Two Mothers who Prayed

I would like to share with you two true-life stories of the power of the prayers of mothers. I witnessed the first story and the second was related to me by the mother involved.

1. A mother we will call Fatima

I witnessed this incident in 1990 in Auchi, in Edo State of Nigeria. A woman had brought her only son to the same Hospital where I was hospitalized because of an illness doc[1]tors expected would kill me since they had lost all medical hope. Her son was about fifteen years old and was declared dead by doctors after about a week of hospitalization. That day seemed like a normal day to patients and staff at the hospital until we all heard screaming and wailing that put the whole Hospital in confusion. It was Fatima crying profusely and violently over the death of her son. Some doctors and nurses had to hide from the violent mother who had refused to accept the death of her son. As she wailed, she narrated that before she had the boy, her in-laws were instigating her husband to marry another wife because in their culture she was still considered barren, despite having given birth to two daughters. She went on to say, she felt that God had mercy on her and gave her the boy in her third delivery, which made her feel secure in her marriage thereafter. Everyone in the hospital could hear Fatima’s profound lamentation that death had suddenly knocked at her door and forcefully taken her only son from her. After some time, people were able to hold this mother to a position, but her tears and cries could not be controlled. As she cried, she kept saying: “God, whatever death that was supposed to take my son from me now, let it come to me. Instead of my son, let me die. God, I choose to die the death that is meant for my son. I refuse to let him go.” After about an hour, the nurses that were attending to the corpse discovered the boy had come back to life; he was no longer dead. The Doctors also confirmed it, and it was amazing how the mother’s sorrowful tears immediately turned into tears of joy and her lamentation into songs of thanksgiving. The boy was discharged from the Hospital after a week of the miraculous resurrection. I was also discharged afterwards. Sadly, Fatima, the mother of the boy died after two months. Maybe it was because she had invited death to take her instead of her son. No one knows. But it is extremely important to be careful of our words. She was not a Christian and did not know better. If she understood that Jesus died in the place of all mankind, including that of her son, she would have pointed the death that took her son to Jesus rather than to herself. Except for her death, her story is similar to that of the Widow of Nain (Luke 7:11-15), who was weeping profoundly on the way to bury her only son until Jesus came into the scene and told her: “Woman, weep no more” and did a miracle of bringing the boy back to life.

(Extracted from The Woman God Uses: A Wake-up Call to Fulfill Purpose by Rogers, M. A. (2019) pg. 60-62. Spain: Círculo Rojo publishing house).