Grandma's Last Words

The doctor said: say goodbye.

But she chose to cry out the name of Jesus instead.

My grandmother was the woman who sent me out doing street evangelism at 17. The woman who told me to be bold. Her faith and her prayers shaped my life.

Life had been hard on her. But when she found her way back to Jesus, it lit a fire in her that never went out.

Many years later I stood by her hospital bed.

The doctor stood there, grave and without emotion, and said to my mother while I stood beside her:

In all my years I have never seen anyone in her condition recover. Say goodbye.

And then she left.

There were three of us left in the room. My mother. My grandmother. And me.

In the quiet of that room, something happened that I will never forget.

Grandma turned toward me, pulled my hand to her head, laid it on her forehead, and cried out with all the strength she had left:

Jesus, heal me.

Her voice was shaking. But her faith was not.

We prayed. One last time.

I wish I could tell you she jumped out of bed, healed. That's not how it went. This time the healing didn't come here. She went home to the Savior she had trusted with every breath.

But something else happened in that room.

I have thought about it a lot since.

Even at the very end, surrounded by words of farewell and medical facts, her focus was on Jesus. Not on the diagnosis. Not on the odds. Not on the fear.

She didn't even try to formulate a theologically correct prayer. She just cried out. Directly. Not polished. Not perfect. But full of raw, honest trust.

That is the kind of faith that sits deeper than words. It isn't something you decide on in the moment. It is something built up over a whole lifetime, of Sundays and ordinary days with Jesus.

And when everything else failed, that was what remained.

I think of Grandma whenever I meet people in crisis. There is a kind of faith we can build up in the good times that we can draw on in the bad. It isn't insurance against pain. But it is something to call on when we have nothing left.

The healing that comes is not always the one we prayed for. Grandma got hers, just not here.

What do you cry out to when you run out of words?

And who is the person who has shown you what faithful faith looks like?

Grandma's cry taught me more about prayer than many books have.