Keep Praying Mom!
The following testimony would really pull the heartstrings of any mother or parent. It has encouraged me again and I hope it will encourage you to never stop praying and to not give up on our children. It will be our prayers that will bring our prodigals home.
"Mom...I know it was your prayers that brought me back."
There I stood by his hospital bed, my son Joseph, age 25 on life support was fighting for his life. I kept repeating the scripture, "You shall surely live; you shall not die". (personalized from Ezekiel 18:21)
Let me back up a bit. I married young, had three children, went through divorce, and was left to struggle as a single parent raising two sons and a daughter by myself. Somehow I thought that divorce would be easier than going through the verbal and physical abuse. Little did I know what lay ahead for me.
I had given birth to two normal, active children, daughter Courtney , son James and one firecracker, Joseph...born to keep me on my knees! If there was any trouble, or invitation to get in trouble - he found it and drug me through the knothole with him. I just didn't get it. I tried so hard to be a good mother even though I knew I had caused my own mother sleepless nights until the age of 13 when I gave my heart to Christ at a youth revival at Kadoka, South Dakota.
As my son, Joseph, lay there in an induced coma, my thoughts went back to the first time he took a toy from a store. I drove back to the store in a pounding thunderstorm and made him go in and apologize for stealing it. Whew...I thought, "I did it...he got it...lesson learned and it won't happen again." Much to my disappointment and deep pain, it only got worse as he reached his teen years. I was beginning to know what the term "free will" meant. In Joseph's life, it meant he was using his free will to take him down the long road of wrong choices and severe consequences. His choices of stealing, using drugs, alcohol and marijuana and choosing the wrong friends ended with him being arrested many times, going in and out of jail. As a mother, my heart was broken. How could I try so hard and have him fail so badly? The pain and guilt was overwhelming.
Then, eight years ago after a siege of wrong choices, being arrested, breaking out and being a runaway from the police, a new chapter was being written. He knew he was cornered and was trapped. In his sick frame of mind, he decided the only way out was to kill himself, yet knew from his upbringing in church that he wouldn't go to heaven. So through much bizarre thinking and planning, he figured if he got in trouble, could get the police involved by chasing him, hopefully they would shoot and kill him and it would all be over. Well, the first part of his plan worked. There was trouble, the police chase, and just as he had hoped, they shot him. This is where the story takes a turn from where I started.
I received the most dreaded phone call from the police in Texas that my son had been on a runaway chase, had been shot and wasn't expected to live. Frantically, I raced from Mississippi to Texas to be by his side. Being a critical care nurse in Mobile, AL, I knew what the word critical meant. When I entered the room, my son Joseph was on life support and almost unrecognizable. Tubes were hooked up all over his body to keep him alive.
I stood there stunned but kept quoting the scripture, "He shall surely live; he shall not die." How could this be? Was I going to lose another child? I had just walked through the valley of death of my 14 year old daughter, Courtney. She, I and her friend were on our way to a family reunion in South Dakota. It was pouring rain and my van hydroplaned, hit a guard rail, flipped eight times finally depositing itself in a ravine. I can still remember crawling over to my daughter and holding her lifeless body in my arms, trying to reason, "Why...God, she loved You." I was snapped back to the moment as the doctors reported to me that when the bullet hit him it lodged in his spine, which caused a fragmented lung, severely damaged liver and they thought that he would be paralyzed for life if he made it. He was on life support and in an induced coma for 6-8 weeks. Before they induced the coma, he was conscious for a few minutes and shared the following with me:
"Mom, when I was shot, I knew I was dying. At first I was really mad and bitter because I lived. That wasn't part of the plan. All of a sudden everything went dark and black, and I experienced being stuck through a long black tube. I went down, down, down until I knew I was going to hell. I could literally feel the heat, and I could see the faces of people screaming in terror and anguish. It was horrifying and I didn't want to go down, as I knew I was going to hell. Then, all of a sudden, I began to go back up this long black tunnel and when I opened my eyes I saw you. Mom, I knew I was going hell. It was your prayers that brought me back."
I wish the story ended with "and we all lived happily ever after". Joseph had to pay the consequences for his actions and he is now in his eighth year of prison coming up for parole in 2013. The good news is that Joseph gave his heart back to Christ while behind bars, and he truly loves the Lord. He has taken his pain and turned it into a pulpit to minister one-on-one, sharing Christ to those that he's able to come in contact with and who want to hear the Good News that God can forgive them and set them free just as Jesus Christ did for him.
As a mother, I've been asked numerous times what keeps me going. I would tell every hurting mother to have scriptures of hope posted like Ps. 146:5, "Blessed are those whose help is the God of Jacob,
whose hope is in the LORD their God." Surround oneself with scriptures that serve as promises and reminders that He will always be with me and never leave me nor forsake me. His words give me the strength to keep going.
~Raynae Richburg, cousin of Gloria
This is what the LORD says:
"Restrain your voice from weeping and your eyes from tears, for your work will be rewarded," declares the LORD. "They will return from the land of the enemy. So there is hope for your descendants," declares the LORD. "Your children will return to their own land." Jeremiah 31:16-17
If you have a child or grandchild away from God, keep praying, keep loving, and keep believing so our children too can also say, "Dad, and/or Mom, it was your prayers that brought me back."
- Gloria