It Works….

Those of you who know me know I am not of a hugely religious persuasion in the sense that I go to church and quote from the Bible but I do feel a little bit spiritual from time to time (well, most of the time, actually.) And lately, I have come to believe quite firmly in the power of prayer.

Picture this. My Mum and I , estranged for quite a long period of time for reasons that now seem insignificant…making up after a really stressful time for me and my family….her being there for me was like that way you feel as a kid when you get the Christmas present you had been longing for all year. Then she suffers a pulmonary embolism and nearly dies but begins to recover after a stay in hospital and being put on Warfarin.

Then she begins to experience severe pain of the gynaecological kind. And bleeding. And incredible fatigue. The gynaecologist does all sorts of tests on her and says :’It might be cancer. And we probably won’t be able to operate.’

So I freak out in that way where you’re pretending everything is going to be OK and you’re determined to stay positive for the other person’s sake because you don’t want them to see how panicked you are…so it’s a really internal kind of freak out that ends up almost eating you alive and you think; ‘How the hell am I going to cope if she dies? How am I going to bear it?’

And you get mad, really mad at the world, at the Universe, at God, thinking, we’ve only just found each other again and now you’re going to take her away from me? How dare you? How can you do that to me?

And then you start to calm down and think : What can I do? What can I do to stop this from being the way it ends?

And there is only one thing you can do when it comes down to it ….. get down on your knees and pray.

I have been praying to all the gods and mystical creatures I can think of in my pagan, lapsed Catholic, fruity spiritual way… all day and all night. It hasn’t all been praying of the most sensible kind, there has been a bit of begging and ranting too. And a lot of weeping. But I haven’t stopped. Not for one day. Not for one moment. Praying for my Mum.

This week my Mum got her results. She doesn’t have cancer. I could be wrong but I feel as if my prayers have been answered. I feel as if a higher power has been watching over me, over her, not letting it be her time to go yet. Giving us a little bit longer together. I feel blessed, I really do. And even though I am usually skeptical about such things and like to look at positive outcomes from a scientific perspective, I now believe, quite strongly, that prayer works. It is an odd, wonderful and unexpected realisation.