Prayer in the post office parking lot

She walked up to me in the post office parking lot as I was returning to my car. "I know we don't know each other," she said, smiling hesitantly, "but do you mind if I pray for you?"

It was not a question I expected, much less from a stranger in a parking lot. Yet I believe in prayer.

"No," I said, "I don't mind." I had to drive to the airport, but you never know when you might be entertaining angels unawares, right?

"Do you know the Lord?" she said.

"Yes," I replied, wondering how much of a quiz this was going to be.

Many Calvinist Christians in my experience tend to be flummoxed at the thought of Catholics knowing the Lord in a personal way, perhaps because some of them suppose that Catholic dogma or clericalism makes that impossible. Sensing that, I have sometimes downplayed my own faith for diplomatic reasons. Catholic theology understands what it means to be saved by the blood of Jesus, for example, but Catholic vocabulary doesn't skew that way-- we tend to emphasize the big picture death-and-resurrection mechanics of atonement.

I had this inquisitive brunette in blue jeans pegged as being about my age, but warmly Protestant.

Then the woman surprised me again. She knelt in the parking lot, and placed her hands gently around my left knee, holding it lightly through my pants leg.

"Lord," she prayed aloud, "I know you have authority over all things, and I believe that you want this man restored to health. I pray that you heal his infirmity, and free him from this affliction."

I was dressed to cope with air conditioning funneled through plastic nozzles over the passenger seats in a Boeing 737. I pulled the Bubba Gump baseball cap off my head and held it reverently over my heart, more surprised than embarrassed. Public prayer in my circles typically reserves the laying on of hands for special occasions.

But now I understood why this woman had approached me: She'd seen me limping. Mine is a distinctive walk.

She didn't ask about my cerebral palsy; she'd just taken it upon herself to pray for a miraculous healing of whatever I had, right there in the post office parking lot, with my gimpy leg in her earnest hands.

Her prayer continued for maybe a minute in the same vein. When she looked up and stood up, I said "Amen."

"The Spirit is working on you," she said. "I know it."

"Thank you," I said, still mired in surprise but oddly grateful as well.

How do you end an encounter like that?

"May I give you a hug?," I said, and she nodded, so we exchanged a hug. I asked her name, and she said it was Gwen, and that she went to church in a semi-rural area about 40 minutes from the parking lot where we were both standing.

A day later, I have the same limp I had before Gwen prayed, the same spasticity in my left calf. I can still throw a tennis ball much further with my right hand than with my left.

But God works in mysterious ways, and that guileless prayer, surreal as it was, touched my heart. So now I pray for Gwen, too, and am thankful that our paths crossed, however briefly.