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CBN.com – How would you feel if every time you took a step it felt like shards of broken glass were piercing through your skin? How would you feel if every muscle, every joint in your body, ached so deeply it hurt to take a breath? How would you feel if every doctor you turned to said your pain was all in your mind? This is Waid Kidd and this is his story.
The year was 1952. The Honeymooners made its debut, the song "Unforgettable" hit the top of the music charts, and one of the most extensive outbreaks of polio swept through the nation.
Six-year-old Waid Kidd was one of 60,000 Americans afflicted by this crippling and sometimes fatal disease.
"I had polio in my legs, in my lower extremities, from my waist down," says Waid. "I was put into a polio hospital on the Kanal River. It was set up just for polio patients. I can remember the big iron lungs they had people in, and I can remember children in little beds. I remember the day that I got out, the doctors said, 'Son, we don’t know why you’re different, but you’re one of the ones that is walking out. You’re blessed. You’re different.' "
These words would ring true in the years to come.
"As my life progressed, I realized I didn’t have the strength or the body muscle or the coordination that the other boys had, so I turned toward academics rather than sports," he explains.
Fragile and weak, Waid’s body never seemed to be as durable as the other boys’. Nevertheless, as time went on, he took his bumps and bruises with stride -- until things began to change.
"About 15 years ago, it started," remembers Waid. "It started with pain in my legs, and it was very severe pain. The doctors couldn’t put it together. I began to have lesions all over my body. My body would crack and bleed. I had irritable bowel syndrome, so internally it was affecting me. I had sleep apnea; I would fall asleep suddenly at the snap of a finger. It had even begun to affect my heart muscle. They began to do electrocardiographs on my heart to see if maybe I had a heart problem, but it was muscular. If I turned a corner too fast, I’d fall. I had no sense of balance, so I began to use canes to try to stabilize my walk."
Waid was discouraged and frustrated by the unrelenting pain and strange symptoms that doctors couldn’t diagnose. But even more frustrating were the disheartening comments about his health.
"When a doctor tells you that it’s in your head, and another doctor tells you it’s in your head, you believe," says Waid. "You begin to believe it’s in your head until you feel the pain."
After years of tests, X rays, and MRIs, doctors were finally able to diagnose the problem.
"They explained to me that as you age, those nerves that have repaired themselves begin to break," says Waid. "People who have had polio in their youth have the symptoms return. The condition returns but not the disease."
Doctors determined that Waid was suffering from post-polio syndrome, a non-curable, debilitating condition.
"There was nothing they could do," he explains, "so all I could do was come home and live with it as best as I could. I was prayed for in many places to be healed and to be touched by God and for the symptoms to go away, but I never worried about it."
But there was one person in Waid’s life who didn’t share the same sentiment: his wife, Linda.
"Waid always had a peace," Linda says. "I was the one who was always in turmoil, wanting him to be out of pain. I knew how severe it was and not able to do anything about it. You always ask that question, 'Why him, Lord,' one that has so much to give and so much going for him?' There were times that it would just almost be unbearable. He would come home, and it was like he would eat dinner and he was gone. It was like he wasn’t even in the house and very lonely."
Just to manage the pain, Waid took up to 30 pills a day. Over the course of Waid's life, literally thousands of people had prayed for his healing. But it seemed that the more people prayed, the worse his condition became.
"I was in bed for six-and-a-half days. I could not get out of bed," Waid recalls. "I told my wife, 'Linda, I’ve got to get up' -- It was a Sunday -- 'I want to drive myself to church, because if I don’t drive myself to church, you won’t let me drive myself to work tomorrow, and I’m going to work tomorrow.' "
Waid went to the night service and sat in the back row. As soon as he was seated, he realized something.
"The pastor wasn’t there. It wasn’t even a real church service. It was a praise fest," he says.
Upset and annoyed because he really wanted to hear the Word of God, Waid reluctantly began to worship with the rest of the congregation.
Says Waid, "At the end of the service, they asked for people who needed to have prayer to come forward."
Since Waid had been prayed over more times than he could count, he was in no hurry to go down front.
"The minister of music stood up and he said, 'We’re not done. God’s not done. There’s someone else here who needs to be prayed for.' Well, I kind of looked around," Waid recollects, "and I said, I know I need to be prayed for, so I got up and made my way forward."
One by one, people began laying hands on Waid, praying for him.
"The
power of the Lord started pouring over me," he says. "As
best I can describe it, it was a bucket of warm water, and it
was slowly poured over the top of my head. It went down over me,
except it didn’t just go down over me; I felt it go through
me. It went all the way to my feet and went out the heels of my
feet. I realized the pain was gone. I realized what had happened,
and you could not hold me down. I was all over that church. I
was all over the choir loft. It was gone completely, wholly gone
instantly. I can’t explain it in words. I can’t explain
that washing. All I can tell you was it went through me and I
felt it go."
Linda recalls Waid coming home and greeting her in the kitchen.
"He handed me his cane, and he said, 'I don’t need this anymore,' " says Linda. "I didn’t understand what had happened. He handed me that cane, and he started dancing around the kitchen. I knew the minute he walked in here he had been totally healed, but there’s a part of you, the human part, that says, 'Is it really going to be gone for good? Are the symptoms going to come back?' "
It’s been almost seven years since God healed Waid, and today he’s a different man. Just ask his wife.
"Every day is a joy. Every day is a new adventure," she says. "We ride our bikes a lot, we walk a lot, things that we really couldn’t do before, because he was not able."
Adds Waid, "I want people to understand that God’s power has no hold-back point. There is no limit to what God can do. Doctors told me I was incurable. Doctors could only treat the symptoms, but the good word is that there is hope beyond what the doctors can give you. There is hope beyond your worst condition.
"I give Him the glory. I give Him the honor. There is nothing in Waid that is special. It is only the special power of God that we as humans have a difficult time understanding. I want people to know that He’s there for them. All they have to do is reach out and take His hand and trust and know that He’s going to do that."
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