Prayer for the ailing
What you need to know:
- At a complete loss of words, I say a prayer. I pray for everyone and every family dealing with any form of physical ailment. I pray for grace and strength. I pray for comfort and I pray for wisdom.
The corridors were always dark and dreary. As a little girl I would literally run through. Firstly because there was fear of bumping into two gentlemen rolling a dead body down the aisle or worse still bumping into them in the lift. Mother usually worked at the far end which meant walking or in my case, running past many patients ailing on their beds.
To this day, I hate hospitals and I hate the sight of blood. I hate their smell and the groans from the patients with visible pain on their faces. Hospitals generally carry a sense of helplessness. Especially the government hospitals where folks do not just ail but ail in gruesome conditions.
Today I sat in a tiny room of a private hospital. On the bed lay a 14-year-old boy. He has been in and out of hospital because of sickle cell anaemia. I had heard about his situation but had never been there to see him. I had to control my emotions because my heart truly went out to him. The disease has ravaged his body he looks smaller than his age. I watched him wriggle in pain, I saw his laboured breathing and I listened to his gentle moans.
What hit me the most is the fact that this has been his life for years. To control the pain, he regularly gets morphine shots.
How could this be? The depth of my anguish only matched the rage I felt towards this disease that had made itself at home in his young body and thrown everyone off balance.
The boy’s father had never given me a graphic description, so I had not appreciated the magnitude. I was as embarrassed as I was ashamed at myself. I held his little hand. I had to master self-control so that my emotions would stay put for the boy’s sake.
At a complete loss of words, I say a prayer. I pray for everyone and every family dealing with any form of physical ailment. I pray for grace and strength. I pray for comfort and I pray for wisdom. I pray for provision and I pray for healing. Healing of the physical body and healing of the soul. I send warm cyber hugs to the patients and to their caretakers.
I also pray for the medical practitioners; may you find meaning and grace to administer not just the medical requirements but to administer love, care and compassion.
