Bryley is an adorable, smiley, people loving, and silly 4 year old girl.
From birth our little girl started showing some signs that things weren’t right. She was choking on every bottle. Everything that went in her mouth came back up. When baby food time came around, every spoonful came back up. We saw multiple doctors and had swallow studies done, in which everything appeared normal. At 15 months old, she started feeding therapy and has been in therapy multiple times a week for most of her life.
Fear started creeping in for her. She developed fears of anything in her mouth. Even a toothbrush near her mouth caused panic attacks. When we started our therapy journey we had to work towards her letting a speech pathologist put tools in her mouth because she had a severe fear of spoons. We even started putting spoons in her bathtub to make them appear as toys so that she would be more comfortable with them.
All we wanted was answers. Why was she choking and vomiting? We saw multiple doctors and numerous therapists. At the beginning of 2023 we entered 21 days of prayer, begging God for answers. In March of 2023 we decided to undergo a stomach scope and her therapist recommended they biopsy her esophagus for Eosinophilic Esophagitis; an autoimmune disorder which causes the body to react to certain food and/or environmental factors causing inflammation in the esophagus. The condition is tied to food allergies, and soon after we discovered she had an egg allergy. When I read about the condition I knew in my heart we had found the problem.
When results came back it was confirmed that she had a chronic disease called Eosinophilic Esophagitis (commonly called EOE). I broke down crying before the Lord. We had our answer that we had been praying for. By trial and error we were able to identify dairy being a trigger for her throat closing. We eliminated dairy from her diet and we were hopeful that we could move forward now that we knew what we were dealing with.
Fast forward two long years later and we still weren’t chewing and swallowing. However, God miraculously sustained a more than healthy weight living off formula, yogurt, and broth. All of the other children at her clinic with this condition had feeding tubes. Every therapist couldn’t believe she was so healthy. One therapist even commented that she was the healthiest child that doesn’t eat that she’s ever seen (while staring at her adorably squishy thighs). We felt God every step of this journey carrying us through every day.
Week after week of therapy crawled by. Constant vomiting in public, at every meal, and in the car. One baby step forward and two big steps backwards. God gave me a vision of her eating birthday cake at her birthday party that I held on to. Three birthdays had passed so far and we were still absolutely terrified to chew and swallow anything.
We ended up taking her to Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt to see a world renowned doctor who was leading research on the disease. We learned a lot about the condition. We told the doctor we had eliminated dairy and she was still choking and vomiting. He gave us the unfortunate news that not only does she have multiple triggers for her throat closing, but that the triggers can change as she grows. He put her on a medicine that only works for 30% of EOE patients and we hoped for the best.
The choking and vomiting and fear only got worse. By the time our 21 days of prayer in January of 2025 was approaching, things were at an all time low. Not only was she about to turn 4 and still not eating solids, but the choking and vomiting only had seemed to worsen. The doctor said our only option was a very painful monthly injection that she’d have to take for the rest of her life just to be able to swallow normally.
The level of fear that our child lived with was crushing. She became fearful of everything. Potty training, all foods and utensils, bugs, water, sand, you name it. Panic attacks that were terrifying. Screaming about getting in the bath, brushing her teeth and sitting on the toilet. It was like our fearless spunky kid wasn’t even in there any more. Fear had her paralyzed. She started having nightmares at night about a bad guy in all black who kept stealing her away and putting her in jail. We were at a loss. Our latest GI doctor wanted to biopsy her esophagus again, and although we didn’t want her to go through another scope, we were losing hope. That is, until January 2025…
In January 2025 we started off the year with our 21 days of prayer and also decided to take a break off of social media.After 42 days off of social media, I’m not sure if I want to come back! We had so many better things to do like pray our butts off for this little girl and lean into God’s voice. We have nothing but great news!
We are praising praising praising! Bryley’s scope results came back and her esophagus eosinophil count was low enough to not have a diagnosis! It really is a miracle, because her last scope placed her in the high/severe category with close to 40 eosinophils! After 21 days of prayer and going to BATTLE for our child, her Eosinophil count was an 11!! At 15 eosinophils you get a diagnosis of EOE. She is under the threshold to even have a diagnosis and no further treatment needed! We asked the doctor before we got results if it’s possible to outgrow this disease and she said no it’s chronic but can be become dormant. Regardless this is a miracle and I can’t think of a big enough way to glorify God with this. Her scope results rounded out 21 days but we were in the middle of a massive breakthrough and it didn’t seem right to quit now! I was called to extend to 40 days of prayer and fasting.
During the second leg of the prayer and fasting it became extremely apparent how much panic and fear was a factor in all of this. Irrational fears and panic around potty training, eating, water, bugs. Full on panic attacks. The fear was gripping and irrational. She’s had 12 different therapists since she was 15 months old, at 4 different facilities and nothing had worked. At this point all hope felt lost and we came to a standstill with therapy. Her therapist said that her anxiety and fear was too strong and that she has PTSD from all of the vomiting and will need anxiety medication and a psychologist before we can continue. The more we leaned in and listened to God and studied his word it became apparent that this terror within her is NOT of God and this was a stronghold on her life from the enemy. I poured myself into scripture and all different types of battle prayers alongside my prayer warriors (y’all know who you are!) I became a fierce lioness roaring into the face of anything evil that would have my baby gripped by the throat. I had years of sadness, years of exhaustion, but now I was straight MAD! Our eyes were truly opened to the extent of spiritual warfare and how much it plays into our every day battles, health, and mental well being.
It was during this time that God revealed to me a generational stronghold in a very visual way. My friend, who had just finished deliverance ministry school told me about this prayer called the Courts of Heaven prayer. There are certain legalities where the enemy has legal ground in certain circumstances and in these circumstances the Courts of Heaven prayer can help. It involves apologizing for your sins, your ancestors sins (past, present known and unknown) and you petition the Courts of Heaven for the prayer to be answered. I tried this prayer and at first nothing seemed to change. Another friend of mine had a friend who has the gift of seeing in the spirit, so around this time my friend told her about what’s been going on with my child and her struggle with eating and asked her to pray with her for my child. As they were praying she saw a vision of my daughter with a snake wrapped around her, just under her rib cage. She also saw a symbol that prompted her to ask if there was any freemasonry in my family because that’s what she interpreted from what she was seeing. So I immediately messaged a family member of mine to ask and she messaged me back and said “oh yeah, there are freemasons all throughout our family’s history”. So I did the Courts of Heaven prayer again but this time I specifically prayed for the Lord to forgive my ancestors of any oaths they have taken, any cult like behavior or any freemasonry. As soon as I added in this specific piece into my prayer I envisioned the image of the snake unraveling and falling off of her. That was THE biggest turning point. We were able to storm the gates of hell and pray this panic and terror off of her. And y’all, when it was broken, it was broken. It was gone. The very next day the fear that had taken hold of her just disappeared.
Within a few days she was swimming under water, completely potty trained (sheer miracle), and feeding herself! The kid flat thrived! With the anxiety and panic around eating out of the way we are actually able to TEACH her how to eat (including her therapist) where as before we couldn’t get past panic/vomit enough to be able to explain how to maneuver her mouth. Now she has food in her mouth learning to maneuver it and chew it with zero fear and all silly. She has learned that when fear creeps in that she calls it out in the name of Jesus! She still had to learn and practice the oral skills in order to be chomping down a double cheeseburger but each day she was making fearless astronomical strides.
Therapy was slow and mentally taxing. Although fear was shattered, she was still struggling with maneuvering food in her mouth and unable to figure out how to chew and swallow properly. We felt peace about the journey, as we knew full well that God is with us every step. We were so close but the very last hurdle was her actually biting into something, moving the pieces with her mouth, and chewing and swallowing. She worked fearlessly towards this.
One night in May of 2025 my husband woke up in the middle of the night for seemingly no reason. He started thinking about her lack of motor ability and that she was well over 4 and the journey was still not over. He prayed to God, asking him specifically to help her figure this last piece out. The next day on a beautiful Saturday lake day, on her own with no one watching, Bryley bit into a cheese puff and chewed it and swallowed it. The floodgates opened! She’s eating fries, Hawaiian rolls, chips, chicken nuggets, pizza, cheese, tacos, church gummies (a dream of hers). Day after day something new!
It was almost as if God wanted her Dad’s prayer to close out this story. What a testament to a praying Dad! By his stripes she is healed and as a bonus, her egg allergy and seasonal allergies vanished! God is so faithful and does more with our pain than we can ever imagine. I pray that she will be a walking witness of God’s strength, glory and love, that she’s forever unafraid of the enemy and his schemes and can recognize her authority over evil. I can’t thank all my prayer warriors enough and Highlands Kids At Church of the Highlands for going to battle with us!
The enemy is the father of lies and fear. He is out to seek, kill, and destroy us. But Mama Bear is no longer afraid to send that coward packing back to the pit of hell where he belongs. We have authority over him by his stripes and I’ve developed such a passion for helping others be set free of illness and anxiety. I promised God that if he granted us this miracle that I’d never stop shouting this testimony. That I’d shout it to the edges of the earth. I want to get this story out so that I can glorify him in every way just like I promised.