Nancy Keating: Overcoming Osteoporosis

Nancy Keating was recruited by the University of North Carolina in 1978 and awarded a full-ride scholarship as middle distance runner. But her career at UNC had a rocky start.

“I had incurred a knee injury there and at that time didn’t know the Lord and met my husband Mark. He shared his healing testimony with me, and I had never heard anything about that,” Nancy says.

Mark Keating, an All-American Swimmer, prayed with Nancy concerning her knee injury, and miraculously Nancy was not only healed, but she gave her life to Jesus Christ. Nancy and Mark later married.

Active throughout her life, Nancy was pregnant for the second time and experiencing a lot of aches and pains in 2000. She thought it was nothing to worry about. But after the baby was born, the symptoms grew worse and she began experiencing intense pain.

“It was just complete shut down in my life,” she says. “I didn’t want to leave the house. I was in pain all the time. I really went through a stage of depression and it got so bad I remember going home and visiting my parents and they took a look at me and they said, ‘Wow, you’ve lost weight.’ I got on the scale and had lost 10, 15 pounds and not even knowing what was taking place in my body.”

Doctors examined Nancy, but it took some time before a diagnosis was made. Finally, tests confirmed rheumatoid arthritis and osteoporosis.

“I’m forty years old. I have a baby and an 11 year old, and I’m thinking, ‘This can’t be. I have too much living left to do’,” Nancy says.

In April 2001, Nancy and Mark received a bad report while at a doctor’s appointment. There was little the doctor could do, six medications had already been tried, and none worked. Leaving the hospital, Mark remembered back to 22 years ago when he was a student at UNC, where he first met Nancy.

“And I said, you know what, we’ve prayed before,” Mark remembers.

“We just stopped and cried out to God, and prayed a prayer of agreement right then and there,” Nancy says.

“As Matthew 18 says and that was really, that was the time period where now God was going to begin to do that work in her body,” Mark says.

“It says by the stripes of Jesus we are healed. And we just stood on that promise and proclaimed it and just spoke the word of God over my body,” she says. “No matter what I felt like, no matter what I looked like, no matter what I could or couldn’t do in the home, we just continued to speak God’s work in that situation.”

As the days passed, Nancy began to see little improvements.

“I definitely feel the Lord told me . . . felt better,” Nancy says.

Also, God showed Nancy something.

“It was a real spiritual battle,” she recalls. “One thing that He did show me was I really believed I had some bitterness in my heart in my life toward a certain person, towards a certain situation. And as I dwelt on that I felt that made the symptoms worse and so I came to the point where I needed to forgive that particular person.”

More days passed as Nancy continued to get stronger. Not only was she doing household work again and playing with her children, but Nancy began working out and lifting weights.

“Each step inspires the next one,” Mark says. “When you begin to see little victories you get an appetite a little bit more aggressive and you certainly don’t want to lose any ground.”

In 2004, Nancy continued to heal and get stronger to the point when she could run again. Today, Nancy is ranked in the top five of the USA Track and Field Masters women ages 45 to 49. She competes in the 800 and 1500 meter races where many times young men and women 30 years her junior compete against her.

“I remember going in for my bone density a year ago. I’d shown sign of osteoporosis and he looked at the results and said, ‘Wow, Are you taking Fosomax or something?’ I said, ‘No, it’s the Lord, I’m running and I’m lifting. It’s the Lord,’” Nancy says.

“To me, it’s another testimony of what God can do in our lives and in anybody’s life who is willing to step out and believe God for His word,” Mark says.