A Bit Of An Odd Prayer

Heavy rain Wednesday. I tried to talk Ginny into staying home from work because of flooded streets; she wouldn’t hear of it. Too dedicated.

Barbara White and I had planned to go to breakfast but she called saying that bone pain incapacitated her.

Apparently her chemotherapy kills all fast-growing cells, cancer cells, hair, etc. But it also kills white blood cells (her immune system needs those to block infection) and to combat that, her doctors give her some kind of shot to stimulate growth of white blood cells in her bone marrow.

As a result she’s in a great deal of pain. And it looks like all she can do is suffer with it.

If she gets to feeling any better, we’ll try for a breakfast at Dave’s Diner later this weak or early next.

I continued work on William Short’s 1854 diary—at the moment, he and his new wife are on a paddlewheeler steamboat stuck on a sandbar in the Mississippi River 25 miles south of St. Louis.

Ginny came home from work early, bringing with her a roasted chicken for our supper. Delicious!

During our regular little devotional time after the meal, Gin read a passage from the Gospel where Jesus healed ten lepers but only one thanked Him. We discussed that incident a bit and read a written prayer as we usually do.

Then, almost as an afterthought, I added a single line of prayer about Barbara’s pain. Immediately, Ginny added another phrase. Then I did. Then she did… It was almost as though we spoke with one voice.

Yes, our two prayers for our friend blended into a single petition. Each adding phrase after phrase—sometimes in unison, some times in sequence. Never overlapping, but in order.

It was a type of prayer that I’m not sure we’d ever experienced before.

Certainly not planed nor rehearsed—just a natural flow and outpouring of our two hearts as one. As though Something beyond ourselves was praying through us.

To be frank, it was a bit scary.