The power of saying “I'm here”

Visiting the wild, craggy shores of Lake Superior not long ago, I lost sight of my son, who even in his adulthood prefers the path less traveled. Which threw me into a momentary panic, picturing all that might possibly – and, in hindsight, quite improbably might befall him: missteps, falls, black bears.

Following quickly on his path and calling for him, I looked farther ahead and there he was, calmly waving, signaling “I’m here, all is well.” He was there with me, but at a remove for the moment.

I tried sending that kind of signal just this week to a sick friend 800 miles away, too ill to use her phone. My mode of signaling? Prayer, something I am not well-practiced in. Except when I'm desperate.

Luckily, the story ended well. My friend got better and my worries were relieved. But the experience got me thinking about prayer and what it does for the person doing the praying, and the person being prayed for.

The results of a 2006 decade-long study –  the most scientifically rigorous investigation into whether prayer can heal – found that prayer had no effect on the recovery of people who were undergoing heart surgery.

In fact, some patients who were being prayed for did worse. Researchers speculated that being aware of people praying for them may have created a kind of performance anxiety, causing some patients to worry that they were so sick that the hospital had to call in a prayer team.

I can see how “performance anxiety” might happen for patients at death's door, when the focus would more properly be on transitioning, not reversing course.

But I think that for those expected to recover, knowing someone's out there on the other side of illness, signaling their concern and love, can be a balm. Restorative, even.

Proponents of prayer argue that it is the most deeply human response to disease, and that it may relieve suffering by some mechanism we don't yet understand.

Skeptics say prayer assumes the possibility of supernatural intervention, which by definition puts it beyond scientific measurement.

I say so what? We can't measure the effect of prayer on the person being prayed for – not now, anyway, and maybe not ever – but it did me a world of good. Prayer focused my thinking and calmed my distress.

Maybe it didn't help my friend recover.

But I wouldn't rule it out.

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