I asked, “Are you sure you’re looking at the right tests? Could they be mixed up?” I expected her to laugh and correct me, but she didn’t. I said, ” Are you sure you’re looking at the right tests? How does this happen?” There was about a five-second delay, and then she goes, “Uh yeah well, it’s a miracle. Tell Ava to have a nice life. Goodbye.”

It’s still surreal to me. This took place five years ago and so every day I am honestly just trying to fulfill the promises that I made to God—and I’m serious about that. It changed my life fundamentally. Looking back, I realized that I had been talking to God in my head for my whole life. I just hadn’t connected it before.

I’ve had moments in my career where I now see that God was speaking to me. One time, during my first year on the job, I was in a fire on the second floor of the building. The room was completely blacked out, and there was a hole burned through the floor in front of me. I couldn’t see anything, and suddenly, a voice in my head said, “Don’t take one more step.” It was so clear that I thought the guy behind me had said it.

I turned around and asked him, “Did you just say something?” He said, “No, I didn’t say anything.” I stopped. Later, we realized that if I had taken one more step, I would have fallen through the floor into the fire below. At the time, I couldn’t process what had happened.

Now, I look back and know that God was there.

There are so many moments like that in my life, where I can now see that God has always been there—holding me up, walking with me, and sometimes even carrying me. I just couldn’t see it then.

So, if you’re on the fence about following Jesus, learn about the Bible! That’s where Alpha is great—it’s a great tool.  Read the Bible daily. Find recaps online that guide you through the Scriptures and the Gospels in a year. That understanding helped me sort through what was true. And through that, my prayers and daily readings of Scripture led to a real connection with God.

Faith is a daily process. One of the biggest changes in my life is realizing that I am not in control. Of course, I have to do my part—I have to take responsibility for myself and those around me. But ultimately, it’s God’s plan. Every day, I am learning to trust Him more.

And that trust—knowing that He is in control—has given me a peace I never had before. Now, when things get tough, I turn to God. I hand things over and trust Him. That has been one of the hardest lessons for me, but also the most rewarding. When you spend your whole life believing that you are in control of your own path and your own outcomes, surrendering that is difficult.

But learning that God has this—that it’s His plan—has been the most freeing realization of my life.

Thank you, Al, for bravely sharing your journey of discovering God’s presence in your life and how God miraculously healed your daughter! 

Did you know Alpha is starting up at all campuses on February 6, 2025? Alpha is a safe space to explore the Bible deeper and introduce someone to Jesus. Who will you invite?

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