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The
Pink Room: Thoughts about Intentional Living
Chapter
11/ Confessions that Make Me Sound Bad
Part
1 (Previous post contain the previous chapters.)
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If
I’m totally honest I’m surprised when prayer works.
Not
too long ago, I just happened to sit by this lady (out of 300 people) at a Young
Life Banquet. She just happened to be praying for several things I have been
involved in because others told her about them. She was so encouraged to get to
hear my stories of her prayers being worked out. I never met her before that
night. My stories were a specific answer to her prayers. She wrote me a letter
not long after the event thanking me for sharing about a few ministries--your
prayers work! Why is that surprising?
There have been times when it is
undeniable, however, something changed because of people praying.
When I lived in the apartment above
my parent’s old house there was a night when everything seemed off. I called
about something and there was no answer. I let myself in, the lights were all
on, a light on meant someone was home—Dad was a stickler for that. I called out
for them, no answer. I looked around for a note, no note. I looked in the
garage. Why was the car was gone? Basement—no one. So I called my mom’s cell
phone. I was prepared for something humorous.
Mom didn’t sound right when she
answered. I paused and listened more carefully than normal. The next few hours
were some of the darkest of my life.
Mom told me that Dad wasn’t feeling well.
He told her that they needed to go to the ER right away. My dad hates hospitals,
and avoids them, so for him to ask to be taken is unheard of. She went on to
say that minutes after they arrived he had a massive heart attack, the kind
they call the “widow maker.” As they got in the elevator he went into cardiac
arrest, she had to witness chest compressions and didn’t know if she’d see him
alive again. She’d been reassured by some nurses that they would take good care
of him and was ushered into a waiting room. Hours passed, waiting for news and
imagining the worst—any news seemed unlikely to be good, and grades of worse
from there. She saw him die.
I was stunned. I grabbed a few
things and sent out a text to nearly twenty people asking for prayers. Called
siblings, shut the house, and went to wait with Mom. Nurses would check in and
hours passed, we finally saw the doctor—the news was dramatic but good. He died
for a while, but they got him back. Part of his heart was severely damaged, and
his heart would never be the same.
And then the surgeon said, “If you
had not driven here, he would be dead. It was absolutely the wrong thing to do,
but it saved his life.”
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That was one of the few times in my
life where the atmosphere was different because of those prayers. And I was
sure it was the presence of God. I don’t remember details besides holding off
tears, drinking Diet Coke with Mom, and receiving those text confirmations of
prayers being sent.
I remember vividly--in those first
hours, the air that night was thick and deep and felt like a hug. On the days I
wonder if God is listening, I sometimes think of that.
