How To Survive a Setback

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Learning To Pray

This is a true story. It actually happened to me.  If you read my bio, you will know that I had a West Nile viral infection from a kidney transplant in 2009.  I was immunosupressed to protect the transplant, and so I got neuro-invasive disease leading to profound weakness.  Every muscle in my body stopped receiving signals from my brain.  I was so weak that I couldn't even breathe on my own.  I was put on a ventilator in the ICU.
After a few months. when I got strong enough to wean off the ventilator, I was moved to a rehabilitation hospital.  There, I could breathe and move my fingers and neck a little.  I was basically paralyzed, confined to a hospital bed.  They gave me a call button so I could let the nurses know when I needed help with an itch, a pain, the bathroom, or other sudden need. During the night, the button was placed in my palm so that I could make the call.  Not good enough.  If it happened to fall out, which happened often, I couldn't find it.  Even though it might be right next to my elbow in the bed.  Despite frantically craning my neck, it was as good as gone to me/
If this happened, somehow, I didn't panic.  All I could think to do was to pray that someone would happen upon me.  And I quickly learned how to pray.  No one has  to be religious to understand this.  You don't even have to be religious to learn how to pray. But it helps you to focus if you believe in God. 
  •  Believers
  • Atheists
  • Agnostics
 Some believers are sure that God exists.  Atheists are sure that He doesn't.  Agnostics are not sure of either.   There is a thin, theological book entitled Mere Christianity, by C. S. Lewis, that was recommended to me by a friend in college.   It lays out the case for believing in Christ. I highly recommend it to everyone.  I have observed that believers are highly successful.  Look at all the praying that goes on in the NFL  There is a reason for it.
In any event, at first I prayed "Please help me to be strong."  But that wasn't quite right.  Whom was I kidding?  I wasn't strong.  I was "kitten weak." I could barely move.  I was asking for too much. My next prayer was "Please help me BE."  I was hoping to be human again.  Better, but still not right.  Wanting to be human again made sense, but I wasn't even close.  I was a vegetable.  Getting back to being human might not ever be possible for me.  Lastly, I prayed  "Please help me." That was all I could say.  I needed help, bit I didn't have any expectations.  I learned something about humility during this trial. And I got help from many people at the rehab hospital.
You don't have to call it prayer.  You don't have to believe in God.  But if you are helpless like I was, you will be humbled and praying can be beneficial.

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