Nothing can really compare to the excitement and happiness one feels when they first find out that they’re pregnant with their first child. I must have been the happiest mother-to-be when I was blessed with the news that I was going to have my first son, Nathan, but nothing could have prepared me for the journey ahead. I was devastated when my doctor told me that my son was not developing properly; he had a condition known as holoprosencephaly, in which his forebrain was not dividing to form bilateral cerebral hemispheres.
Because most children with this condition do not usually survive birth, you can imagine how devastated I was; however, despite what the doctors and specialists told me, Nathan did survive, and he is now seven years old and he must be one of the happiest children in the world.
While I’m incredibly grateful—more words can describe—that Nathan is still with me today, his path has been quite rocky, having undergone numerous surgeries and medical treatments to keep him as healthy as possible. During one of his most recent surgeries, he was given the wrong medication and because of it, we almost lost him.
Turning to Prayer
As you can imagine, it was an incredibly difficult experience to see Nathan in a catatonic state, not responding to me at all. What made it even worse was that it seemed the doctors and nurses surrounding Nathan weren’t paying any attention to him at all either, since nothing they had done so far had helped.
Not knowing what to do for my son while sitting in a hospital room, I turned to prayer and asked everyone in my online community to pray for Nathan’s recovery. While most do not rely on Facebook as the optimal prayer forum, I felt completely powerless and didn’t know how I could help Nathan in any other way; I reached out to friends, family and even strangers for support.
What was really surprising was that in just a matter of minutes after posting my prayer, the doctors and nurses who had previously been doing what seemed like nothing, were back to work, and at what seemed like a feverish pace. All of a sudden, all of the people that should have been working to find a solution for Nathan were doing exactly that.
Nathan’s Recovery
Right after I posted my wish for people to pray for Nathan, doctors started running blood tests and actively tried to figure out a solution to how to get Nathan back to health. At first, I didn’t necessarily relate it to the Facebook post I made just moments before.
However, when I think back on it now, I see that the power of prayer – simply asking people to pray for my son – made a huge difference in his recovery. Within what seemed like minutes, Nathan was awake and responding to stimulus in a way that surprised even the doctors and nurses (who I’m sure have been in similar situations before).
How my son was given the wrong medication at a major hospital isn’t necessarily the important part of my story here – it’s how quickly Nathan recovered just moments after I simply asked for others to pray for my son’s well-being.
For many people, the power of prayer can be difficult to understand– even many of us who do pray on a regular basis. Most of the time, our prayers aren’t answered in such an immediate way.
While I do believe the doctors did everything they could to help Nathan, I think it was the prayers that ultimately motivated them to work – that made them become a force to help Nathan.
I know Nathan is a lucky child, and I know he’s relatively strong, but I really believe prayer is what saved him in this case. For me, this incident really was proof of the power of prayer.
Have you ever experienced a miracle such as this as a result of the power of prayer? Please share with me your experiences and continue to follow my journey by following www.PrayForNathan.org.
Marcela De Vivo is a freelance writer and proud mother. Her journey with her son has taught her life lessons that she would never trade for anything else in the world, and through the power of prayer, he continues to thrive and love life.