Free Once Upon a Wish by Rachelle Sparks

started to question her daughter’s destiny.
   6   
    After three months of Katelyn’s silence, Sharon left her daughter’s side to stand in front of a large prayer map that she had hung in her hospital room. She stared at the hundreds of colored tacks pushed into towns, cities, and states across the country praying for Katelyn. Ray and Sharon’s family and friends, as well as their six thousand-member church congregation, had started a prayer chain that eventually left the country and reached people in China and Australia.
    “Lord, don’t leave her like this,” Sharon pleaded, eyes on the pushpins, reminders that she wasn’t alone. “Lead her home or wake her up.”
    Later that evening, as Ray wrapped Sharon in his arms and kissed her good-night, the door to Katelyn’s hospital room slowly opened and a nurse poked her head inside.
    “Excuse me, there are two gentlemen here to see you,” she said.
    It was nearly 10:00 p.m. Sharon looked at Ray and he shrugged.
    Two men with dark, kind eyes walked into the room and introduced themselves—one as the pastor of a Baptist church in Holly Springs, Mississippi, the other a deacon. They had never seen these men before, never heard of their church, never been to their town.
    “A member of our congregation requested a prayer for you and your daughter, Katelyn,” the pastor said, “and we felt like we needed to come pray over her.”
    They had driven from Mississippi—from a town more than an hour and a half away—late in the evening to pray over their daughter, a stranger to them. Ray and Sharon stood speechless. The men studied their faces, their eyes, and their expressions with the concern and compassion of long-lost friends. They were born to love others, to feel their pain, to care deeply, and to heal with words. Sharon invited them further into Katelyn’s room and granted them permission to pray.
    Before placing their hands over their daughter, the pastor said, “I can see now why we came to pray for you.”
    He stared intently at Sharon, who could not hide her worries or fears in the presence of this man, this perfect stranger. “I’m here to tell you to stay strong in your faith in what God is telling you, not in what man is telling you.”
    How did he know about the death talks they’d had with Katelyn’s doctors?
    He didn’t.
    And when the pastor added, “You go with what God tells you,” Ray’s faith, which had started to sink beneath the weight and into the darkness of their nightmare, was restored. God had been telling Sharon all along that He would prepare her, and since He hadn’t, Ray knew, once again, that nothing was going to happen to their daughter.
    Over the next couple of months, Katelyn slept peacefullythrough countless brain surgeries and chemotherapy treatments until the bacteria crawled slowly, greedily, and victoriously into her brain stem.
    “I’m not sure what’s going on with her,” said a nurse who saw on Katelyn’s monitor that her heart was beating 160 beats per minute. “I need to check the machine. There’s no way her heart is beating this fast….”
    The nurse fumbled with the wires, convinced of a malfunction, but found nothing. She took Katelyn’s temperature, and when the thermometer read 107°F, she quickly called for help and Katelyn’s hospital room, once again, became a ballroom of frenzied doctors and nurses dancing to the beat of chaos. The music—frantic shouts, relentless beeps, slamming doors, voices of panic—spun through Sharon’s head, its chorus familiar and heartbreaking.
    She closed her eyes and an unexpected calm, a sense of hope and knowing, warmed her, filled her mind and spirit.
    It’s going to get worse before it gets better. It’s going to get worse before it gets better.
    She repeated the words over and over in her mind.
    This had to be the worst of it.
    Sharon felt the heat from Katelyn’s skin, like rays from a small sun, inches before her fingertips touched the fire. She