Wednesday, April 16, 2008

A Mother’s Frantic Prayer

I had such an interesting experience the other night. I completely meant to blog about it, and then got caught up doing Mom Stuff. Anneliese suffers from growing pains, almost every night. I had them as a child, so I know how agonizing they are. Juliana gets them occasionally, but I've never seen them so bad as with Anneliese. Sometimes they start before she falls asleep, but other times they wake her up with a shock from sleep. She cries and screams and is downright miserable when they don't settle down right away.

We use children's Tylenol and muscle rubbing. Daddy does a better job with the muscle rubs than Mommy, apparently, because if Daddy is home she wants him to do it. But the other night, he wasn't home, and the Tylenol wasn't working yet. She was laying on me, on my bed, and I was trying to massage her but it wasn't working either. She kicked me in the stomach at one point, and the whole time she was screaming in pain my face and in my ears.

It's not easy keeping your cool in a situation like that. I was feeling quite the failure as a mother and at a complete loss of what to do for her. It was the worst incident yet.

So I prayed. I prayed for patience, I prayed for the ability to tolerate the screaming, and prayed that I could massage her legs, and she would feel better and fall asleep. I prayed that I would be able to comfort her. Make of the next part what you will…

I actually felt my hands become hot. They felt like they were glowing or radiating actual heat, but I wasn't sweating and it wasn't unpleasant. I guided my hands up and down her feet, calves, knees, and thighs twice, and within a few seconds, she suddenly stopped crying and was peacefully asleep! She didn't even wake or whimper when I rolled her next to me on the bed. She was simply perfectly at peace and deeply sleeping, almost instantaneously. I don't think I have EVER had a prayer work that quickly before. Within moments of resting Anneliese in her own spot on my bed, and realizing that she was truly asleep and wouldn't wake from more pains, the heat slowly dissipated from hands.

So, WDYT?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Wow Jessica, that's incredible! So many people underestimate the power of prayer.