When You Are Truly And Sincerely Needing Help, You Have Only To Ask To Receive

Two times in my life I have cried out to Jesus for help in utter absence of an ability to do anything under my own power. Both times I have been answered. One was when we lost our son. 

The other time was when I was 21 years old and had an 8 month old in her highchair while I cleaned my kitchen. To keep her busy while I worked I had given her a vanilla wafer to chew on. B had no teeth yet, but was happily gumming away at it every time I turned to check on her - until I turned to see her sitting completely still, eyes wide open, a thin blue line appearing around her whitening lips.

I was such an uneducated person at that time in my life. I knew enough to know she was choking, but I had no idea what to do about it. I panicked. I ran from the highchair to the phone several times thinking I would call an ambulance, but rationalizing that if I did, they may not reach her in time to prevent lasting complications.

Finally - and for what reason I do not know as I was not a practicing Christian - I stopped in the middle of the floor and cried out, "Jesus, help me!".

Immediately, as if from a scene in the Matrix, instructions downloaded in my head.

I ripped B out of her highchair, threw myself into a kitchen chair, hurled her face down over my knees and slapped her between her shoulder blades with the palm of my right hand. Immediately, a piece of uneaten vanilla wafer shot out of her mouth onto the kitchen floor. Just as immediately, B took an enormous breath only to expel it with the loudest cry I'd ever heard her utter in her short life.

For what seemed like an eternity, we both sat there in that kitchen chair clinging to one another, crying in grateful chorus.

It would be decades later before I would accept Jesus fully into my life, but I never forgot that episode in my kitchen as He answered the prayer of a confused, frightened young woman whom He owed nothing.