HT: Sunday Scribblings

Somehow, Sunday Scribblings prompts seem to tie in with what I’ve already been thinking about. With the death of my uncle earlier this week, and the tension that it has brought along with it, I’m reminded of hospitals. More specifically the times my relatives have been patients in them.

Time to turn back the clock, to my 19th birthday…my Grandad was in hospital and I’d been told ‘this is it’. I needed to visit him, in case when I went back to uni I didn’t see him again alive. The problem? His illness was a respiratory related illness. So him and most other people on the ward were coughing and choking etc.

Not good for someone with emetophobia.

Yep, I lasted all of about 2 seconds before my panic button got switched on and I walked as quickly out of the ward trying not to listen or look…just in case. My mother was closely on her heels.

I sat on a bench needing some space. My Mum invaded it trying to ‘calm me down’ and ‘talk me round’. I know there was only one person that could give me strength to get in there, so I tried to pray. Difficult to do when your Mum who doesn’t follow Jesus is right there. The further issue? When I can’t pray in English in a way where I can’t find the words or don’t want others to know what I’m saying, I automatically start praying in angelic tongues. 

If you’ve never heard it, it sounds really weird.

I tried to do it quietly under my breath

What did you say? asks my Mum.

Nothing. I reply. Thinking ok, pray silently, pray in English…nope…it’s not working…

What’s that now? asks my Mum (now in a nosier tone)

This goes on a couple of times before I lose it slightly and just um, yell, 

I’m praying in tongues, ok? It’s a special way of praying. It HELPS! So let me do it!

That seemed to work as my Mum finally backed off, let me pray until I felt at peace, and when I did I got up, went back in the ward and spent an hour with my Granddad. 

When we came out of the hospital, my Mum was just kind of staring at me, her jaw kind of on the floor. 

But you were scared…and then…you were totally fine…I’ve never seen you like that in a hospital before…I mean…how? How did that happen?

Well, Mum, prayer works…

My Grandad didn’t die (not then anyway). But she obviously didn’t forget about it.

Cue almost 2 years later. My Dad was in hospital where he had almost died the night before, surgeons had discovered a large portion of his bowel had gone gangrenous which was bad enough but he also had a raging infection which meant that they couldn’t remove the gangrenous section. It was too dangerous to have him under general anaesthetic (as they had discovered the evening before). My Dad hadn’t slept in a week and I went into sit with him in the High Dependency Unit. I began to pray silently, and then under my breath in tongues. The evening before I’d specifically prayed for angels to be in the room protecting him.

As I prayed my Dad was finally able to sleep. He also kept mumbling about angels which I was like ‘hmmm….so that’s what morphine does….’ but there was an unexplainable peace in the room.

3 days later surgeons and doctors were scratching their heads as not only had the infection disappeared (which could be explained by IV antibiotics) but the gangrene hadn’t spread. No. It had disappeared too. The infection should have made it worse. The doctors and surgeons could not explain how.

Meanwhile, I’m like…ok…God – 1 Gangrene – 0.

Of course my Mum picked up on it without me mentioning God at all. She knew I prayed. She knew it was a miracle.

2 months later we were in the ICU where my Nana lay in a coma with a mystery illness. All of a sudden it was like my Mum saw me as some sort of miracle healing machine. But if we pray, she’ll get better!

The two of us were by her bedside and my Mum was like…lay hands on her, and pray. So I did. Do that special prayer you did. I couldn’t believe she had remembered that day from 2 years before. So I did (feeling REALLY stupid by the way in front of all these nurses and doctors zipping about the ward) and her SATs went right up much closer to where they should have been. It became like a game. Every time her SATs went down, I’d pray in tongues, my Mum would be like ‘look, look!‘

The toughest part is, we’re not invincible. We’re all going to die, and I had a real sense that my Nana’s time had come. I wasn’t happy about it, but I knew somehow that this was going to be it.

How do you explain why some people get healed and some people don’t?

I don’t know the answers.

I just know that miracles do and can happen.

And that prayer works…even if it’s not always in producing the answers we want it to.