Become a CBN partner and receive The Transforming Word: Verses to Overcome Fear and Experience Peace, our special DVD/CD gift to you.
CBN Partners are making a difference sharing the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Find out how.
CBN.com Hope Cabrera and her husband, Valentine, were on a trip to Raleigh from their home in Charlotte, North Carolina, when Hope, who was pregnant at the time, noticed that her feet and ankles were swelling.
"My feet looked like synthetic feet. They looked like bubbles tied to my ankles," Hope recalls. "It sent me into eclampsia [convulsions], and I had to have an early delivery. I was very swollen—my legs and everything."
Son Austin was born, but the swelling in Hope’s feet, diagnosed as edema, did not go down. Every step she took gave her intense pain.
"A newborn baby doesn’t weigh that much, but to carry him and take care of myself when I had to do it—it was agonizing," Hope explains.
Valentine and the children would rub Hope’s feet to ease the pain. The doctors didn’t give her medication—only orders to lose weight, thinking that maybe then the swelling would go down.
"If the doctor can’t do anything—that’s who we all turn to when we have medical situations—what can you do?" Hope asked herself.
Valentine knew that there was nothing he could do for his wife but pray.
Hope suffered with the swelling for more than two years. Then one afternoon, while watching television, Hope accidentally hit the channel button on the remote instead of the volume button, flipping the channel to The 700 Club.
"I was just getting ready to change back to my show when Pat Robertson said that there was someone suffering with edema and swelling," Hope explains. "I was thinking, Wait a minute. Could that be me? Could that be me? I looked down at my feet. I was thinking, Who else could it be?"
Hope decided to join Pat Robertson in prayer for healing.
"I looked at my feet after we finished the prayer," she says. "My feet were still big as ever, but I didn’t give up the faith. I kept the faith and I just said, 'I don’t know when it’s going to happen—maybe a month or so—but I’m going to keep the faith.' "
A few mornings later, Hope woke up to one of the best surprises of her life.
"I pulled the covers back," she says, "and my feet had returned. They were so small that I knew I could fit into shoes that I hadn’t worn in almost three years!"
Valentine was grateful to the Lord for answering their prayers.
"This is amazing to me," he says.
Hope can now do everything she needs to do for her family and in her job as a nanny. She has no trouble being on her feet and thanks God for the timely prayer that she heard just at the right time.
"It may not come as soon as you want it, but God heals and
God is there for you," says Hope. "When the time is
right, you’ll know. You’ll understand that it’ll
come for you. I guess that was my time."
A caring friend will be there to pray with you in your time of need.