God, Our Healer

A Journey of Suffering, Faith and The Supernatural Power of God

It was an incredibly hot summer day, just like every other day in Haiti. I had just returned to the nation after spending a couple of months visiting family in the United States. The following months, I would be interim director of an orphanage on the island of La Ganove in a little village called Ti Palmiste. The day I arrived, there was news of a virus spreading through the country. Chikungunya was its name.

Our small team was told that it was an epidemic and one of my dear missionary friends encouraged me to go back home until things had gotten better. It was explained that this virus was blood-borne and was spread primarily through mosquitos. Its name, Chikungunya, literally meant “to be contorted in pain” and it was informally known as the “bone-breaking disease.” It was an unknown virus in that there was still no cure and no medication that could help with the pain that it caused. Typically, it would cause a person to be bed-bound for anywhere from 3-14 days in excruciating pain, high fever, and possible rash. The pain could be in one part of your body or many parts of your body depending on how it reacted in your bloodstream. After the initial days of infection, most people were able to stand with help and move around as the pain continued to lessen. This virus would then be in your blood and could cause “relapses of pain” within the first year of infection. After this first year, 97% of those who contracted the virus developed life-immunity.

With all this information and a lot of faith, I continued on from Port-Au-Prince to the island knowing with assurance that God had called me there for a reason and that He was the Healer of all disease, so I didn’t need to be afraid.

Within two weeks of our arrival, the majority of the children and Haitian staff had contracted the virus and we were working non-stop in the Haiti heat to keep fevers down and to pray fervently over the children who were nearly all bed-bound in incredible pain. The three other Americans that had ventured there with me to serve that first month, all contracted it as well. It was terrible. Everyone was suffering and there were not enough of us to help and care for everyone in need. Then, it finally hit me.

It was about nine in the morning. I typically woke up around 4 AM and was out meeting with the staff by 6 AM, so being that it was nine and no one had seen me, they came looking. A staff member named Renel found me on the floor on my mat in the room I was in. It felt like it was 120 degrees. I was confused and in incredible pain with a high fever. I couldn’t speak English and was mumbling words in Portuguese and Creole. Renel grabbed my mat and dragged me outside where he proceeded to dump buckets of water on me to cool my body temperature down. I was confused as to why I couldn’t move my arms or my legs. I began to cry. It was June 2014.

This was just the beginning of my journey with chronic pain. I had no idea that I would be in the 3% of those that the virus reacts differently in the bloodstream. By March of 2015, I was completely bed-ridden and had to use a wheelchair to get around. By this time, I was in NYC living at the ministry that I had previously served with, Street Life Ministries. The Lord had told me during a fast in Haiti that I was to return from January to September of 2015.

This sudden loss of all my physical ability coupled with the intensity of nonstop pain I was experiencing was the greatest testing of my faith I had ever walked through up to that point. I had just returned from Haiti where we were seeing people miraculously healed on a regular basis (blind eyes opened, deaf ears opened, lame getting up to walk) to being in desperate need of a miracle myself. It seemed as though God had suddenly closed His ears to my prayers. Was I not as important to God as those He was healing in Haiti? Did my pain and distress not matter to Him? Why was He waiting so long?

I found that I had zero control over the situation and that there was nothing that I could physically do to change my situation. My days were spent on a bed in constant, excruciating pain. There were so many people who were praying for me, believing with me, encouraging me, visiting, etc! The more time that I was bedridden, the more people found out and began to pray. I wondered when my healing would come. Would I have to wait months? Years? Decades? I got to a point where I was so exhausted and felt completely worthless. I could no longer serve or help anyone else, what value did my life have now? I began to believe the lie that I was just a burden to everyone around me and that’s when I cried out to God and asked Him to take my life.

This was the lowest point I have ever reached in my life. I remember the day as if it was yesterday. I was lying in bed at my mom’s house and the pain was so intense I began to cry (again). I began to cry out to God and ask Him to take my life. I told Him that I didn’t have enough faith to go years believing. I told Him that I didn't have a faith like Amy Carmichael (a missionary who endured a similar sickness, but it lasted for her until she passed away). I told Him that I didn’t think that I was needed anymore in the world and that it would be so much better if He would just take me right then and there so I could at least be relieved of the physical and emotional pain I was experiencing.

In the midst of my groaning before the Lord, He spoke loud and clear. He said to me, “Weslea, what you do does not make you important. Who you are makes what you do important.”

This phrase changed my life in that moment. I realized that any of the service that we do as believers has zero value in and of itself. In fact, most of the service we do can easily be done by unbelievers! It’s who I am that makes what I do important. It is the fact that I am God’s daughter that makes cleaning the toilet the most important job I could do. Cleaning the toilet has minimal value, in and of itself, but when someone important does the job, then it is noticed.

At this point in my life, I had been a full-time missionary for ten years. I had served the addicted, those without homes, street children, women who prostitute themselves. I had led worship in massive churches, in house churches, in houses of prayer all over the USA and in both Brazil and Haiti. I had been an excellent doer. The major problem was that I had found my value and worth only in that which I could accomplish for God and for people. I felt valuable when people noticed me, accoladed my work, wanted to be like me. I had missed God’s heart entirely.

My life changed in this encounter with Jesus/Truth. I truly had a revelation of His love for me as I laid helpless and weak on a bed. I had intrinsic value and worth simply because I belonged to Jesus. I was HIS and that was all that mattered.

I continued on for four more months in that condition of bed-riddenness with doctors telling me I would never walk again. And then, God healed me.

I remember clearly, August 1, 2015 I decided to believe God is Who He says He is, my Healer. I was going to believe Him no matter what my circumstances looked like. I decided on that day that I was going to take each day at a time and believe for His healing. I would wake up in the morning with pain and I would say out loud “Today is the day I am getting healed.” I would attempt to do things to exercise my faith, which on some days, was simply lifting a water bottle to my own mouth (as there were times I was not able to do even that on my own). At the end of each day, if I wasn’t healed yet, I would say “Thank You, Jesus, MY Healer, You can heal me in my sleep if You so please.” I would fall asleep and rinse and repeat!

I did this for 15 days and on August 15, 2015 the Holy Spirit confirmed to me that I needed to get up and run.

I had been an avid runner (marathons and such), but this was comical and nerve-racking to me. Even an attempt to walk would be extremely painful and leave me worse off than before, but I knew that He was speaking and there was a surge of expectancy in my heart.

I got up, put my running shoes on, and hobbled out to the driveway.

I began to “run.” It was more like an attempt and I probably looked completely foolish, but I was unaware at the time. I was focused on one thing only. I began to run and I felt pain, but it was not increasing and I was able to run, which was the first miracle. So I kept going and I prayed out loud, “Lord, YOU told me to run. YOU told me You would heal me while I run. Well, here I am!” And within one block, I felt the pain travel from my feet up through my hands and then it was completely gone.

I began to cry and shout and wave my arms around, which normally would have caused unbearable pain. I instantly knew that I needed to testify. I saw a man walking up in front of me so I kept running. As I got closer, I noticed the back of his shirt read “Hell-bound.” I thought how appropriate it was that out of the thousands of believers that were praying for me, this man would be the first to hear that I had been healed.

I ran up to him and began to excitedly tell him how I had just been in a wheelchair that morning and that God had healed me. I couldn’t stop moving, crying, laughing. He probably thought I was insane. He was looking at me so strangely like he didn’t understand, so I decided to ask him if he had any pain in his body. He told me that he had a 20-year old injury in his shoulder and he couldn’t lift his arm up past a horizontal level, which he then showed me. I told him that I believed God wanted him to know that He was real and a Healer and asked if I could pray. He said yes and up shot his arm within these few words “Jesus, thank You for healing him.” He was then in shock and wanted to hear again what had happened to me, but I knew I must keep going to tell others.

I ran a mile that day and I told multiple people (those stories are equally as exciting) of what God had done for me and He showed up in tremendous ways.

This is just a snippet of my story and my hope is that today if you are in need of a miracle that your faith has been encouraged to believe God. If you would like to read more of my story you can find pieces of it in both my books, The Orphan Mentality and To Weep With Those Who Weep (coming from Presence Pioneers Media in 2025). God is a Healer and He delights to heal us. You are unfathomably loved by Jesus.