One Answered Prayer Resolves a Crisis of Faith.

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"She quietly said, 'I feel like I'm supposed to tell you something.'"

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When I was a little girl, I adored my dad so much that I naively decided I would marry him when I grew up. (If I had told Mom, I'm pretty sure she would have said he was taken.) From about the age of 4, when I woke to the sound of his pick-up being fired up to go to work early in the morning, I would jump out of bed (even in snowy winter!) and dash outside to give him a bye kiss through the truck window. Like most children, I couldn't imagine life without my father and determined that when I grew up, I would replicate my family of 11 (That didn't happen!). As the years passed, I began to sleep through the sound of the vehicle being revved up, and then--I was a teenager. Soon, enough tragic things had happened to me and my family that my heart was becoming numb, and, like many teens I turned away from family; I sought comfort more in being liked by friends, drinking with them at parties, and dancing. I got engaged at 17, fresh out of secondary school, attended some college, broke off the turbulent relationship before turning 20, got a job, lived on my own, drank way too much, and started to gradually sink into a mild depression due to undealt-with emotional issues and the seeming meaninglessness of life. During all this, I was also feeling guilty for turning away from family and for not loving my dad the way I used to. At 22, I moved away from my little hometown, looking for a new start and a more exciting life. ...Meanwhile, Dad struggled with addiction to alcohol and was becoming sicker; and although we were distant from each other and I had lost touch with my emotions, underneath the numbness, I actually still loved him very much.

Several months after moving to Kelowna, I got the news that cancer had attacked Dad's body. Declining treatment, he had collapsed into a coma and was in the hospital in Kamloops. In shock and grief, I drove to see him. I held his large, tanned hand that no longer matched his now frail, failing body. He couldn't speak, but I told him I loved him, and I cried and cried. I returned to Kelowna, and never saw him alive again.

Before losing Dad and before moving away from my hometown, I had received a bible from someone else who was out there drinking and running from God, and who said family members kept giving him bibles! I had also made a shallow attempt at uttering the "sinner's prayer," but I didn't understand faith in Jesus, and now I was facing the idea of eternity and the question of life after death for real. Longing for assurance that I would one day see my father again, and fearing eternal Hell, I again asked Jesus to come into my life and save me for Heaven. Still, even though I had been raised going to church with Mom, I had no concept of a real relationship with the Creator of the Universe, so there was no depth to the fragile connection. But, clearly, the connection was made, and God had heard my almost faithless prayer, and He had a plan. For one thing, out of the blue, my work changed and I suddenly had enough money to move away from the place where alcohol and the bar were a way of life for my peer group.

The crisis of faith came when, soon after Dad's death, it occurred to me that I did not know what he believed about God, although I knew that he did believe there was one. Had he gone to Heaven? Was Heaven real? And Hell? I was immediately in a dilemma. I could not ascribe to a belief that possibly left my beloved father in some terrible place forever--and I told God. Furthermore, I laid out an ultimatum:

"If you are real, you have to show me that there is at least a chance that my dad accepted You as Lord and is now in Heaven. Otherwise, I can't do this." (Well, something like that.) This became my first specific prayer that I can remember.

A little while later, when I was back for a visit in Clearwater, I decided, even though I was a skeptic, to drop in to the local church that I had gone to as a child. After the service, a young woman whom I recognized as one of my grandparents' neighbors approached me. I didn't know her then, and can't remember her first name now. She knew nothing of my secret demand of God. No one did.

She quietly said, "I feel like I'm supposed to tell you something." This young lady went on to explain that while Dad was in a coma in the hospital, she would repeatedly go and visit him and talk about Jesus and share the "Gospel" with him, describing the simplicity of believing in Jesus and accepting Him as Savior for eternal life. One day, before Dad went on into eternity, and just as this woman was starting to leave the hospital room, she felt an unfamiliar tugging in her spirit drawing her back to the bedside. It seemed to her that she was sensing Dad wanting Jesus, and so she stayed longer to pray with and for him. Her specific way of expressing this part of the event evades me now as it was decades ago, but it was something to that effect, and it marked the beginning of my trust that God is truly present and listening, and always ready to bestow His amazing grace upon whoever is open.

I did not yet fully understand the relationship concept at this point, but this answer to my prayer was enough for me to give the Divine Creator another chance to show me the meaning of this journey called life, which can, at times, be so difficult and painful. Some questions that we have about this broken, twisted and sin-sick world will, apparently, remain unanswered until we cross over, but He promises that He knows what we need and when we need it, and can bring good out of the worst situations--if we will only believe.