How prayers changed my life

One of the most beautiful gifts in life is to have someone sincerely pray for you. I have been so blessed to have had people who prayed for me when I needed it the most and I wanted to share those examples to demonstrate the power of prayers. I might have already shared it in other blogs but I can go on repeating the goodness of God in my life. My hope through this blog is that reading it, you might get down on your knees and pray for that person who needs your prayers.

To start with, my dear mother. Well she always prayed for us, however there is this one incident that always stuck with me. We had a party, after which me and my sister got very ill from food poisoning when we were really young. I remember I was in the third standard at the time and I ended up being the worst affected. Both me and my sis were rushed to the hospital. However, I refused to eat anything because I couldn't keep anything down and that kept worsening my condition. It had been almost 5 days and I just kept deteriorating. I remember the doctor telling my parents that she needs to eat something, anything if she has to live but I simply refused. Then in the middle of the night I woke up to the sound of someone crying bitterly. I opened my eyes and it was my mother on her knees, begging God to take her life in exchange for ours. I kept listening to her and it awakened a fighting spirit in me. I woke up the next morning and demanded food and surprisingly I could eat and keep it down. I made a full recovery within two days and went home.

When I became a teenager, I got a disease that made me bleed uncontrollably for months at a time. There was this one time that it got so bad that I almost bled to death. When we reached the hospital the doctor told us if we came even a little later I would be dead or in a coma. The doctors couldn't believe how pale I was and they couldn't figure what was wrong so they ordered an emergency operation for the next morning while giving me continuous blood transfusions. Obviously my family was horrified. However what I didn't know at the time was that my sister was sitting at the hospitals grotto and praying for me. She didn't want her little sister to undergo an operation at such a young age, so she prayed for the bleeding to stop and moreover that she suffer in my place. The next morning as they were preparing to take me to the operation room they realized that the bleeding had stopped so they called off the operation. I was given 7 bottles of blood and medication and later sent home after they found the disease to be an advanced form of PCOD. 

This disease was a thorn in my side right upto adulthood and there was this one particular year when I changed my meds and I ended up not having my periods for a whole year which everyone knows isn't normal. But I kept it to myself and didn't really tell anyone, however it was driving me insane. At that time I was doing my Ministry of the Word course in the seminary and we had a spiritual director Fr Roland Fialho who was known for being a really Holy man. However, I was hesitant to approach him as he had been suffering from cancer and obviously had problems of his own. One day, after class he simply approached me and asked me how I was doing and I just said Father pray for me. The minute I said that he said meet me after class and I was scared because I didn't know how to explain my issue to someone especially a man. However he sat with me for almost an hour listening to my entire history, guiding me on how to pray and finally praying over me. I will never forget, the next day was women's day and I got my periods after a whole year on that day. I was so relieved and overjoyed, I quickly told Father his prayers worked and he told me now pray for someone else who needs it. 

In our Ministry of the Word course there was one particular day where I had to hold the prayer service in the morning, however on that same day I fell terribly ill. I didn't want to disappoint the class so I dragged myself to the seminary and sat on the first row with my head down on the bench worrying how I would put up the prayer dance I had planned. Then a girl suddenly approached me and told me that she felt that she should pray for me. I found it really strange at first because I hadn't spoken to her that often before this, nor did I tell her I was unwell but I simply said okay. She said a prayer and went back to her seat. Soon after that class started and I was called in front to begin the prayer service. From the moment I stood up, I didn't feel any symptoms of my illness that I was feeling just minutes back. I danced and gave glory to God with the song I had prepared and had a lovely service. No doubt I am good friends with that girl till date. 

To end this list of prayers that have been answered, I wanted to mention one of the times I prayed for someone and something amazing happened. It was my sister who was ill this time, she had water collecting in her lungs and this had happened a couple of times before. However, this time it was really bad and the circumstances around it weren't good either. We had just lost our mother from cancer and now my sister was being rushed to the hospital. She wasn't able to breathe as there was too much water collecting in her lungs, so the doctors decided to operate on her. I was around 20 years old and I just couldn't take it, I desperately wanted all of it to go away and things to return to normal. I literally Google searched a prayer in my desperation, as at that time I didn't really know how to pray. It happened to be the Divine Mercy chaplet and I prayed like I never prayed before. I shouted and cried out to God that I would change my life if he just answered this one prayer. I folded the prayer and took it to work that day and sat in my office corridors and continued praying. I will never forget the phone call I got at around 5 in the evening from my sister, ecstatic on the other end that the doctors had called off the operation at the very last minute because suddenly the water in her lungs disappeared. I screamed for joy knowing fully well that it was a miracle. 

So many times people tell us to pray for them and we simply say yes and sometimes forget about it. Just imagine though what would happen if we sincerely with our whole heart prayed for them. You never know how your prayer could change someone's life. What a powerful weapon we have with us that we underestimate and rarely use. Let's pray for someone today!