Front Porch Stories: Praying and my experience with a MRI
By KATHY BOHANNON, Special to The Coweta Shopper
I’ve learned a few things about prayer in my over-sixty-years of life. I think it would be difficult to have not gained some spiritual maturity in all those years of life experiences.
My prayer life began as a child, on my knees beside my bed with the “now I lay me down to sleep” version I’d been trained to recite. That particular prayer now feels like it is missing a lot. It doesn’t include the thankfulness of answered prayers or prayers for the needs of my loved ones. It seems too simple; too vague for this grownup, there are not enough words.
But then there’s the “Jesus” prayer.
When our 16-month-old grandlittle was diagnosed with a genetic mutation form of cancer, I lost my mind for maybe a few hours, maybe a day. Shoot, maybe some of it is still missing. She is now nine years old, and in remission, but that moment of hearing the earth-shattering news destroyed me.
My prayer? All I could say was, “Jesus.” Over and over again. “Jesus.” I remember calling out, “JESUS!” I was not able to pray in the way I was accustomed with the list of prayer needs, the list of thanksgivings. No, I was only able to say, “Jesus” over and over again. I realized much later that the Holy Spirit was intervening on my behalf. How much later, I don’t know. It resonates with me that I was in shock and sometime between that day and a year or so ago, the realization came that the entire situation was covered in prayer simply by calling on Jesus.
Another prayer situation came when I needed an MRI. The doctor said my head would be inside a machine that would be so close that it would almost touch my face. Fully aware that I am not a complacent person, and would fight anyone trying to keep me in a claustrophobic situation, I prayed for a way to cope with the exam. The answer to that prayer is one I have shared many times with anyone who would listen. What I needed to do was have a prayer walk. Lo and behold, I was to pray for others while in that machine.
The tech told me via intercom, that they were about to start. I closed my eyes. I began praying my list. I started with the eldest of our family, my dad. The bed of the machine began to move. I was still praying for him when the loud bong-bang-buzz of the machine began to do its job. It was still whirring when I began praying for mom. Still buzzing while I prayed for my eldest sister, her husband, their children. Next, the middle sis, then my brother, my husband and children, then husband’s family.
My mind and heart were so focused on prayer that the exam finished before I got to my list of friends. I was actually disappointed it didn’t take longer. I had reached a level of prayer that completely removed me from my own angst.
There’s a little book called The Practice of the Presence of God by a seventeenth-century French monk named Brother Lawrence. It helps us to know how to pray in the duties and circumstances of the every day.
It’s a blessing that we can seek to know God on a higher level that when we are young and praying that sweet little children’s prayer. It’s a blessing also that we can grow spiritually in many circumstances, even when all we can say is, “Jesus.”
He hears us.
Kathy Bohannon can be reached at [email protected].
