Spiritual Moments

Earlier this year, my grandfather had to undergo heart surgery, replacing an aortic valve. He has always been in fairly good shape, my grandmother makes sure of that with a strict exercise routine, but still he is an eighty one year old man and I was extremely nervous when I heard this procedure was necessary. Despite reassurances from my grandmother that my grandfather would be receiving state of the art care from the best heart surgeons around, I couldn’t get the what-ifs out of my head.

            The worst part was waiting for the surgery day to arrive. There were so many unknowns involved that all the things that could go wrong kept playing over in my head. To make matters worse, my grandfather caught a cold when he was scheduled to fly out to Duke, and the surgery had to be postponed. There was more waiting and more stress, but finally the day came. I received another call to let me know that my grandfather had arrived at the hospital and the procedure was under way. I have never been one to pray much, but I felt compelled to do so at this time. This was one of the few moments in my life where I felt completely helpless, and feeling this way made me realize that I had to have faith and hope for the best.

            To my relief my grandfather recovered from the surgery with flying colors. Within weeks he was back to his old self telling long drawn out stories and offering advice on every situation. Throughout this situation I felt like my grandfather’s fate was in the hands of a higher power. I was tremendously thankful to see him come through the experience and be alright. Having him go through such a potentially life threatening situation made me realize how grateful I am to have him around. While I have not been the most spiritual person throughout my life, the helpless feeling I had knowing that there was nothing I could do to help him through his surgery made me want to believe that there was a higher power looking after him.

When I prayed for his safety it was not directed towards any specific deity, but rather towards an unknown power. Maybe because there was no specific target for my prayer to go out to it was received. I felt like I had to believe in something, but I was not entirely sure what. I believe that just having that faith that there might be something above us qualifies as a spiritual moment, even if it is not exactly a religious one. In the end, I do not know if it was a higher power that helped my grandpa through his surgery or not, but I am just glad that he made a full recovery.