Another Millionth Prayer Unanswered
So often we fail to see what is before us–the invisible miracles in our lives.
Not too long ago, somewhat nonplussed at a friend’s comment “Another millionth prayer unanswered” it made me wonder how often prayer gets offered with no real conviction of receiving an answer, or at least the expected one. What the prayer was I did not know. My friends comment didn’t come across as despairing but neither was it hopeful, it was more a shrug your shoulders I don’t know remark.
As to correlation between the strength of a prayer and its affirmative outcome I am unsure. But perhaps the mis-perception of an answer is where we miss the miracle, or maybe the answer is bigger and more pervasive than our limited view permits.
Lately, I wonder if one such invisible miracle is brewing. It is early days in an agonizing wait.
Catastrophic Crash
In a small, thin voice laced with shock my daughter relayed the news of a catastrophic car crash–a parent’s worst nightmare. The twenty-three-year-old boyfriend of a summer work buddy was t-boned when driving home from work. A vehicle flew through a stop sign at a purported seventy kilometres an hour and struck the car on the driver’s side. Lifted by ORNGE air ambulance to a Toronto hospital the young man had life-threatening head injuries. Riding in the passenger seat was his brother, also injured but less severally.
The hospital brain surgeon thought there was no point in operating. All indicators pointed to extensive brain damage. Paralyzed with shock the parents remained speechless but the boy’s girlfriend would have none of it.
Within the Ontario medical system countless are the times I’ve heard people cite the need for patient advocacy. For the ill or injured not to have a strong voice when dealing with harried medical workers is a fearful thing. The system strains at the seams.
Encouraged by her mother, the only one with a clear enough head to ask rational questions, the girlfriend became the proverbial lioness protecting her cub. She rejected the surgeon’s verdict. Fierce and unrelenting she fought through the hospital ranks driving advocacy for her boyfriend’s life to the highest levels of hospital administration. Another surgeon agreed to operate.
Praying for an Invisible Miracle
And then the waiting began.
What sparse news there was of the boy’s progress got relayed through my daughter’s hospital visits. Her friend refused to leave until her boyfriend woke from his surgery.
My heart broke to learn her girl friend had donned her boyfriend’s pyjamas, put on all the jewellery he had ever given her, piece by precious piece, and was wearing the large crucifix normally found dangling from the rear view mirror of her car. Every minute the medical staff permitted she stayed in his room, only coming out for brief periods to confer with family and friends. After midnight the nurses would chase her out and she would sleep on the waiting room chairs.
The young woman and the boy’s immediate family had a large community of supporters–extended family augmented by members of their church. I prayed, as I am sure they did, for the boy, for his parents, for his brother, and for his lion-heart girlfriend–for restoration and recovery, for resurrection from death to life, for an invisible miracle to happen.
My daughter and her friends brought mats to the hospital to relieve the young woman of cramped sleeping. She was glad to stretch out. For the first time in two weeks she slept for a solid five hours.
To be continued (refer next post).
Have you ever needed to advocate for a family member or friend in the medical system? What was your experience?