The power of a wife’s prayer

A pastor asked a little boy if he said his prayers at night. “Yes sir,” the boy replied.

“And do you say prayers in the morning, too?” the pastor continued.

“No sir,” the boy answered. “I ain’t scared in the daytime.”

Fear can certainly move us to pray, although I should hasten to add, prayer should encompass our lives more often than just the times when we are afraid.

And there are moments when having someone else pray for you, (church people call it “intercession”) is a welcome relief when trouble strikes.

As a pastor, I sometimes pray for people before they have surgery. Years ago I decided to try and pray for my flock before the medical procedure rather than after it, although I’ve sometimes done both. It is comforting, people have told me, to have the pastor pray for them shortly before they receive the anesthetic.

But not long ago, as a patient myself, I learned something first hand: it certainly doesn’t have to be the pastor who prays.

My little procedure was far from major surgery. But it necessitated that they “put me under,” nonetheless. The nurse had processed my paper work earlier. I hadn’t thought much about the procedure until she asked if I had a living will, which I do, and if I was aware of possible complications, which I wasn’t.

I signed the document, acknowledging that I knew things could go wrong.

Then my mind went south with wrong scenarios.

It was prompted, I suppose, not just by the living will business, but also because my brother had died while under the anesthesia after the two of us had been in a car accident together.

But that’s been years ago.

Bad memories have a way a lurking in our past and presenting themselves at the most inopportune times.

I took comfort in the fact that the very capable nurse anesthetist had done hundreds of these. But what if she gets bored with the routine, I thought, and consequently is easily distracted or slips into a daydream about what she was going to do later in the day? What if she’s fatigued at this early hour and accidentally gives me too much propofol? After all, that’s the drug that led to Michael Jackson’s demise.

Anyone can make a mistake.

And what if the doctor, whose expertise I totally trusted, had had a bad night and didn’t sleep--- maybe he had had an argument with his wife, or a bout with indigestion, or perhaps his hot water tank had exploded, preventing him from taking a shower so that he wasn’t fully awake on the day I showed up for my minor medical procedure.

And voile, “Sorry, but I nicked you, ol’ boy,” he tells me as I’m writhing in pain. “It happens, you know. You will hopefully recover after several weeks of therapy.”

“We’re so sorry, Mrs. Whitlock,” I could hear a chaplain telling my wife, “this complication only occurs in about 1.6% of the cases, but your husband…”

Then the nurse’s voice shook me back to reality. “Your blood pressure is a little high, just breathe deeply and try to relax,” she told me as she prepped me for the procedure.

“Well, your blood pressure would be high too if you knew all the bad stuff I’ve been thinking about that could go wrong here,” I wanted to blurt out but didn’t because she quickly disappeared behind the curtain separating me from the other patients.

In a moment she opened the curtain again.

And there was my wife.

“How ya doing?” Lori gently asked.

I just nodded my head, “okay.”

“Everything alright?” she inquired.

“You know how I am when I haven’t had coffee,” I said, trying to mask my anxiety.

Without saying a word, Lori took my hand in hers.

And then she began to pray for me.

In that moment, she became my “pastor,” or at least my “intercessor.”

And by the time she said, “Amen,” my fears were relieved.

“You should check my blood pressure again,” I told the nurse, who had stepped back in my cubicle. “I think it’s okay now.”

“I’m not worried,” she said, “most people’s blood pressure is a little elevated before a procedure.”

If she wasn’t going to worry, then neither would I, I thought.

And besides, I had someone who had prayed with me and would continue praying for me.

As I breathed in the propofol and drifted away, I thought like the little boy, “I ain’t scared in the daytime.”

The right thing to do

If ever you are in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, I recommend you stop and eat at Harry’s Breakfast Pancakes.

Wait, before you leave me: This is not a restaurant review.

Neither is it a travel journal.

It’s a lesson about sowing and reaping.

Back to Harry’s.

Lori and I were eating what my dad would call a “scrumpdelicious,” breakfast. Guy Fieri likes to use the phrase, “out of bounds.” My breakfast at Harry’s was outstanding, to say the least.

Then Lori scooted a $100 bill across the table.

“We need to break this $100 bill, so pay for breakfast with it, and we’ll have plenty of change.”

So I stuffed the money in my right pocket. Or so I thought.

I had read where if you mention “Pete,” (the owner), when you pay at Harry’s, you will get a 10% discount.

I was at the cash register, spinning a yarn about how I had met “Pete” on the beach and how he had told me to mention his name.

The lady was laughing at my story, or maybe pretending to laugh, when I reached in my pocket.

And I stopped telling my imaginary tale about “Pete.”

You are ahead of my story: The $100 bill wasn’t there.

Before I had time to look shame faced at Lori, I heard our waitress, whose name was Chris, calling out to us. She was waving the $100 in her hand.

It had slipped out of my pocket and was in the booth where I had sat.

After many “thank-you’s,” and a warning from my wife to be more careful, we were happily traveling up the road, back toward our ol’ Kentucky home.

But I couldn’t help but think of Chris, the honest waitress.

Being a waitress can’t be easy. The hours are long and people can be rude. I thought of the song, “She works hard for the money.”

Wouldn’t it have been easy for her to have inconspicuously slipped that $100 bill in her pocket, rush back to the kitchen and wait while I frantically searched for it?

$100 is a nice bonus for most of us, and besides, Chris could have justified keeping it: “I’ll use it for a ‘good’ cause;” “I need to pay bills with this;” “I deserve to make up for all the lousy tips I’ve received;” “That talkative man should be more careful, so maybe this will actually help him.”

Instead, she unhesitatingly brought the money to me.

Why? Did she ponder taking it, even if only for a second or two?

I wondered.

So couple of weeks after we had returned home, I called Harry’s Breakfast Pancakes and asked for Chris.

She immediately remembered the man who had left a $100 bill in the booth.

“Why?” I asked. “Why did you give it back?”

“I didn’t want bad karma,” she joked at first.

Then she told the reason beneath the answer: “It was the right thing to do.”

Chris was raised in a home where Christ was present, where her mamma taught Chris to do the right thing simply because it was the right thing to do.

Chris’ comment about karma was not totally awry. I don’t believe in a karma that determines our eternal destiny.

But I do believe in the biblical principle of sowing and reaping.

Paul the Apostle put it like this in Galatians 6:7-8: “Don’t be deceived: God is not mocked. For whatever a man sows he will also reap, because the one who sows to his flesh will reap corruption from the flesh, but the one who sows to the Spirit will reap eternal life from the Spirit.

Add a “t” to the end of Chris’ name, and you’ll see the name of the one she is following in doing good. I hope she reaps a fruitful harvest, and I believe she will, if like the Apostle said, she does not get tired of doing good.

And so can you and I, along with and a host of others, who as flawed as we are, yet find hope in the fact that we can change what we are reaping in life by changing what we are sowing.

If nothing else, Chris is reaping a heart full of integrity. My guess is, she can sleep at night with a clear conscience. Not everybody enjoys that.

So, if you are ever down Myrtle Beach way, stop in at Harry’s, mention “Pete,” say hello to Chris, enjoy a wonderful breakfast, and then keep going, for the principle of sowing and reaping is the same everywhere: sow something good along the way and something good will eventually come your way.

Good morning, Mr. Sunshine

She opened the door and tiptoed outside.

“What are you doing?” I whispered from bed. “You’re going to wake the kids,” I said, referring to our then 13-year-old daughter and 11-year-old son.

“I want to see the sunrise on the beach. I may never get to see it again.”

My first wife, Katri, had been diagnosed with breast cancer four years earlier, and recent check-ups did not bear good news.

The “Teacher” of Ecclesiastes observed that “the sun also rises,” meaning that we come and go, but the sun always rises.

True, and each sunrise is the same.

And each one is different.

That can be a comfort and hope for us, who walk so quickly off the stage of life.

I think my wife was wanting to take a little bit of that sunrise with her, into her future, which was so uncertain.

And the sunrise is splendid in its beauty and magnificent in its constancy.

People suffering from cancer often feel neither beautiful nor magnificent.

She knew something about that.

Since I was fast asleep with the kids, I can only imagine her down there on the beach, her toes in the sand, her eyes fixed on the horizon, swallowing what she could of the sunrise.

Last week, these years later, with my wife, Lori, I wished to return to the beach, early, in hopes of catching a glimpse of Mr. Sunshine.

The sun was scheduled to rise at 6:06 a.m., on Myrtle Beach, Wednesday, June 23, 2016.

I was up at 4:30, just in case the calculations were inaccurate.

And so hand in hand, Lori and I walked along the shore.

“I guess it just gets light,” I complained, disappointed that we seemed to have missed the sunrise. “It’s like God turned on the lights. No warning. No anticipation. No ‘ta-da.’

Maybe the haze hid the sun.”

Checking my watch, I noticed it was only five after six.

Maybe I hadn’t missed it.

And there it was.

Mr. Sunshine was poking his bald, red head above the sea, breaking into the horizon. At first he looked like an egg, struggling to birth himself from the netherworld. Then in only a few minutes, he stood like a warrior with armor, his weapons bright and full and glorious.

We took it all in.

And wished he would have stayed young a bit longer.

For we felt his youth, his vigor, his newness.

It seemed as though the sun brought its own bouquet of freshness. And I wanted to take Mr. Sunshine’s fragrance with me.

Ecclesiastes was right. The sun would be back tomorrow and the next day, and all our days, until I am here no more, until the Lord chooses to return.

“Did you take it in?” I asked Katri as she ever so quietly closed the door so not to wake the kids.

Afraid I would sound blithe if I told her I thought she would see the sunrise again over the ocean and too fearful that she wouldn’t, I said nothing.

Lonely days and lonely nights would follow.

For she was right in her premonition: it was the last time she saw a sunrise on the beach.

At least this side of eternity.

Mom and Dad told me as a child that if I held a seashell next to my ear and waited, I could hear the ocean inside.

It never seemed to work for me.

But then again, I’m not very patient.

So, I would like to think, if I hold a seashell just right, and peer inside, I might catch at least a ray from the face of Mr. Sunshine.

And thereby take some of it home with me.

And with each new, day---each filled with its hopes and fears, each one the same and each, one of a kind, and with every day trotting out a declaration that I will see another day and each one bearing a question mark about tomorrow--- I could yet look inside that shell, and maybe if I look long enough,

I could declare,

“Good morning, Mr. Sunshine.”