A Precise Prayer for Healing
Your mother has cancer.”
I gripped the phone as I listened to Dad’s choked-up voice. In my thirty-four years, I’d heard that word more times in relation to my mother than a daughter ever should.
I sucked in a breath. I didn’t want to go on this ride again, but cancer offers no choice. It tosses you to the front of the line and thrusts you onto its crazy roller coaster without asking permission.
Silence hung between us. Dad always had positive words to say. Encouragement to give. But not this time. It was so unlike the other times he’d delivered this news.
I sucked in a fortifying breath, resolving to once again believe and speak the words Dad couldn’t. Those words he’d used with each previous diagnosis that now seemed stuck in his throat. “We’ll beat this.”
And we would. I didn’t want to consider any other option.
“It doesn’t look good.” Tears filled his voice. It was the first time I’d heard my father cry over my mother’s health.
My stomach tightened. With my free hand I massaged my temples as I lowered myself onto my bed.
“What did the doctor say, Dad?” I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.
He cleared his throat and took a moment. “We’ve been to several, and they’re all saying the same thing.” Again he faltered. “They’re telling her to go home and enjoy the time she has left. Six months, a year tops. There’s nothing they can do.”
A lump lodged in my throat. Six months? She’d never been given a time allotment before. The calendar flipped through my mind, time slipping away. How do you plan your last Thanksgiving, your last Christmas—your last anything with someone you love?
“How’s Mom?”
With a shaky voice he answered, “She says this might be the one she doesn’t beat.”
Cancer hadn’t come only to do battle this time. It had come to war and win.
We regrouped as a family. Reading over her diagnosis in black and white, things looked dark. A tumor was growing in close proximity to her pancreas. They’d tested the cells. Pancreatic cancer. The five-year survival rate fell under 5 percent, but they reiterated that due to the intricacies of her case, they couldn’t even guarantee a year.
With the tumor encased around a major vein, no one wanted to touch what promised to be an impossible surgery. At best, it would extend her life by a few months. Worst-case scenario: She could bleed out on the table.
All doctors in our area refused her case—which spoke volumes. We lived in the suburbs of Grand Rapids, Michigan, known as the Medical Mile, aptly named for the millions of research dollars that had been poured into our city. Schools had added campuses simply to be close to the medical advances in the heart of our downtown.
If no one there was willing to help her, who would be?
We prayed desperately for wisdom, and God led my parents to a doctor nearly three hours away on the east side of the state. My parents met with a surgeon who agreed to evaluate her case. We gathered as a family shortly afterward.
“So?” My older brother voiced the question we all wondered.
Mom, perched on the dark wooden chair at the worn kitchen table where we’d grown up eating, folded her hands over her stomach.
“The surgeon took my case before the tumor board. They agreed I at least deserve a chance.” For the first time since this started, she smiled. “They’re going to do the surgery.”
We clung to that hope, and it bolstered our spirits even if we knew the tumor board was humoring us. They didn’t truly believe the surgery would be successful. With the tumor measuring eight centimeters and its precarious location, this surgery was more about allowing us to let her go, knowing we’d tried everything we could before uttering our good-byes. It was their way of offering hope.
But the hope we felt wasn’t from the doctors.
Our hope came from the Lord.
With a new plan facing us, we bathed the day of surgery in prayer, our church congregation, extended family, and friends joining us. Hope continued to rise even in the midst of an impossible situation.
The night before the procedure, as I packed at my own home, my parents received a call from our pastor.
“I’ve been praying for you, and God has placed on my heart something specific to share. I wonder if I can come over.”
“Definitely,” Dad answered. Prayer was the most important action we knew we could take, and we’d absorb all the prayers we could.
Pastor Sam arrived at their house, and the three of them huddled in the family room. Mom settled into the red recliner she’d purchased for my father, but which had quickly become her favorite chair. In the comfort and quiet of their own home, our pastor anointed her with oil and prayed for her healing. In that prayer, he declared five specific things:
The tumor would be completely encapsulated.
The tumor would separate from the main vein without the need to cut.
The tumor would fall out into the surgeon’s hands.
There would be clear margins on the tumor.
And regardless of what the pathology report currently said, when they tested the tumor after removing it, there would be no evidence of pancreatic cancer at all.
After praying these things, Pastor Sam left.
The next day, my entire family caravanned across the state to the Karmanos Cancer Institute. On March 11, 2008, we hugged Mom good-bye as they wheeled her into the operating room. We then settled in the large waiting room with so many others who longed to see their loved ones healed.
The chair crinkled as I sat, hard beneath my weight. How unreal. Had I just said good-bye to my mother? Yes, my hope came from the Lord, but it was feeling battered. With every cancer diagnosis, I wondered if it was the last one she’d receive—and this time the foe was so formidable. Could I trust Him again? I struggled to hold tight to the truth I knew: God is the greatest physician of all.
And He was the one who operated on her right now.
Throughout the morning, friends and other family members showed up to comfort us, sharing stories that made us laugh or simply waiting with us in silence. Unsure of how long we would wait for the surgeon and his report, this outpouring of love helped us pass the time.
Several long hours ticked by before a nurse came into the waiting room. She approached Dad. “We’d like to have you all come back to a room so the surgeon can speak with you.”
Wide-eyed, my sister and I gaped at the woman. There was only one reason I’d ever heard of them delivering news in seclusion.
“What if we don’t want to go back to that room?” I asked.
She smiled. “You do. It’s good. I promise.”
The bands of anxiety squeezing my chest released.
She led all of us to a tiny gray room with a small wooden table and chairs. Some of us sat while others leaned against the wall. As awkward silence descended, we began to recount more funny stories about Mom. In the midst of our nervous laughter, the surgeon entered the room, his blue scrubs showing a few faint lines of sweat while his hair remained hidden under his cap and a white surgical mask hung around his neck.
He crossed his arms, slightly shaking his head. His eyes focused downward before scanning each of us.
“I don’t know what you’re doing, but whatever it is, keep doing it.” Then he stared Dad in the eye. “That tumor was completely contained. It wasn’t involved with the vein. I didn’t even have to cut”—again he shook his head—“I don’t know why, but it just fell out into my hand. All margins were clean.” He paused. “We’ll have to wait a few weeks for pathology reports, but it appeared to be nothing more than a cyst. Not at all what we saw on the reports.”
This surgeon unknowingly had just repeated nearly verbatim the words our pastor had prayed over Mom.
Dad smiled. “We know why.”
It was the second time I’d ever seen him cry over my mother’s health, and this time they were tears of joy.
Six weeks later, Mom and Dad sat in the oncologist’s office as she repeated the final item our pastor had been led to pray.
“Your pathology report is clean. There’s not one pancreatic cancer cell in that tumor.” She lifted her shoulders, in awe of what she saw on the medical report. “Other than healing from the surgery, there’s nothing else to do.”
The medical community was amazed at Mom’s case and left without explanation, but my parents offered it to them anyway. God instructed our pastor to pray over her. He was obedient and delivered the words he’d been given, praying specifically how the Holy Spirit led him. Yet our pastor’s words didn’t heal her; he was simply a messenger. The surgeon didn’t heal her either; he was simply an instrument.
The Great Physician alone deserved all of the credit. Not only did He sew together my battered hope and remind me that in all situations I could trust Him, but He ultimately did what no one else would or could do. He healed my mom. Once again. Miraculously.