“I’ll pray for you.” Said so often by me and others. Does prayer help the one we’re praying for?

I started pondering this because of Rosemary. Of all people, I should be able to help. And there’s not one thing I can do to lessen her pain. So I told her the same thing everybody else did. “I’ll pray for you.”

Did prayer help me after Ben died?

No, it did not. I suffered such unimaginable pain that it is not logically possible to say that God helped me. There’s that comforting little Footprints in the Sand poem, that God was carrying you when things were at their worst.

If he was carrying me then it was through hell.

My naive belief that prayer works, passed down by my elders, is damaged, if not obliterated. Did they give prayer a great deal of thought or did they just hand it down from their elders? And if so, did any of those people lose their only child and scream out alone night after night wishing only to trade places with their child?

Did they suffer every single day for years and finally stop sharing their suffering because it cannot be cured. Resigned.

But finally convinced prayer does not work.