I wrote the following post on February 15, the day before my firstborn had a serious skiing accident, which landed him in ICU for three days at the door of death. The bleeding on the brain stopped and all of his various injuries are expected to completely heal with time and rest. Unbelievable. All that I experienced with that whole unexpected “adventure” only cements my thoughts below. As to my comments about church membership in the post, I would like to add upfront that I have witnessed the body of Christ at its absolute best this last week since the skiing accident. Our family has been loved so well by the church.

Now to my thoughts on prayer hours before I had hundreds (maybe even thousands) praying for my son’s healing.

Do you struggle believing prayer is doing anything? I’m a mixed bag on my feelings about prayer. The Bible is clear we are to pray. Without ceasing actually (I Thessalonians 5:17). I get that. But the Bible also says God does whatever He pleases (Psalm 115:3). I don’t get that. I mean, I get He does whatever He pleases, I just don’t get what prayer is doing then. People reconcile the two by telling me that prayer isn’t changing God, it’s changing me. Really? Is that all prayer is about? Me changing? Jesus prayed. (Matthew 14:23; 26:36) How did the perfect Savior need to change? And what is up with the story about Elijah praying for rain and it raining and then praying for no rain and it didn’t rain? (James 5:17-18) How is that changing Elijah? Is that not changing circumstances? So, I just haven’t been able to figure out prayer. And, to be honest, it’s been frustrating. It’s hard to do something when you don’t see the point. And, I truly love God and want to please Him and obey Him. So, it has felt like a communication issue between God and me. So, ironically, I have been praying. My request is to understand what prayer is really doing.

God heard me and is shedding light on the answer. I will give you the big idea and then share the long story backing up how I came to this conclusion. Prayer is voicing to our heavenly Father our lack of control and self-sufficiency as well as our utter dependence on Him and our unwavering belief in His power and absolute trust in His love and goodness towards us as His precious children. The answer to prayer is God showing off all His glory and confirming we are exactly right – we are His precious children and He is our awesome Father.

The story that helps me grasp this happened recently. Ever since the New Years, I have been struggling with a new wave of unrelenting grief and also my health. Typically, I stay very healthy, spending a few days sick in bed only every other year or so. So, the fact I found myself knocked down for several days and then experiencing that again a couple weeks later was very unusual. For weeks, I just couldn’t seem to get healthy and stay healthy. During all this time, my husband and I were striving to become members of a church. While this decision was easy for my husband, the process has been excruciating for me due to the impact of past circumstances. My will was ready to join but my body was fighting it. My counselor encouraged me to pray that my body would follow my will. So, I prayed – again, not really sure how much that was doing but knowing that I really wanted my body to calm down and just happily join the church along with my will.

Then came this past Sunday. I am telling you, it was a FIGHT to get myself to church. Not because I didn’t want to go, but so many different obstacles kept popping up, which I will spare you. I have never had to fight so hard to get to the place I love as I did this past Sunday. As a mom of four, we have had plenty of hard times attempting to arrive on Sunday mornings, so that’s saying something. Realizing my helplessness, I literally started praying that God would help me get to church. That is how bad it was.

So that I could leave the service quickly if a coughing fit revved up, we had forgone our normal seats which are far from the door and up very close to the the stage and instead chose the very last row right by the door. All of my family had left home earlier to also participate in the classes before the service. Though I had planned to arrive and slip in right before the start of the service, I did no slipping in until right after the sermon had started. That is how hard it was for me to get myself to church. Very hard. Strangely hard. I began to wonder if this was a spiritual attack. I understood I was not fully back to 100% health and that I was emotionally struggling until the church membership became official next month, but this felt ridiculous.

Reflecting Sunday afternoon on how hard the morning and the past few weeks had been and that we still had a few weeks left till membership was official, my concern about my physical and emotional health mounted. How much longer could I exist in this state? Maybe I needed more people praying for my body to follow my will? But that felt incredibly risky to share with anyone. Who in the world would even understand such a request? And to share such a prayer request felt like opening a can of worms. I had zero desire for any follow-up questions on what had happened in my past that would make a “simple” decision like becoming a church member such a big deal. No, asking for prayer was not the way to go. Besides, what does prayer do anyway. God is just going to do whatever He wants, right?

But then passages about prayer started surfacing, including the verses immediately preceding that Elijah passage I previously referenced. James 5:13-16 says, “Is anyone among you suffering? Let him pray. Is anyone cheerful? Let him sing praise. Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven. Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.” The story of Elijah’s two prayers then follows.

In light of that passage, how could I dismiss prayer as an option in my current situation? ”Is anyone among you suffering?” Um, yeah, slightly.

Back to the drawing board on who I could possibly ask though. An elder the passage said. There was one that came to mind. But, I really didn’t want to. “Um, hi, I’d like you to pray for my body to follow my will so I can join your church.” Yeah, really didn’t want to go there. Even though he knew a tiny part of my story, he really didn’t have much detail and I had already wavered a year before in joining the church. I really didn’t want to reveal there were any issues going on this time around. I wanted to appear stronger than I was. Hold up. That sounds a lot like pride. Humbly, I decided to send a brief email asking for prayer. That was hard for me to do. I hope that that point alone encourages someone out there who struggles with appearing less than perfect.

Just one person praying didn’t sound like enough to me. Again, I find this ironic since I still didn’t understand what prayer was even doing. But, surely the principle works the more the better, right? Who knows. (Actually, we’ll touch on that later.) Continuing to brainstorm about who else would be ideal to share with in this situation, two women came to mind. Both are mostly housebound and frequently bed-ridden due to health issues they have each suffered with for years. But, both are my friends and people that I daily connect with over a short back and forth KOKO text (Keep On Keeping On). One of the ladies I actually have never met. The other lady lives in a different state and so I rarely see her. Based on history, I knew both ladies are good at keeping conversations and texts private, love Jesus, care about me, and knew enough of my story that my request would make some sense. Testing the waters of how this would go over, I vulnerably reached out to the one who I felt had enough bandwidth for the request. She responded with so much love and grace that I decided to go ahead and share with the other bed-ridden friend as well, who equally showered me with kindness.

All right then, my prayer warriors were now in action. What would happen next?

God showing up big time in my life is what would happen next. Though our Father, as any father, sometimes says no and sometimes says wait, this time said yes and took immediate action on my behalf.

You will have to read this post to get a glimpse at what God did in response to the prayers of these two women. Yes, just two bedridden women. Let’s go back to that question about is the more praying for you the better? Maybe. But, check this out. The elder I reached out to read my praise email at the same time he read my request email. He hadn’t seen the first in time to even pray. So, it was only the two women who are rarely ever out in public who get all the glory for praying for me. That makes my heart so full. These two women have lives I cannot imagine enduring. Not because it doesn’t have “good” in it, but who wants to be bed-ridden? Who signs up for that? Who as a little kid dreams of growing up and seemingly not be able to do anything? No one. Being housebound is a massive trial and all done in private. No one sees their daily struggle. No one knows how alone they feel. But, these two women have a confidence that God sees them and is with them, and in my hour of need, they are the two vessels God chose to lift me up through. I hope that point is especially encouraging to anyone out there who feels limited by their health or circumstances. You do not need a big stage or big strength to do big things for God. You just need to have big faith and big obedience in whatever you can do.

So, what is prayer doing? Prayer is showcasing our priceless father/child relationship with God Almighty.

For further reflection, read my post Safe in My Father’s Arms and check out Luke 18:1; 22:40; Matthew 26:41.

So, all the above is what I wrote 24 hours before my son’s skiing accident. I felt so prepared for his stay in ICU and the unknown future. The above post is just one way God was preparing me. Having wrestled through my understanding of prayer, I was completely ready to ask for prayer a week ago today when my son skied off the slopes causing significant, life-threatening injuries.

However, one thing I still hesitated about at first was what exactly to pray. God is sovereign. He is going to do whatever He wants. I trusted His power to intervene on my son’s behalf but I doubted His willingness. But then I pictured my own children boldly and unhesitatingly asking me for exactly what they want. We as parents do not always say yes, but we as parents know how unshy our kids can be about telling us (sometimes repeatedly) what they want. I was now the child calling out to an all-powerful, good Father. So I decided to be like my own kids and to voice exactly what I wanted. I wanted my son to live. To be healed. To be ok. So, I asked God to stop the bleeding on my son’s brain and to spare his life, but I added not my will but thine be done (Luke 22:42). I understood He saw the big picture and that I needed to completely trust Him if He chose to say no to my deepest desire. But I also now understood that my responsibility as the child was to actually voice my desire. For God’s sovereign purposes, He chose to mercifully say yes to me and countless others who brought my seventeen year old son before the throne of God. I am forever grateful.