by J. Aday Kennedy

I suffered a stroke in 1998 and became a legally blind, ventilator-dependent quadriplegic. I prayed, “Lord, make me walk and breathe on my own.” The next morning I thought my legs and breathing would be restored, but they were not. Why didn’t God answer my prayer? God must want me to struggle, I thought. Okay, I had to work for it. I didn’t want to, but if that’s what I had to do, I would. 

Can You Feel This?

“We have a visitor in the hospital today,” said the nurse. “Would you like to meet her?”

“Who is it?” mom replied.

“Joni Earickson Tada.”

“We’re reading her book!” said mom. She had been reading to me daily to keep my spirits up.

Joni’s attendant rolled her to my bedside and Joni lifted her hand and placed it over mine.

“Can you feel this?” She asked, smiling.

“No.” I could only mouth the words.

“Me either,” said Joni, “but it looks good, doesn’t it?”

Joni had become a quadriplegic at age sixteen in a diving accident. She became an author, an artist, and a businesswoman after she became paralyzed. Her faith had given her peace and strength. Is God trying to show me something? I remember wondering.

A Strange Command

My new physical therapist, Dale, gave me a strange command: “Move your right index finger.” Through previous months of physical therapy I had thought I had to feel something before I could move it.

“Don’t ask her to do that, said my mom. “You’ll depress her.”

Dale ignored her and directed me again: “Move your right index finger.” To my amazement—and my mom’s—the finger wiggled a tiny bit. It was the beginning of reconnecting with my body.

After we left the hospital, day in and day out, my mother would prod my diaphragm and ask, “Do you feel this? Can you feel this?” My answer was always no. I continued to pray, but I had lost faith. I wondered when she would stop this fruitless effort. Only a mother would have tried over and over without results.

I still prayed, but without much hope, “God, please help me to walk, breathe, and see.”

Fall stretched toward winter. Rain spat at the window panes. Cold rain turned into sleet. My recovery froze like the streets outside. Not better, but not worse, and still the questions: “Do you feel this? Can you feel this?”

Then, late in December, my answer changed: “I think I can. Do it again.”

She did, and I had a glimmer of feeling.

Now that my body was starting to respond, I hoped my vision would improve.

“She’ll never be able to read,” the ophthalmologist said. “It’s a nerve problem. No amount of therapy will help. She can’t track a sentence from line to line, making it impossible to read.”

But I exercised my eyes daily. “Follow the pen,” Mom would say as she moved it up and down, side to side, backward and forward.

From 1998 to 2002, I spent eight hours a day trying to see and trying to move. I regained partial use of my left arm and hand, thanks to my mother’s dogged determination and prayer. I could rotate my head. With assistance, I could sit on the edge of the bed for fifteen minute intervals. I could now breathe for more than an hour off the ventilator. And my eyesight had improved, despite the doctor’s insistence. With a magnification program, I could read.

Still I prayed for the ability to walk and to breathe unassisted all the time. I had regained many things, but not those two things. I thought God answered prayers, I said to myself. I did my part. A few weeks later, I gained an insight.

More than Sympathy

“I want you to meet Connie,” said the nurse. “She has Lou Gehrig’s Disease.”

Connie was bedridden and unable to move, speak, or breathe unassisted. I knew how she felt. My experience had been just the same. It was still much the same. In me, she had someone who could do more than sympathize.

If I could walk and breathe without my ventilator, my own unique testimony would be muted, I thought.

The apostle Paul recounted a conversation with God, in which God told Paul, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” This produced an attitude adjustment in Paul: “Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me” (2 Corinthians 12:9, NIV).

So I thought about Joni Earickson Tada. When she visited me, I gained more from her because she could not walk or draw and write with her hands. Right then, God had left me clues about what my future held. God has answered my prayer, and His answer, for some things, has simply been, “No.”