How God healed me and gave me back my life • PhilSTAR Life

This is my personal testimony—an offering of gratitude, and a prayer that anyone facing a similar battle will also experience the same divine healing I received.

For most of my life, I was running. Running between hospitals and clinics… meetings and lectures… advocacy work, charity missions, editorial deadlines, mentoring, and corporate work. I was the kind of person who could fit in a 12-hour workday before lunch. I rarely said no. I felt responsible for everything because somewhere along the way, I tied my worth to my work.

Looking back, I realize I wasn’t simply busy—I was addicted to work. Productivity became my oxygen; achievement, my adrenaline. Rest seemed wasteful. Silence felt suspicious. I wore many hats because I believed I could carry them all.

And for a while, I did.

Until 2023, when my body finally said, “Enough.”

The crisis that stopped me

A small lump on my abdominal wall—what I assumed was benign—turned into a frightening diagnosis: a very rare tumor, so rare that even my oncologist and dear friend, Dr. Tony Villalon, said, “Raffy, this is extremely rare. There’s hardly any data. No proven chemotherapy. No predictable radiotherapy response. Only wide resection.”

A whole-body PET scan then revealed additional suspicious lesions on my right parotid gland. Fine-needle biopsy suggested malignancy.

A quiet moment between uncertainty and care—when I was forced to pause, surrender, and face my own fragility.

Within six months, I underwent three surgeries, two of them major, with one involving a “reconstruction” of the muscles of my abdominal wall after a wide resection of the tumor, and the other one a thorough dissection of my parotid and neck area to remove two suspicious nodules, accumulating more than 10 hours of general anesthesia.

I was blessed beyond measure with an exceptional medical team—head and neck surgeons Drs. Jeannette Marie Matsuo, Alfie Pontejos, Rainier Lutanco; reconstructive surgeon Dr. Faye David-Paloyo; general surgeon Dr. Reynand Macaisa; anesthesiologists Drs. Butch Fellizar and Pearl Macaisa; oncologist Dr. Tony Villalon; and cardiologists Drs. John Anonuevo and Marie Barrientos-Regala—and the fellows, residents, and nurses of Manila Doctors Hospital and UP-PGH Medical Center. They removed what needed to be removed. They did their part brilliantly.

But the uncertainty of my disease—its rarity, its unpredictable course—took a heavy toll on my mind and spirit.

There came a point when I sensed my doctors and colleagues had brought me as far as medicine could. The rest, somehow, was between God and me.

My weight dropped to 128 lbs, dangerously low for my 5’10” frame. I felt brittle—not only physically, but emotionally and spiritually. For the first time in decades, I stopped everything. Rounds. Clinic work. Lectures. Advocacy work. Even my weekly newspaper column (in another major daily)—the work I had nurtured for over 22 years.

I feared I would never write again.

I felt empty, anxious, and uncertain about what “recovery” even meant.

A life-changing decision

I grew up reading and hearing the fourth commandment many times: “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.”

But knowing is not keeping. My Saturdays were always the busiest—hospital rounds, meetings, lectures, writing deadlines, errands, obligations I could not decline. The Sabbath was a beautiful idea, but not a lived reality.

Medicine reached its limit; the rest was between God and me. In my weakest hour, I stopped running and surrendered.

But when illness humbled me—when everything familiar was stripped away—something stirred inside: What if God was inviting me back to His rhythm, not mine?

In weakness, I made a decision: I would keep the Sabbath holy.

Not as ritual, but as surrender. Not as a lifestyle change, but as a lifeline. Not because I had nothing left—but because I finally needed God more than anything else.

And then everything changed.

I obeyed the Sabbath—and God rewrote my story, completing with His hand what medicine could only begin.

The healing that made no medical sense 

After the surgeries removed the tumors, something deeper began—something I cannot attribute to science alone.

Slowly, quietly, gently—God rebuilt me.

God rebuilt my life, not just my body. My weight restored to 160 lbs and my joy returned as I finally followed His rhythm.

My weight rose back to 160 lbs, my healthiest range. My energy returned. My sleep normalized. My anxiety softened. My joy—once buried— began to surface again.

I resumed hospital rounds, clinics, corporate work, volunteer projects, and yes, even my writing. To my surprise, I became even more productive in everything I do now than before my illness.

But this time, productivity was no longer my identity. It had become a side effect of obedience.

My relationships softened. My patience deepened. My mornings slowed into devotion rather than deadlines. I woke up each day with gratitude —and with strength I did not have before.

God did not only heal my body. He healed my pace. He healed my rhythm. He healed my life.

Why the sabbath was the turning point

People often ask, “Doc, what changed?” I always honor and thank my medical team—but the turning point was spiritual.

I kept the Sabbath holy.

The Sabbath is not a burden, but a blessing. It is not a ritual, but a relationship with the Creator who remembered my prayer.

It is the only commandment that begins with “Remember…” As though God knew it was the one humanity would most easily forget.

In Tagalog, it’s even more urgent: “Pakatandaan mo…” Do not forget this. Take this to heart.

God did not say, “Remember any rest day.” He specified the seventh day, the Sabbath—His day. Not for restriction, but for restoration. Not as a burden, but as a blessing. Not as a ritual, but as a relationship.

Just as He tested Adam and Eve with a single tree—not because the fruit was special, but because obedience was—He also gave the Sabbath as a test of obedience and trust for all generations.

When I began keeping the Sabbath, I wasn’t merely resting. I was aligning my life with God’s blueprint for human health—physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual.

A mission of testimony

Since then, God placed a burden on my heart: Tell the world what He did for me.

On my Facebook page (Raffy Ricafranca Castillo), I now share Sabbath testimonies from people whose lives transformed when they kept the Sabbath holy.

The pattern is unmistakable: restored health, renewed relationships, emotional stability, mental clarity, unexpected blessings, and spiritual revival.

I share these stories not to promote a denomination, but to highlight a divine prescription—a weekly reset written by the Creator Himself.

If God healed someone as driven, exhausted, and stubborn as I once was, then the Sabbath is not only a day—it is a miracle.

My closing testimony

I once lived as though the world depended on me. Today, I live knowing that my life depends on God.

The Sabbath completed my healing. It saved me—from illness, from burnout, and from the quiet arrogance of thinking I had to carry everything alone. It restored my body, realigned my spirit, and gently returned me to my true purpose.

Every Friday at sunset, I whisper a simple prayer: “Lord, thank You for healing me. Thank You for giving me back my life. I will remember Your Sabbath—as You remembered my prayer.”