I've been trying to figure out how to write about this for a few days now. And I'll probably do a poor job, but I figured this moment was strange enough to merit some blog space, so here goes:
When I was at the radiologists the other day, I had been taken back into a secondary waiting room, put into a gown, IV started, and was just waiting until the CAT Scan machine was available for me. I was being shepherded around by this nice African-American woman, probably in her late 40s. Her name was Theresa. She came to check on me. I was sitting there writing in my journal, trying to hold it together while being terrified. There were 2 other women in the waiting room, also African-American. It was a mother (about 80 years old) and her daughter (about 60). They were both dressed to the nines and sporting well-coifed but obviously fake wigs.
Theresa asked me, "Are you okay? You look white as a ghost." And I just lost it. Started crying and blubbering about how I'd just had a hysterectomy, and they'd found cancer, and I have a 10 month old baby, and I can't be sick, and this scan was going to tell me what my future was going to hold dealing with this illness. The daughter approached as I was talking to Theresa. "I couldn't help but overhear. Would it be alright if I prayed for you? I'm a minister." I said certainly, thinking she meant she'd pray for me at church, but no, she meant right then. She, her mother, Theresa and I joined hands, and the minister went to town. She was doing some serious praying, and the mother and Theresa were reaching mumuring "Praise God, Praise Jesus" at various intervals. After the first round of prayer, she pulled out a bottle of "holy oil" from her purse and asked me if she could anoint me. How often do you get asked that? So I was anointed, and then the praying continued. Afterward, She gave me her card--her name is Sister Doris, and her husband is a minister too. They minister to inmates at various prisons around central Texas--Kyle, Gatesville... She wrote my name and Gracelyn's down in her notebook so they could pray for me this Sunday. While I was getting my scan, she pulled out her Bible and a piece of paper and wrote down a bunch of scriptures about healing and God's love for me to take home and contemplate. Sister Doris was pretty amazing.
I've thought about this whole deal a lot since Wednesday. It's weird, but if it had been some white, evangelical, right wing, car-salesman looking dude asking to pray for me, I wouldn't have been so okay with it. But Doris was not trying to save my soul. She was just sincerely praying to God that I be okay and that I be able to raise my baby. She wanted me to be well, and she wanted God to help me. Those three women will never know what their being there meant to me. I felt indescribably scared and alone--like I was standing on the edge of a cliff at the end of the world. And as strange of an experience as it was, after they prayed for me (I was praying too, but silently), I was not as afraid as I had been. They soothed me and comforted me, and it worked.
I am planning on writing Doris a note and letting her know I got the "all clear," and to thank her once again for being so kind to me. But I guess all of this is to say that if some random African-American minister woman wearing a big black wig ever offers to pray for you, take her up on it.
1 comment:
That is so wild, becasue i was once rescued by some people just like that, when my car broke down.
I was in college still, en route to Houston from Austin, and somewhere outside LaGrange the car just went "pfft" and no more worky.
I freaked and pulled over. And sat and wondered what to do. Opened the hood, closed it, locked the door, etc.
Soon after a van pulled up and this family opens the door, dad, mom and daughter, and offered to help. They drove me all the way into LaGrange, where i called my Dad, and they STAYED WITH ME until he drove from Houston.
They were traveling ministers, too, a really nice black family, and you are right, I would not have taken it nearly so well had they been white right wingers. As it was, we did pray and I said a little prayer of thanks to them for helping me in a time when I could have been in big trouble.
It's amazing, isn't it, the kindness of strangers?
I'm so glad they were there for you, and I know, after that, you are getting the all clear.
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