“Is she breathing?” the nurse said to me frantically as I ran past her carrying my daughter’s limp and listless body. “Yes, I think so”, I yelled back as my wife and I were sprinting through the hospital. I handed our little girl off to a nurse and we followed her and others into a hospital room. We watched stunned as a team of about of nine doctors and nurses began hovering over our little girl and worked feverously. We were both at the same time praying without ceasing and at the very same time we had no words to pray.
Romans 8:26 – 27 In the same way the Spirit also helps our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we should, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words; and He who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because He intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.
We watched a team of doctors and nurses trying feverously to get an IV into our little girls arm. The veins in the arm had collapsed because of sever dehydration. Then one nurse told the others” to step aside” and she stepped up and found a vein where there seemingly was not one to find. I truly and honestly believe that the Spirit heard the words we could not speak and interceded in this desperate situation. That nurse later told my wife that there was no vein there to hit that she believed “it was a miracle or angel was there or something”. After a few days in the hospital our little girl was discharged and sent home but we never got any answers for what had happened too her. We keep praying for answers and did not get any.
Fast forward 6 months – Our daughter has another episode and we again have to rush her to the hospital. She has all the same symptoms as she did the first time and is very ill. The doctors at this hospital in Lynchburg have no idea how to treat her, so they need to take her to a larger hospital. I am at her bedside and Wendy is at home just a couple of minutes away gather some stuff for us for the night. Wendy called and I had to tell her to come back quickly because they were going to Life Flight our little 5 year old girl. She is sent by Life Flight to University of Virginia Medical Center, but they will not let Wendy or I fly with her. We had to watch them load our little girl on an ambulance and then hear the helicopter take off. Where we were we could not see the helicopter, we could just hear it taking off. For our little girl, she would be to the hospital in about 15 minutes, but for Wendy and I it was a 45 minute to hour drive. This drive was again a time when there were no words to pray, just us pleading without knowing what to say to God. It was the longest and most agonizing time of our lives – things happened so fast we had no family or friends with us – we only had the Spirit. We had the Spirit and Christ interceding for us as we were literally groaning during our drive to see our little girl.
Romans 8:34b Christ Jesus is He who died, yes, rather who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us.
Wendy’s heart and my heart were filled with prayers for our little girl. Wendy and I slept in the hospital room at the University of Virginia Medical Center with her for five days, never leaving. We watched her go through test after test. We had a steady stream of doctors coming and going. Mckayla had in terrible pain in one leg and being doctors they had to touch it and when she would be in pain, we would be in pain. Her heart rate raced for days. Her heart raced at 150 beats per minute or higher for about 3 days straight. The brought an echocardiogram and checked her heart. The doctor was checking her heart and she looked up at him and asked one of the most touching things, “do you see Jesus in there”.
After five days of being there she was discharged. She was discharged and we had no answers. They had done every type of testing you could imagine including genetic testing. They could not find anything. Every time after that she would get sick, we would live in fear that it was going to happen again.
A couple of months later we moved Baltimore. We thought for sure that we would find answers from the medical staff at Johns Hopkins. We again were brought to the point were we were left with no answers from anyone, anywhere – just their best guesses. We have never got any real answers and praise God that our little girl has not had any episodes like this since.
But during that time, Wendy and I had no words to pray. The doctors had no answers and nothing really to say. Our gratitude was and still is to the Spirit of God who expressed our daughter’s needs with groans to the Father when we could not get the words out.
Do you find comfort in knowing that the Holy Spirit and Jesus are making intercession for you?
Find comfort in knowing that the Holy Spirit and Jesus are praying even in those times when you can not get a word of a prayer off to God.
(There are many more details to this story but the post would be way too long to share all of it)
