Do You Believe in Miracles?

Dear Diary, 6 June 2012

Do you believe in miracles?

When I pray, do I really expect for God to answer my prayers? Or am I just going through the motions? Is it just an obligation following the old, "Oh, I'm so sorry that happened. I'll be praying for you." You know, many times, I've said those words and then forgotten about it, never actually praying.

God's responses aren't predictable...you never know whether He's going to say "yes", "no", or "later". But really, that doesn't matter. What matters is that He has a plan and a purpose for you that is going to surface no matter what the circumstances.

Prayer is a powerful thing! Since I've been a believer basically my whole life, I don't know what a life without prayer is like, but I am new to the acute realization that prayer truly has the power to make or break our lives.

Do I believe in miracles? Maybe I had my doubts before, but the day after my birthday last month, I know I was a part of one.

I was pulled from a dream-filled sleep by my mother shaking my shoulder. "You need to get up," she told me. "Your father's dad is really sick and we are going to go see him."
He was really sick. So sick, in fact, that my uncle asked for us to take the three-hour drive and for my aunts to fly in so we could all see him...and say our goodbyes.

My life up to that point had been so blessed that I hadn't suffered the blow of losing somebody very close to me. Although I've only seen my Grandad a handful of times in my years, losing him would definitely be hard on us all. But more than fear of the initial pain of loss, I was scared for another reason. I didn't know if Grandad had a relationship with God. Did he understand grace? Did he know that the son of God died to wipe out our sins, his sins? Jesus really did! An ex-marine, I always saw my Grandad as a realist, somebody who didn't take any crap from anyone. Yes, he had a sweet side, but the question pressed hard on my mind. What would happen to him after he died?

There was nothing else I could do. I prayed hard, every hour, every time I thought about him. All morning, as I showered and did my makeup and went through my chores.

I don't know what I was expecting. Changes in a person's life come from the heart, and others don't always see them. So even if my suspicions were wrong, and perhaps he did know Christ already, I kept on praying.

Finally, while I was eating breakfast, my dad got a crucial text message from his uncle.

My mom leaned in to read the screen, and she immediately pressed her lips together like she does when something has touched her heart deeply. Tears fell down her cheeks, and she threw her arms around my dad.

Sitting there, my first impulse was "somebody died"... But both my parents looked...happy sad, kind of a sadness that comes from something sweet.

"What?" I probably asked thirty times before they answered me. Am I invisible? -_-

"He's hooked up to a respirator, so he can't talk," my mom explained to me. "But he's been writing notes, and he wrote to ask if his brother and sister-in-law would pray with him to receive grace."

Wow. Bam, it hit me. All morning, I had been asking God for something, a very specific thing. Never before had His answer to my prayers been so clear and prompt. Never before had He spoken so directly to me. I hadn't told anyone I was praying! It was like an encoded message, God talking to me through this turn of events.

Chills raced up my spine. All of the sudden, peace washed over me, and I think the same thing happened to my parents, too. We wanted Grandad to recover, of course, but if he didn't, that was OK. We knew where he was going next, and we knew that someday we'd see him there.

You don't know peace until you're staring death in the face and you say "it's up to you, Lord."

Hours later, we arrived at the hospital, and my great uncle basically told us that my Grandad was't able to breathe on his own due to atrophy in his lungs (the result of years on an oxygen machine). In short, when they took him off the machine, he would die. "I wasn't going to let him die until his kids got here," my uncle told us, tears pricking his eyes.

OK, God, I prayed silently, you did one miracle today. Please get him better.


My Grandad was on the brink of dying, to the point where everyone thought taking him off that breathing machine would be too much for him. But God had other plans. Much to our amazement, when they tested him off the machine, his lungs responded and took over. Mere minutes later, he was actually talking with us and teasing my brother about his hat.

Now, my Grandad is back at home. His lungs and heart are a bit worse for wear, but something else has changed inside of him. Now he has something that he never had before, and that's a space in his life filled with all the right stuff.

I had never seen a miracle before...until that day. Until that day when I saw a piece of paper with barely distinguishable handwriting scrawled out by a gruff, retired marine to say "I need to make peace".

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