The Power of Prayer

When Lucy was 2 years old, she was diagnosed with Juvenile Dermatomyositis. What, you say? It's certainly a mouthful.  It's also a particularly nasty auto immune disease loosely associated with arthritis, generally treated with years of heavy duty steroids, IVIG (administered much like chemotherapy), and is potentially fatal.  Needless to say, there were some pretty low times in my house when this occurred.  Fear, especially fear of losing a child, is pretty terrible stuff.  I shared Lucy's situation with others so they would pray for her.  I shared just enough to get the prayers started, but not the whole story.  I just couldn't bear talking about it over and over again.  Every time I talked about it, every time I had to explain what this crazy, rare disease was all about, my fear grew.  It grew so much I thought it would consume me.  In many ways it did.  All I could think about was Lucy, and losing her.  I cried more than I have ever cried before, or since.  Uncontrollable, gut wrenching, laid out on the bathroom floor, sobbing.  On a side note, isn't it interesting that most mothers pick the bathroom floor to fall apart?  Maybe it's the only place we get any privacy!  Anyway, I prayed, a lot. And so did hundreds of other people.  Lucy was on every prayer list from here to Georgia to North Carolina and back.  Now, children don't just "recover" from JDM.  There is a regiment of very harsh, very expensive treatment that eventually could, maybe, lessen the symptoms and provide comfort.  Thankfully, we were in the right place for treatment. Moving to Nashville just a year earlier (hmmm, did God place us here on purpose?) we were right down the street from one of the finest pediatric rheumatology  departments in the country.  And, we were seeing the head honcho, the doctor who started the department many years before.  Lucy was poked, prodded, tested, you name it.  It was awful for everyone. Six years later, she still gets nervous when we drive by the children's hospital.  The prognosis was that she would be treated for the rest of her life, and we'd "see what happened."  The reality is that she was treated minimally (IVIG, but no steroids! ) for 6 months when we went back for a check-up and lo and behold, the dermatomyositis was gone!  Our doctor said "I don't like to use this word with my patients, but this was nothing short of a miracle." He had never, in all his years of treating this disease, ever seen a child not only go into remission so quickly, but it was if the disease never existed in her little body.  How could this happen?  Other doctors wanted to know.  What did we do?  Prayer.  I truly believe that the power of prayer is the answer.  There's just no other explanation.  Lucy had an army of people praying for her, every day, without fail.  Our prayers were answered.  Well, sort of.  God didn't give me a perfectly healthy child.  He didn't make it all go away. He didn't give me the perfectly normal family I prayed for.  He gave me something even better.  Something I never would have thought to pray for. When the JDM was in remission, now it was time to address why Lucy wasn't walking, and why she had not uttered a word at 2 years old.  Things that had been moved to the back burner when her sheer existence was in question. The culprit, autism. Which has actually turned out to be a blessing in disguise.
 A songwriter once wrote "One of God's greatest gifts, is unanswered prayers." I'm glad I didn't get exactly what I prayed for.  God knew better than I what my life needed.  One of those nights, on the bathroom floor, I was called to ministry. I didn't know it at the time, but looking back, I can pinpoint the moment it happened.  I remember the feeling of such peace, knowing God was with me, and that everything would be okay.  An unshakable certainty that Lucy would be okay, that our family would be okay.  Years later, that feeling led me to a call to want to help others know the same.  One of God's coincidences after another and here I am, a Children's Minister, able to do just that.  My family is not the "perfectly normal" family I prayed for.  It's a fabulously flawed, single parent, special needs child, raucous preschooler, fly by the seat of our pants, kind of family.  The perfect "un"answer to my prayers.