Nicole

My daughter Anoushka was hospitalised for a week with advanced pneumonia when she was 7. A year later she developed it again but we managed to control it out of hospital.

At the Thursday women’s group another year later, one of the women felt that God was saying something to me. She said that, like Esther in the Bible, a time would come when I would need to call people together to pray, intercede and support me. Esther had called all the Jews to pray for her, before she went in to see the king to plead for their lives.

Then Esther sent this reply to Mordecai: ‘Go, gather together all the Jews who are in Susa, and fast for me..’ (Esther 4:16)

That time came the next day. Anoushka, now 9, was off school due to a chest infection. Her condition deteriorated fast into pneumonia, her breathing becoming shallower, her body weaker and the decline more rapid than any previous attack. As I held her in my arms, I could sense that she was fading away. The thought raced through my mind, ‘This is the time when I need to call people to pray! But I haven’t had the chance to gather them!’ However, I was able to quickly fire off an email to a friend from church who leads a prayer team. Then I was back with Anoushka, trying to get her to some medical attention.

I sat there and prayed over her. I found myself saying to God the words from Job 1:21:
The Lord has given and the Lord has taken away. Praise the name of the Lord.’

‘You’ve given her to me Lord, but ultimately she’s yours,’ I said. ‘She’s only on loan to me for a period of time. I surrender her to you – but, if it’s your will, please heal her.’

I knew that I had completely handed her back to God. But I continued to call on him to heal. I carried her in my arms to the doctor who gave her the prescription for the medication. Yet by the time I got home, before giving her the medication, she seemed to have more colour in her cheeks, her eyes were opening, and her breathing was improving just as rapidly as it had declined. Within 3 hours she was almost completely back to normal. I did give her the medication, and by the next morning she was firmly out of the danger zone.

On Sunday, I discovered how effective my ‘calling to prayer’ had been. My friend had received my email and then sent an urgent email to many others asking them to pray. The evening that my daughter began to recover, fifty people were praying for her.