What is a prayer? It is something I did not know I'd need. Until my mother prayed for me and it spoke gently to my childhood. When my mother tucked me in and she would stroke my hair and sing a lullaby. The one that said that I might die before I wake. Which was reason enough to pray. Then came the list. The list of things I was grateful for. My stuffed bear named Noel. Our dog Kai. But there was one prayer I never said out loud. For God to keep my parents together.

God doesn't always answer our prayers by giving us what we want. Prayers are reserved for God to answer with the miracle of what we need.

I know He heard my mother's latest prayer. On the day I could not see the life in front of me. When I hit rock bottom on April 25th. The day after my birthday, I wondered if I should live. Wondering how it could be possible to endure such agony for forty years more. But then my mother prayed. She knelt beside my bed and held me in her arms. I convulsed in a pain so deep you could not reach it with earthly hands. I turned inside out that day. The day she saw my naked soul. And tried to clothe it with grace.

My mother prayed for me to walk. To be released from pain. She said this prayer in silence. The kind of prayer with tears that well because your heart has overflowed. So I worry that she feels God has not heard her yet. That her belief in miracles might be fractured. So I try each to convince her that I feel God's will is done. Because I feel I have found what it is I need.

Yes, I wish I could walk like before. That I could be normal again. But God must have known that what I needed more than anything else, was a sense of peace. So I could be strong. And see the world for what what it still is, not what it used to be. Since my mother prayed, I see the nature below my feet. The blessings I can touch. And the gifts that I can see.

I can only imagine God heard her ask for me to be set free. But what kind of free? So He answered not with what she wanted, but with what I needed most. He cradled my heart and made it whole between my mother's heaves.

I know her prayer was answered. Because I soar within my mind. I dream of walking with our children and loving my husband with all that I can be. I can see an end someday to pain. I can envision accepting my limitations and learning a life that's new. I know that life will go on. Just not as I had planned. But who says that life was more meaningful before - with more blessings than what this new life will bring?

I thank God for my mother's prayer. He answered it for me. Because he knew the kind of miracle my new life would need.