Shelley Maurice-Maier
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Shelley Maurice-Maier, PA-C, says her journey toward spiritual health and maturity—and toward becoming a medical practitioner, Christian counselor, and inspirational speaker—began with the diagnosis of a rare autoimmune disease called Eosinophillic Gastroenteritis (EG). Its debilitating symptoms included full-body eczema, asthma, migraines, abdominal pain, and sensitivity to numerous foods and the environment. By the time Shelley was four–years–old, pain had become the unrelenting focus of her life. Abuse would further mar her innocence and inflict emotional pain. “Yet in a way I never could have anticipated,” she says, “this also became the fertile ground in which God grew the seeds of love and the message He had planted deep within me.”
Gifted with a singing voice and strong presentation skills, Shelley majored in music at USC, later performing with troupes throughout Europe. When she returned to the States, she was taken under the wing of a Hollywood agent searching for new faces and talent to appear on TV commercials. Soon she was earning thousands of dollars annually on one Listerine® commercial alone! Not bad for a thirty–one–year–old single female, Shelley thought. Still, she felt restless and unfulfilled.
Shelley became the lead singer of a small musical combo and, while on tour in Alaska, met and married a commercial fisherman. Over time she worked as a state certified public safety officer, a firefighter, and an emergency medical technician. Then, in 1982,
she was accepted into a postgraduate program at the University of Washington in Seattle for certification as a physician assistant in family medicine. With a medical license as a board certified PA, Shelley returned to Anchorage, where she taught primary medicine to rural, indigenous Alaskans. Her first marriage having ended in divorce, she remarried, and in 1988 she and husband Kenneth Maier, MD, moved to Oregon to practice family medicine together.
Pursuing her passion to teach and speak, Shelley established a nonprofit corporation she called The Heart of Health, Inc. and began production of a weekly television series interviewing internationally recognized physicians and psychologists on such subjects as the effectiveness of prayer, acupuncture, homeopathy, biofeedback, and nutrition. In a moving story, she recounts her own experience with physical healing by faith:
“In March of 1996, though very ill with EG, I travelled to California to interview Larry Dossey, MD, about his book, Healing Words: The Power of Prayer in Medicine. In preparation for the interview I had read five of his books, as well as current articles on the effects of faith on physical healing. By the time Ken and I boarded our plane for home, I was exhausted, but I knew I earnestly desired the kind of healing Dr. Dossey 
spoke about in his work. As I reclined in my airplane seat, I prayed, ‘Father, if it is Your will for me, I ask that You heal me.’ Though struggling with doubt, I continued to pray until sleep overtook me.
About two hours later a distinct physical sensation startled me awake. I felt goose bumps start at my feet and spread rapidly over my entire body. After a few seconds the bumps disappeared. I didn’t hear heavenly voices, no bright lights flashed, and my appearance didn’t change. But somehow I felt different. “Some time later, still unsure what had occurred, I turned to Ken and said, ‘I know this may sound odd, but I believe I have just been healed.’ Three days later, I consulted with specialists and stopped all medications. Today I am still free from the symptoms of EG.”
Shelley’s miraculous healing brought her to a turning point in life. Through it, she came to a deeper understanding of the connection between mind, body, and spirit and how important it is to have a personal relationship with the God who created them. Equipped with this relationship and a new understanding of health, she would later overcome the challenges of several major surgeries, metastatic cancer, and a near- death experience. “God had always been pursuing a relationship with me,” says Shelley. “Now I began actively pursuing one with Him. I’d always wondered: Could years of being harmed by and of harming others really be undone by a simple act of faith? Now I knew the answer: It is not that the harm can be undone, but that God can and will redeem it. He will use it
for His purposes.”
Today the author of The Sampler: Ten Life Enhancing Concepts Right at your Finger Tips, and The Soul Factor: What Is the Soul’s Role in Healing? is a Christian counselor in private practice in Bend, Oregon. She and Ken enjoy volunteer work, church activities, and horseback riding in the High Desert sun. Through her ministry, The Heart of Hope and Healing, Shelley offers weekend workshops and retreats, helping others find their way to love through healing, forgiveness, praise, and humor.
