I had always been skeptical about prayer. What good did it do? Three years ago I found out.
I was shopping at a local drugstore when all of a sudden I felt disoriented and unsteady. An employee noticed. He sat me down right away, then managed to get in touch with my wife, Jo Ann. She came to pick me up and, at the pharmacist’s urging, took me to the emergency room.
In the car I couldn’t buckle my seatbelt. It seemed as if my fingers just wouldn’t work. By the time we got to the hospital, I couldn’t even have told you what day it was. Tests were inconclusive. The doctor decided to keep me overnight for observation. By the next morning I was having convulsions. They moved me to the intensive care unit, where I fell into a coma.
The doctors told my wife the prognosis wasn’t good. I had the West Nile virus; it was affecting my brain and nervous system. They’d do what they could, but there was no specific treatment known to fight the infection.
Maybe the doctors couldn’t do anything, but Jo Ann could. She prayed. She also told her sister, Judy, about my condition. Judy organized a citywide prayer chain. On September 19 everyone in Selma was asked to pray for me between 7:00 and 8:00 P.M. They prayed that night. And the next. And the next. After three weeks, I finally came out of the coma. I had no idea how long I’d been out or what was wrong with me. “What happened?”
“You have the West Nile virus,” Jo Ann told me.
“Is it serious?”
“Randy, you’ve been in a coma. The doctors told us it would take a miracle to bring you back.”
That it did. I am back. Not just healthy, but a changed man. Thanks to the good people of Selma, I’m no longer a skeptic.
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