Susanna Smith – Our Story

Our story began in December when I’d finished a night shift as a nurse at the Christie Hospital in Manchester. I was relaxing looking at Facebook and it suggested I should be friends with a guy called Jezz Smith because we had some mutual friends. His picture was him with a melon as a smile and I could see that our mutual friends were all people from Nazarene Theological College in Didsbury, Manchester. I clicked through to his page and saw the advert for his book Faith through the storm about when he was struck down with Guillain-Barre syndrome. Since I love reading and like to read about how God has helped people through adversity, especially illness, I decided to download the book on Amazon and over the next couple of days read Jez’s book and got involved in his story. It touched me so much since his story struck a cord with events in my life of chronic illness: I had ME for sex years and also went through a break up of a relationship. I decided to message Jez to say how much I liked the book and how much I liked the book and how there were similarities in our story and that’s when it all started. We messaged each other for a while, then chatted on the phone and two days later we met in a play centre for coffee whilst Jez’s kids (Lauren, 6 and Luke, 10) played. The rest is history and our relationship has gone from strength to strength. In March we went to Leeds (where I went to uni) for a weekend and Jez proposed to me. We got married on August the 23rd 2014 in Manchester and had a fantastic day, with Luke as a ring bearer and Lauren as a flower girl. Over the summer, Jez with me on backing vocals have been recording an album of songs he wrote when he was ill in hospital. It is set to be released later this year and we are hoping to donate some of the proceeds and promote GAIN at the concerts we will be doing over the next year.