I have seen this a couple of times. Fr Don Calloway asks the question: What do you think God would make His own mother like? What qualities would she have?
My friend Marcia’s daughter in law from South Africa had been learning how to drive in here America and she looked at her driving permit and realized she had one day to take her driver’s test. That day she called Marcia to see if she could take her and use her car to take the test. My friend couldn’t take her and told her to pray. Her daughter in law was so stressed out she couldn’t even think to pray. She told Marcia that the only thing she could think of to pray at the time was “Hail Mary full of grace the Lord is with thee” and said it over and over again. Everything worked out and Her daughter in law passed the test.
Her daughter in law is not Catholic and neither is my friend Marcia.
In my blog post Seeing the Light, I wrote about how God healed me of anxiety when I was 22 years old. I was healed for about ten years then when I was 32 years old it came back. I had pretty bad anxiety after an accident when I was 45 years old Then the anxiety got really bad during the pandemic and I have been struggling ever since.
Today I watched a daily service at Catholic church named St Jude’s and at the end everyone prayed together to ask St. Jude to pray for them and I prayed along. I asked St. Jude to pray to God that God would heal me of this anxiety and take it away.
I have a dentist appointment today and after I took my shower, I felt really anxious at about 11:30 a.m. Then around 12:30 p.m. a feeling of peace came over me, similar to how it felt when God healed me of anxiety the first time. Only time will tell if I am completely healed, but I believe asking St Jude to pray for me made a difference.
This blog post is a thank you to St Jude Thaddeus for praying for me. He was an apostle and cousin of Jesus. He is the patron saint of impossible and hopeless cases, and I have asked him more than once to pray for me and for friends.
Last fall I fasted and prayed a novena (which is nine days of prayer) to St Jude to asked him to pray for a friend, who had a tumor on her bladder. When the doctor went in to perform surgery on it, he could not find anything. The tumor was gone.
You might think praying to saints this sounds strange if you are not Catholic, or Eastern Orthodox or Anglican, and I used to struggle with asking saints to pray for us but there has been too many prayers answered to deny the power of it.
I pray every day. I also look at my blog stats every day, and I can tell which country the people reading my blog are living in. I know in some of the countries, people are being persecuted for their faith terribly by their own governments and family members because they believe in Jesus. I cannot imagine what you are going through because you love Jesus. I pray for your safety and protection and just wanted to let you know I care.
Glory Be Prayer: All glory and honor be to God the Father, Jesus Christ the Son and the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and will be forever, Amen.
The Lord’s Prayer: Our Father who is in heaven, hallowed be Your name, Your kingdom come, and Your will be done on earth, as it is in heaven. Give us today, our daily bread, and forgive for our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us, do not let us fall into temptation but deliver us from evil, for the kingdom, the power and the glory are Yours now and forever, Amen.
Hail Mary: Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you. Blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb, Jesus. Holy Mary Mother of God pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen.
Prayer: Holy God, Holy Mighty One, Holy Immortal One, have mercy on us and have mercy on everyone in the world, in the name of Jesus Christ I pray, Amen.
One of my evangelical friends who lives in a different state had an MRI in August to see if she would be a candidate for back surgery. She has terrible pain in her back and chronic sciatica, along with fibromyalgia. I feel so bad for her because she suffers so much.
After the MRI, the doctor called her and said the MRI showed something. One of the ducts on her pancreas was enlarged so he told her he could not do surgery on her S1 Joint. She was upset. Then she saw her regular doctor who told her she needed to get a CAT scan and to make an appointment with a specialist right away.
She went in for her CAT scan, and that showed multiple very small tumors on her liver and a 14centimeter tumor on the outer wall of her bladder. When she went in to see the specialist, he said the tumors on her liver were harmless, but he wanted to do surgery right away on her bladder and do a biopsy to test for cancer. She was scared it might be cancer.
The Monday before her surgery on Wednesday I fasted and prayed for her to be healed of her tumor. I had fasted during lent by giving up meat, but I had never done a serious fast for an answer to prayer. It wasn’t as hard as I thought it was going to be at first. I think the key to fasting is eating protein for each small meal. I didn’t eat any meat or fish. I had a veggie burger for breakfast for my big meal, for lunch I had raw almonds and almond milk, then for supper I had pretzels and almond milk which was a big mistake. I think there might be 1 gram of protein in pretzels which isn’t enough to stay with you. By the end of the night, I was extremely tired and felt kind of weak, so I went to bed early.
I prayed the week before her surgery and Monday, Wednesday of her surgery. I asked Jesus to heal my friend and make the tumor disappear. I asked St Jude to pray for her and Mary, the mother of Jesus to pray for her also.
My friend didn’t tell many people about her tumor because she didn’t want to talk about it. She told one person from her church a couple days before her surgery, and they put her on the prayer chain. To my knowledge, I am the only one that fasted. Her husband who is a retired pastor did even fast.
Her surgery on Wednesday was at noon, and I knew they were going use some type of anesthesia for her outpatient surgery. I texted her about 4pm to ask if she was awake and if she was in a lot of pain and I didn’t hear anything back, so I assumed she was sleeping. Then around 5pm she called me and said she had texted me, but I never got the text. She told me the surgeon couldn’t find anything. The tumor had disappeared! It was a miracle!
Hosea’s Heart in Africa is an organization that helps exploited children. It’s a home and school for vulnerable children who have been sex trafficked. It is owned and operated by a woman who is from the U.S and now lives in Africa
In August early September 2024 I got covid. One night I watched something about Mary, the mother of Jesus, and in the video, they talked about how special she was. I was raised catholic but never really thought much about Mary when I was younger. I had been going to evangelical churches for five years and the catholic church I went to off and on for years prior to becoming an evangelical. Then during the pandemic, I watched different evangelical churches. There were some evangelical pastors who were anti-Catholic, but funny and spoke with authority.
That night I decided to pray the Hail Mary prayer, after not praying one since before the pandemic. I laid down to go to sleep and all of the sudden I thought of Hosea’s Heart, so I prayed for the organization. Then I sensed Jesus standing by the right side of my bed and I heard the words, “I am going to give her a book.” (I hadn’t heard Jesus speak to me in years) I asked Jesus, “what kind of book?” but I didn’t get an answer. Then I thought maybe Jesus was telling me to donate to Hosea’s Heart in case the owner wanted a book and she couldn’t afford one right now. I thought to myself, “I will make a donation in the morning” and tried to fall asleep because it was very early in the morning. I still couldn’t sleep and after I laid in bed a couple hours, I got up and made a small donation because it felt like I should and God wasn’t going to let me sleep until I did it, then finally I fell asleep.
I contacted Hosea’s Heart and wrote an email the next day explaining what I heard from Jesus and I wrote, “I know it sounds crazy., but….” Then I called the number on the website the next day and left a similar message. I felt like a fool.
Someone called me from Hosea’s Heart and when I heard from the woman on the phone that they didn’t think it was crazy and they hear things like that often. I was relieved. Then the person I talked to told me the owner was working on her second book. I had no idea she was a writer, and I had no idea she had published a book either. I was very surprised. She had been struggling finishing her second book.
I started worshipping satan the summer I was seventeen. It didn’t last long though and I started in July. The things that led up to it happened when I was 16 years old and were out of my control and I now believe I was a victim of witchcraft. I didn’t understand what was going on, and I thought God hated me, was going to damn me to hell, and I didn’t have any other choice. It was during that time I started seeing visions.
That June before I started following satan, my sister and I used the ouiji board my grandma had and she gave it to my mom. My sister and I used the board once. We started asking questions and got gibberish for answers. I became interested in the occult and witchcraft after we used it. I started reading books about the subject but the more I read about witchcraft, I knew it wasn’t the truth. Witches don’t believe in God or satan. They believe in a variety of different goddesses and gods: idols. I didn’t believe it because I knew that God and satan were both real. I knew that the God of the bible was the real God and that there weren’t any others. I thought God hated me and I was damned to hell, and I had no choice in the matter. I thought I should just worship the enemy because I was going to hell anyway. Yes, I was listening to the enemies lies and I was deceived.
Even though I was raised catholic I didn’t understand the religion, the rituals, or why I had to memorize prayers when I went to catechism class. Because no one explained things about God and prayer I never prayed or talked to God. Throughout childhood, and my teens I lived as an atheist. I never paid any attention to God. My parents did not talk about God.
I started having a lot of anxiety then and I also started seeing visions then. The first one was of an unborn baby in the womb that looked almost full term. I saw that one while I was sitting in my friend’s car while she went into Planned Parenthood to get birth control. I knew nothing about partial birth abortions at that time in my life. The next one I saw was of me and a man. That vision had to do with the biblical meaning of marriage. Then I saw the next vision in September. I saw the exact same vision on the night full moon of every month for three months in a row. I would wake up in the middle of the night in extreme pain. The pain would get so bad I could not lie in bed anymore so I would get up and go downstairs to get something to drink and by the time I got downstairs I felt like I was going to pass out, then I would break out in a cold sweat, and then I would faint but not before seeing a vision.
I didn’t know what the vision was supposed to mean, but I saw the same exact one every full moon for three months in a row. The vision started with me seeing all black, then I would see a dot of gold light that would move in a clockwise circle until it was a perfect circle of gold light like a halo. After the circle was complete, I would faint. Now I think it has to do with the third hour, specifically the third hour when Jesus died after he was crucified.
Soon I started dreading full moon. I didn’t want to wake up in pain again, but I didn’t know what to do either because I didn’t even think of praying or that God would help me. In November I saw a personal ad in the newspaper. It was a personal ad from a man who said he was spiritual and looking for a spiritual woman and there was a number written under his personal ad. The number was a blind box number the newspaper used so people could respond by sending letters to the newspaper, then the letter was forwarded to him. I sent him a letter and a photo, but I have no clue as to what I wrote in the letter now. He called after about two weeks, and we talked for a short period of time. I don’t remember our whole conversation now, but I know I had told him I worshipped the enemy. I told him about the visions and the pain that happened on the full moon. In the want ads in that day’s newspaper there a notice that said: Thank St Jude for favors received and it listed prayers to pray. It said to pray 3 of the Lord’s prayer, 3 Hail Mary’s and 3 Glory Be’s. I asked him if he thought I should pray them and he said he didn’t think it was a bad idea.
About a week later I got a letter in the mail from Jonathan, the man in the personal ad I had sent a letter to. He wrote I was on the wrong path, and worshipping satan was just a negative self-fulfilling prophecy.
I prayed on the night of the full moon in December. I stumbled through the prayers and didn’t think God would even hear me. In the morning when I woke up, I realized I didn’t wake up in pain the middle of the night and I didn’t see any visions or faint. God had heard my prayer and answered it. It changed my life. After that night, I started praying those prayers every day for protection from evil and I never left the house without praying for protection. I would read bible verses in my grandma’s old catholic daily mass bible every morning when I woke up. I also started talking to God all the time.
I wonder if Jonathan was an angel on earth. I don’t mean a heavenly angel but a human doing God’s will because he was at the right place at the right time. After that happened to me, I started asking God to help me be in the right place at the right time.
I know God can use anyone to make a difference in someone’s life. Maybe someday you will be someone’s angel on earth.
MKR Prodigal Daughter Christian Perspectives from a Prodigal 