Power of Prayer
I was raised in a Christian home where it seemed we were always at church or a church function, so I accepted Christ as my Savior at an early age. When I look back on my childhood, it can only be described as wonderful, and I think my parents were close to perfect in every way.
Finally, the day came for me to start college, and that is where I met Robert, my future husband. We started dating, and I didn’t know if he was saved or not, but I could tell that he probably wasn’t. We dated for a year and a half, but we could only go out one night a week, so Robert starting coming to church on Sunday nights so we could be together. Robert finally asked me to marry him, and the thought crossed my mind that we had different beliefs and values, but I thought I could teach him everything he needed to know and things would work out fine.
Well...instead of me leading Robert to Christ, he pulled me away from Christ. In eight years of marriage, we only went to church 4 or 5 times at the most.
In January 1990, our first child was born. That was when I told Robert I wanted to start going to church again, because I wanted our daughter raised in the church. He said okay, but with work and late night feedings, we never made it. I think I may have taken Hollie to church on Easter Sunday when she was a baby, but no more.
In July 1990, I was in a car accident. I don’t remember anything about the accident or my stay in the hospital, but I have learned a great deal about the power of prayer from my family and friends.
My mother said when they first got to the hospital, the doctor told them I had no chance for survival, because my brain was swelling and I was losing a lot of blood, and he didn’t know why. My mother said there were over fifty people packed in the waiting room and lined up and down the hallway that night. She said they stayed through the night praying.
By the next morning, the doctor said there was no sign of my brain swelling, but he couldn’t give me more than a two percent chance of survival, because I was still losing a lot of blood, and he said my head injury was so severe that I might never wake from the coma I was in. My uterus had also been cut in five places, so my gynecologist was called in. He told me later that when he made that last stitch in my uterus, blood starting backing up in the chest tubes, so he knew then that it was my heart. I had a ruptured aorta valve and had to have surgery. My mother said that when the cardiovascular surgeon came out of the operating room he told them he had done all he could do, and they should pray. So that’s what they did; even complete strangers were praying for me.
On the third day of my hospital stay, my mother-in-law said I came out of my coma around 10:00 that morning (she was keeping Hollie during this time). She said she felt that I was going to be okay, so she took Hollie to the mall. She said they were on the elevator in McRaes, and there was a young lady in the elevator with them. When the elevator stopped, the other lady went off to the right and my mother-in-law went straight to a counter where a friend of hers worked. The friend was asking how I was doing, and my mother-in-law was telling her I had come out of my coma.
My mother-in-law said she then heard someone calling, and when she looked up, the same lady that was in the elevator with her was running towards her. She asked if they were talking about me, and my mother-in-law said that I had woke from my coma around 10:00 that morning. She said the lady’s face turned white as a ghost, and she said, “Your not going to believe this, but we have a prayer group at our church, and the lady in charge called everyone this morning and said she had this feeling that they needed to be praying for the girl in the accident, so we all met at the church.” Then she said,
“We started praying for Laura at 9:30 this morning”. My mother-in-law said when she got home from the mall the phone was ringing and it was Robert’s aunt from another state, and she said, “I was just calling to let you know we held a mock laying on of hands for Laura this morning”.
My mother-in-law asked what this was, and Robert’s aunt said,
“It’s where someone plays the part of Laura and lies on a table, and then everyone goes around laying their hands on “Laura’s” head saying a prayer of healing”.
My mother-in-law asked when they did this, and she said they started around 9:30 that morning. My mother-in-law said,
“You’re not going to believe this, but Laura woke from her coma at 10:00 this morning”.
My mother-in-law told me later,
“It was amazing. One day, the doctors would present with a problem, then everyone would gather to pray, and by the next day, the problem would have vanished, leaving doctors baffled”.
I was in the hospital for about a month. Two weeks after I had gone home, I returned to the heart surgeon for a follow-up visit. When he came into the room he said,
“You know, I can’t explain how you can be sitting here today”.
He said, “98 percent of the patients with a ruptured aorta either die at the scene of the accident or die in route to the hospital, but you lived 16 hours before we even discovered your injury. You shouldn’t be alive today.”
A couple of months after my accident, a good friend of mine was killed in a car accident. I had a real hard time with this, and I kept thinking, “Why did I live, and then she died?”. I had visitors in daily, and it didn’t matter if they knew my friend or not, when someone came to visit I eventually asked them “Why do you think I lived and she died?” Most would say, “Well you had on your seatbelt and she didn’t”.
But one day, a close friend said, “Laura, maybe your accident is God’s way of getting Robert’s attention, maybe he’s saying ‘Hey you can’t see me, but I’m out here, and now you see what I can do’”. But the more I thought about it, I thought, what if God is trying to get my attention. I had been away from him for eight years. And if I had died then, I’m not sure I would have gone to heaven. I mean, I wasn’t a bad person or anything, but I wasn’t doing what the Bible says we as Christians are supposed to do. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to grasp how long eternity is, but forever is a long time, and to think I might not spend it in heaven was a scary thought for me.
A couple of months after my friend died, my favorite uncle died of a heart attack. This was another shock for me and again I was asking, “Why did I live and he died?” I can tell you there were days when I felt like God and Satan were having a fist fight inside my head. I kept having all these crazy thought and emotions. One minute I was laughing, the next crying, and then the next minute I would be angry. I just knew I was turning into a real nutcase. Then my friends would say, “Laura, you’ve had a head injury, and all this is normal.”
It was about ten months before I recovered enough to go back to work and probably a year before I started driving again. But when I started getting around again, I told Robert I wanted to start going to church again. He said okay. We started visiting this small church in our neighborhood, and I’m not sure how regularly we went, but it didn’t take long before I was back into those old habits, and again I was letting Robert decide if I went to church or not. But this time I felt bad about it. And then one day it hit me, “When I die, God won’t care what Robert did, he’ll be looking at what I did”. Well, Robert and I have since had another daughter, and we have been separated for the past 2 years, but I try hard every day to do what God wants me to do, which is not always easy, and I make sure our girls are in church as much as possible....
There were days when Robert would say, “There is no God” and he had a list of reasons why he thought that, but I can’t agree with him, because when I look back over the last ten years of my life....I’ve gone from the doctors saying I would never wake up to being able to buy a house for me and my two girls (this year), and I know none of that would have been possible without the power of prayer and the power of God.
Laura Day Copright 2000
Laura is raising two daughters, 4 and 10, and is working and trying to finish school to become an interpreter for the deaf, maybe in teaching.