Prayer- squeezing God’s hand.

Glancing through my photos on my phone, I chanced upon a picture of my sibling’s gravesite. It brought me back to those days so dark. So full of fear, dread and panic. I knew where his future lied as I knew the statistics of his particular illness. Chances of survival was at zero.

Yet I prayed and cried hundreds of times for a miracle. I sobbed bitter tears for the doctors to come up with some sort of cure.
Yet here I am, looking at that haunting photo of the grave, wondering where all those prayers went. Were they all for naught?

What about all those tears shed when I was a young innocent child and teenager going through so much abuse and trauma?
What about those night where I wet my pillow, hoping, wishing and praying for an end to my suffering?
What about those prayers when I was so alone and vulnerable?
What about the prayers of the many thousands of now widows and orphans?
Where are they? What have they accomplished?

Perhaps, we have prayer all wrong. Perhaps it’s not about begging and convincing God to change his mind.
Perhaps it’s not about showing Him to use our ideas and solutions to fix our problems.

It’s written, that the plague of darkness was the worst. What’s unique about that plague was that there was no actual danger or loss of life and if so, why was it the worst?
An answer can be, that with all the other plagues, they had each other, whereas with this particular plague they were completely alone.

Loneliness is awful and the only thing worse than that, is going through a tragedy alone.
The biggest punishment in jails is solitary confinement. Being alone during dark times amplifies the tragedy so much more.

When a child needs to endure a painful medical procedure, the parent standing beside him will say, “hold my hand and squeeze when it hurts.”
Although it won’t take away any of the pain, the child knows that he’s not suffering alone.

Perhaps the gift of prayer is God is telling us, “squeeze my hand.”
Just like a father won’t ask the doctor to skip the necessary procedure, God can’t always skip the challenge we are going through.
However, He gives us His hand to squeeze when the going gets rough.

It takes away that loneliness.
It removes the feeling of powerlessness.
It brightens the darkness, even by a drop.
We are squeezing God’s Hand. Not just any hand. We are squeezing the hand of the one who is so much greater than us.

Looking back at those painful times, perhaps it was the prayer that got me through it. If I ask myself where did it all go, the answer might be, it went right there, right to the place where I needed it most.
Watching a sibling suffer or going through abuse and trauma is awful, but the only thing worse than that is going through it alone.

Prayer gave me that reassurance that someone’s got my back, regardless of what might happen at the end.
Prayer gave me that sense of safety and security just like a child has when squeezing his parent’s hand.

Prayer connects us to the source of infinite kindness. There are times when it can change the future reality, however when it can’t, for reasons we will never know, it can change our current reality.

Those tears, those many prayers late at night, the calling and reaching out was my soul squeezing God’s hand and it was precisely because of that, that I was able to pull through it all. It gave me that sense of safety and security that I’m not alone and that there’s a loving fatherly figure, holding me and carrying me through it all.