Unspoken Prayers: Part 2

I mentioned in my last entry that there have been two instances in my life (that I know of )where God intervened on my behalf; when I didn't even know Him enough to ask Him for help.  This second story relates to my entire immediate family.

Almost 12 years ago my father was diagnosed with cancer.  I was 22 years old and getting ready to move across the country to Arizona to begin my career as a teacher.  Finding out that he was not only sick, but very very sick rocked me to my core.  After surgery was performed to remove a tumor from his lung we were told his cancer was stage 4.  He was informed there was no treatment that would work on this form of cancer (melanoma) and that he should prepare himself and his family to die.  A death sentence.  Up to this point in my life I had dealt very little with death or hardship of any kind.  Finding out that my Dad was probably in his last year of life seemed completely surreal.

I remember meeting up with my sister at her college dormitory, throwing my arms around her, and we both just cried our eyes out.  We were without hope and the pain of that was so very great.

For anyone of you who know my mother personally, she is a fighter and as spitfire.  She's a tiny 5 feet tall, but she does not back down from a confrontation.  My father's cancer became her fight and she determined to stop at nothing in order to find a cure for him.  To make a long story short, they were able to enter my Dad into a treatment regimen that was somewhat of a trial.  There had been studies done on it up to that point, but the success rate was dismal.  I think of everyone treated 25% would see a reduction in the cancer's growth and of that 25%, maybe 2% had seen the tumor disappear altogether.  Not great odds.

In the interest of time, I will cut to the chase here.  Through no prayer at all on the part of myself or to my knowledge anyone else in my immediate family (I could be very wrong about this, but it wasn't evident to me) my Dad became that 2% of 25% and is alive and well to this day!

I'm amazed by this feat of God.  It still blows me away.  What amazes me as well is that God restored my father's health without me asking him to.  Maybe others were praying for him.  Maybe he prayed and asked God to heal him.  I don't know.  After reading this I'm sure he will tell me.  But the bottom line is that God does answer the prayer of our hearts sometimes even when we don't ask Him to.

I struggle with this often though because I see many faithful believers praying for sick family members and the answer they receive is not a healing touch.  I don't understand that so I have to leave that with God.  What I do know is that God showers His love on His people.  He is faithful even when we are not.  He allowed my father to live for reasons that only He knows.  And God knew that someday I would know Him and the fact that he saved my Dad would blow my socks off.