Prayer From Our Friends

The Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans.

—Romans 8:26

One morning, early in the pregnancy, there was blood. The door of my heart swung shut and locked like the door to a safe, impenetrable. An ultrasound showed a hemorrhage. There was a 50 percent chance that the hemorrhage would diminish. That left a 50 percent chance that the hemorrhage would grow, and the baby would not survive.

For me, fifty-fifty may as well have been zero-zero. I began to mourn.

My husband and parents reminded me that fifty-fifty is good, but I couldn’t get there. I asked for help and prayer from a couple of close friends. I was so thankful for people who prayed with faith and expectancy and courage when all I felt was fear and dread. My own prayers were ragged, desperate, their fabric torn with anger and shot through with bullets of accusation and bad memories.

Then at my follow-up appointment, the best possible news. The hemorrhage had diminished. Everything was fine. Alongside fear and gratitude, I felt the first precious rush of hope.