My folks and I, together with my sister, were in the waiting room when we received this news which led to a lot of emotion and crying.  Finding myself in the middle of this situation and listening to the crying and the emotion, I was moved to intervene.  I stood up and said “We need to put this in the hands of someone who can do something about it”.  My Mom, thinking I was distraught or something, attempted to stop me and I left the room.  On seeing me leave the room, my Dad followed me and said “Bob, what do yo think we need to do?”  I told him that we needed to put this in the hands of God.  My Dad said “Tell me what you want us to do and we will do it”.

On hearing that, I said “Go and get Donny and Debra (Jolee’s parents) because if God is going to heal Jolee, they need to know who did it.”  My Dad immediately went and brought Donny and Debra back with him to the waiting room.  As soon as they arrived, Donny and Debra kneeled and I prayed, asking God to intervene in Jolee’s behalf and heal her.  I had no sooner finished that prayer when we were informed that the ambulance was ready to take Jolee to the Miami hospital; Donny and Debra immediately left to travel in the ambulance to the Miami hospital with Jolee.  Now I would be remis not to bring to mind the significant element of the story “9 – Prayer, faith, and my sister’s cat!” found in an earlier page of this website.; that is, the role that belief (faith in God) has in prayer.  So here it is again.

As I noted within the story of “9 – Prayer, faith, and my sister’s cat!”: I had begun reading the Bible and was aware of the Scripture in the New Testament (Mark 11:24) in which Jesus says “…What things so ever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them”.  I decided to do exactly that beginning the moment I finished asking God to help me find my sister’s cat.  That’s not an easy task.  Aside from the overt doubts that will arise in one’s mind, there are many subtle little doubts that will constantly try to creep in.  Constantly.  How do you fight something like that.  Here’s what I did.

Whether that night, or the following day, on the appearance of the slightest sign of a doubt sliding into my mind, I said to myself: “God will help me find my sister’s cat”.  Over and over again; until it disappeared.  Thing is, it is impossible to hold two thoughts simultaneously in your mind and, because of this, doubt was unable to displace belief in my mind.

Back to Jolee.  I determined from the moment of the prayer for Jolee that I would do exactly the same thing as I did when I prayed that God would help me find my sister’s cat.  I set a guard in my mind and at the slightest sign of the appearance of doubt, overt or subtle, I said “God will heal Jolee” (to myself of course).  Upon the departure of the ambulance, we headed home and on to bed as it was quite late.  Early the next day, Sunday, I returned to Lake Worth

Sometime that day, I received a call from my Mom.  She had received a call after the arrival of the ambulance at the hospital in Miami.  On the way over to Miami, Jolee woke up and started playing.  She said that the Miami hospital repeated the tests performed at the Naples hospital and they had found no evidence of meningitis or the swelled brain.  The Miami hospital decided to keep Jolee for observation for a few days to be sure.

Sounds like a great ending but it is not over yet.  A related event occurred subsequently that underlined the importance of our testimony as stated in Matthew 4:21 (KJV); that is, that our belief is also linked to our testimony.  That evening, while attending a bible study in Lake Worth, I told the story of Jolee, her illness, and her recovery.  However, on telling the story, I really screwed up.  My exact words were “…and we think that God healed Jolee”.  Thing is, the minute the words were out of my mouth, I knew I had screwed up and confirmation of that screw up came shortly after I returned home from that meeting when I received a call from my Mom.

My Mom informed me that she had just received a call and Jolee had fallen back into a coma.  Realizing what and why that had happened, I said to her “Don’t worry Mom, I know what the problem is and I will fix it”.  Even though it was quite late, nearly 11:00 P.M., I traveled down to Del Ray Beach and explained the situation to some good friends of mine with whom I had worked with from time-to-time in a halfway home for teens that they provided.  I asked them if they would pray for Jolee and let their faith and belief stand in for mine.  They agreed and immediately prayed for Jolee and I returned home and went to bed.

The next morning, my Mom called and said that Jolee had come out of her coma a few hours after her call to me that night and that additional testing again found no sign of anything wrong.  A few days later Jolee, together with Donny and Debra, returned home.

Before leaving this story, it seems appropriate to incorporate a further note about the significance of prayer and belief.  Of the six children my wife and I had after our marriage, the doctors declared to us that two of them, one a baby and one a nineteen-year-old, would die before the night was over.  They were proven wrong.  In both of those instances, God intervened and His intervention was the result of prayer and belief.  Those two stories are found in the following pages of this website.