The Power of Prayer

The last post I wrote from a hotel in Grand Junction. A girl on my team had just gotten injured and I had suspicions that it was her ACL. 

Everything in my knowledge and education pointed to an ACL injury. The symptoms were classic. The pain was classic. The mechanism was classic. 

If the injury did end up being an ACL.....it would devastate the team. 

The team stopped their practice and placed their hands on the injured player, surrounded their team mate and lifted her up in prayer. 

We got MRI results back this week. This would be the official yes or no on what the injury was. I was expecting for it to show an ACL injury. 

The MRI was clean. There was nothing found. All the ligaments were clean. Everything was clean. The MRI found nothing. 

I am still in shock. Every bit of my education and expertise told me it was an ACL. The only explanation I can think of is it comes down to prayer. The only explanation that I can wrap my brain around is that in that moment when her team lifted her up in prayer....the Lord also laid his hands on her. 

I have never experienced such a display of the power of prayer. It still is giving me goosebumps. 

Prayer and torn ACL's and Faith

I am sitting in the lobby of the hotel in Grand Junction. I am traveling with the men's and women's basketball teams from CCU this weekend. The lobby is all Christmased out! And it is snowing outside....it feels like Christmas. Especially since there is a drunk lady sitting in the same lobby....she had a little too much fun at the Christmas party. 

I was sitting at practice this afternoon when one of my girls went down. She says that her knee hurts and feels "funny".  Everything she tells me points to a torn ACL. This team is already low in numbers and this is the last thing they need.  This is the part of my job as a trainer that I hate. When I have to look a girl in the eye and tell her that her season could potentially be over. 

I tell the coaches and they are obviously upset. They stop practice, tell the girls the situation. In the middle of their practice, the day before a game, they stop for five minutes, lay hands on the injured player and pray.  I have never been in a setting like this and it gives me goosebumps. Tears even come to my eyes. 

I get to thinking, how can I as an athletic trainer believe that prayers is going to heal her ACL when I know, based on physiological knowledge of the body, that that isn't the way it really works.  That is when I realized how ridiculous I was. God is so much bigger than lost games and torn ACL's!  

Why can't the creator heal the body that he created? Where is my faith?